 
## **Contents**

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter II

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 五

Chapter 六

Chapter 七

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 十四

Chapter 十五

Chapter 十六

Chapter 十七

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter 二十四

Chapter 二十五

Chapter 二十六

Chapter 二十七

Chapter 二十八

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter 三十四

Chapter 三十五

Chapter 三十六

Chapter 三十七

Chapter 三十八

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 四十二

Chapter XLIII

Chapter XLIV

Chapter 45

Chapter XLVI

Chapter 47

Chapter 四十八

Chapter 49

Epilogue

Notes

The Half-Life of Truth

Nick Lacroix

After six years without contact, a young man returns to New Zealand and attempts to reconnect with family and friends who have moved on and a country he no longer recognises, but he is forced to confront the failures of his past, as a headstrong idealist trapped in a floundering relationship, and as a Japanese exile infatuated with the wrong woman.

From the high-achieving daughter of Chinese immigrants, a Japanese misfit who rubs everyone the wrong way, and an old friend embroiled in a Maori land occupation, this satirical and darkly humorous novel chronicles bigotry, love and the fragility of truth in New Zealand and Japan at the close of the twentieth century.

For W: Thank you for being the strong one;

N and L: May you grow into a world where this book is irrelevant.

None of what follows is true, most especially the facts.

Copyright 2015 Nick Lacroix. Cover Art: Carlos Donderis
CHAPTER ONE

The train snaked through the night, screeching round each bend, clattering along every straight. Gripping tenuously to its tail, the final carriage issued a disconcerting lurch as it whipped into line, though with little alarm to the twelve inanimate men within.

To the casual observer gazing down from the heavens, they were indistinguishable in every way; weary "salarymen" in crumpled suits and drab ties catching the last train out of Tokushima city to their homes up the valley. All were slumped forward with arms tightly folded and chins resting upon chests. Those that weren't actually dozing had embraced the blissful stupor borne of the train's undulation. Only a single form diluted the symmetry. It wasn't the dark blond hair or angular features that piqued the omniscient, but that the voices in his dreams, so rabid and spiteful, were English.

He was a gaijin, as they say in the local parlance, or gaikokujin to those that like to challenge the status quo, which amongst Japan's vast populace numbered precisely six.

The train braked with a caterwaul that drowned the mumbling station announcement, but a tiny part of his brain alit, and he roused himself and gazed longingly at the door. Addled with fatigue, he lurched forward and - in the manner of a drunk - used his momentum to throw himself to his feet and propel from the carriage.

Save for the flickering luminance of an aging vending machine, the station was empty and the young man paused for a time, then heaved a shallow groan and trudged into the street. A thin mist had descended and the meagre streetlights shone weakly through the haze.

The wind bit at his bony hands and gaunt cheeks. Snow was approaching from the north; he could feel its lash in every gust, and clutching his jacket tightly to his frame, he chastised himself for forgetting something warmer. Though in truth, he never took a coat and chastising himself for it was a daily ritual.

It was drawing to the close of 1997 and another Christmas had slipped by without ado. It was widely celebrated in this secular land by department stores and children alike. Nicholas Fairfield, however, was recoiling from an epic, rancorous altercation with his girlfriend, and so he'd occupied the day pondering whether to deliver her gift. In the end, he hadn't and it still sat in a small box atop his fridge. He then spent an interminable evening at a baby shower of one of the local gaijin. Alcohol was provided when requested, but after being reprimanded for his third drink in as many quarter-hours, he had nursed an ever-flattening lager for the remainder of the night.

His announcement of the event only three days prior had initiated her first salvo in their argument, "You've known of this for weeks, so why only tell me when it's too late to amend my plans?" It hastily devolved into all-out war, with every one of his failings launched upon him in an endless barrage. But he merely absorbed them without defence or retaliation. He already knew each of them abundantly, and while none were wholly intentional, he had done little to correct them either. He had been here before. He recognised the knell of a failing relationship and knowing as he did, that resolution was out of his hands, he reasoned that if it was to fail, better it fail fast.

Although it was only a short walk to his apartment, it culminated in a grudging uphill climb, which he regarded with no less repugnance than if it were Everest. His breath soon grew heavy and his posture slumped, implying a suffering that his few years did not deserve. Once or twice, he eyed an attractive stoop and briefly considered curling up into a ball and resting his weary body, but he conceded, if he just kept moving he would soon be home and into bed, rather than found there, another gaijin ruining the harmony of Japanese society. He used to say this to himself with a dark humour, now he just said it.

Nearing his building, he could hear the distant ring of a telephone. Initially, it merely irked him that someone would call another at such an unspeakable hour, but he was quickly jolted with the recognition of the elevated trill as his own, and he found himself running. Though, he could not begin to comprehend his haste. Certainly, no conscious choice had been made. Even in his apartment, he only ever bothered to answer the phone to silence its infernal bleating. Yet he kept running and, reaching the stairs, he bounded up them like an octogenarian with a new hip. As he arrived at the landing, his hand was already in his pocket clutching his keys and his mind had settled on a single thought. "Good news never arrives at midnight," his grandmother would say.

The door flew open, his shoes dispensed themselves to opposite corners of the foyer, and in his fist, he finally gripped the receiver. He let his arm go limp, propped himself against the table with his free hand and heaved an almighty gasp, wringed it of every ounce of oxygen and expelled with a slow, shallow wheeze. Renewed with the power of speech, he uttered, "Moshi-moshi?"

"Nicholas? Is that you?"

He gasped again for air, and his tired legs staggered. He'd not heard that treacherous voice in six long years and could easily have bided another six of similar length. "Mum?"

"Yes, it's me. Oh it's so, so good to hear your voice," she enthused.

"How did you get my number?"

"The embassy. Given the circumstances they were able to pull some strings..."

"Circumstances?"

"Oh, I don't want to tell you this over the phone... Can you sit down?"

"I am sitting," he lied.

She inhaled loudly. "It's your father. He has... passed... on."

"Oh? How?" he replied instantly.

His indifference gave her pause, but then she cleared her throat. "An aneurism," she advised, before promptly adding, "It was very quick."

"Oh," he repeated. "What are the arrangements?"

"The funeral is next Thursday. It would mean so much to me if you could make it..."

He did sit down then, letting the receiver hang loosely in his hand. He was immediately burdened by the thought of all the rivers he must ford and all the mountains he must scale to make an event 6,000 miles away in less than a week. Which he had absolutely no desire to attend. Obviously he would not go. He would not do that for him. And though he was quite certain of this in his head, the words that passed his lips were, "I'll be there."

"Oh, excellent," she exclaimed brightly, as if so surprised by his response she had forgotten herself. "I'll put fresh sheets on your bed."

"You needn't bother. I'll grab a motel."

"You mustn't," she protested, her excitement dissipating. Then, seeming to think it might help, she said, "I'll be away, I'm afraid. Your brother is driving me to Auckland to fetch your Auntie Carol. She is very fragile these days."

Nick sneered. If he needed any proof that his father was truly dead, it was that Aunt Carol was coming to town. While he was alive, she could not stand him enough to visit, but for his death, she'd be there. "A motel will be fine."

"Well, if you insist," she uttered. "I shan't see you till Thursday then. I'll give you James' cell phone number. Please call when you arrive. It's 025-985-4959. Did you get that?"

"Yes," he lied again, and after some silence, said, "So I'll see you Thursday," awaited her response and hung up.

* * *

With abundant surprise, he discovered that all his belongings - the vestiges of six years of his life - fitted into a suitcase and a carry-on, with enough space for the work of his favourite students and his most treasured books. Zipping the bags closed, he stood and reviewed his sparse possessions without emotion.

The door opened with a clamour, and he swung to see Yukiko in the foyer, striking in tight jeans and a trim jacket, which she commenced to unzip. "I thought it was time for your Christmas present," she beamed, revealing none of the anger that had seemed so intractable four days earlier.

He strode out quickly to intercept her. "I tried calling you..."

"Really? Because I never heard it ring." Sensing that something was amiss, she blew past him into the bedroom, and by the time he caught up, she was glaring at his baggage on the bed with no less abhorrence than if it were a disrobed mistress. "What's going on?"

He drew a breath, and then uttered the only line he'd prepared, "My mother called... I need to go back to New Zealand. There's a funeral."

"Oh God," she said, touching her face in concern. "Someone close?"

"No."

She examined his curious expression for a time. "So when do you leave?"

He gestured weakly to documents on the shelf. "I'm catching the last ferry this afternoon and then I fly out of Osaka at midnight."

Slowly surveying the room, she observed that he wasn't just packing a few clothes and toiletries, but everything. And then her eyes dawdled on a tidy pile of items on the desk. They were hers. "So how long are you away for?" she probed with the conspicuous timbre of interrogation.

"I've taken extended leave. I don't know when I'm coming back. Or even, if..."

The final word struck her with a slap; her eyes retreated and her lips quivered. "I don't understand. You said you never talk to your mother, but she just called. You said you could never go back, but you already have a ticket. You said you'd never leave me, but your bags are packed..."

"This is not about us," he said urgently, knowing that of all the things he might say, this was the truest. "I have to go home. I can't hide here forever. I have to fix things..."

Her face contorted, before skewing to the midpoint between her eyes. "Do you mean with her?"

He sighed heavily.

"My God," she exclaimed, backing toward the door. "You think after six years, you can just turn up on her doorstep?" She was trying to mock, but there was a piteous taint to her voice. "And where does that leave me?"

"Please! I just need some time."

"Ichi-nenkan mo! Ichi-nenkan mo!" she bellowed, reverting to Japanese as she always did when angry. "A year together and suddenly you need time? What was I to you? Your little Tokyo whore? Your disposable geisha?"

"Yukiko," he pleaded, "It's not like that. My every moment with you has been invaluable."

"So, you're saying our relationship has no value?"

"No, that's not what invaluable means."

"Really, because it sure seems to mean that." Her voice had cracked, and he knew that soon there would be tears, and all his resolve would evaporate. But in an instant, her countenance steeled, and she was calm and controlled. "What day is the funeral?"

"Thursday."

"Call me by Thursday night or don't call me, ever!" she barked, and then in the ensuing silence, she stormed out the door.

* * *

Nick woke with a gasp, and still breathless, took a moment to remind himself where he was. Thirty thousand feet over the Pacific, constricted on either side by elbows, the deafening thrum of engines filling his ears.

He'd had the dream again.

While he possessed a rich catalogue of nightmares that were each vexatious and unsettling in their own way, it was this one he detested most.

He arrives home from university to the flat he shares with Tessa. Crossing the hallway, he hears a wretched sobbing beyond the bedroom door, but bolted fast, he is forever powerless to console her.

Tessa had been his everything from the very first, but he drew of her so much and hurt her so deep, that all his affection was not enough to make her stay. Despite the years, he could never escape her grip.

He examined his watch, noting that he'd managed forty minutes of sleep, though only with the encouragement of a succession of miniature bottles. Fondling for a button on the seat-arm, he righted himself a full two degrees from not-quite-reclined to bolt-upright. He had especially purchased a book for the flight, but with his mind torpid from altitude and fatigue, he could not bring himself to read, so he stared about the dark cabin, hoping he might catch the attention of a flight attendant. Though obviously not the matronly one that had warned him to restrict his intake due to the heightened effects of alcohol at altitude. It was a point she had seen fit to mention not once, but thrice. Her first attempt was inflected as helpful advice, her second with a marginal attempt at humour, and finally, having abandoned all pretences of civility, as a remark of such condescension that even the liberal application of sarcasm did not serve to mitigate it.

But there were no flight attendants, and it seemed that every other soul was asleep, possibly even the pilot, he considered with a masochistic relish, visualising him keeled over the yoke, drooling uncontrollably into the altimeter.

As it happened, Nick had only ever flown twice, when he'd fled to Japan and now, his return home. Home. He held the word in his mind for a time, probing the emotions it evoked, but in the paucity that followed, his thoughts shifted to his life in Japan. Six long years, awash in all the hues of grey, and for it, but a few snatches of memories that would scarcely fill a matchbox. Then he pictured a younger Nicholas Fairfield and wrestled with the hazy image before it irretrievably slipped away. He felt utterly detached. The boy of his memories was no more him than someone you might encounter at a party, who'd come from your town and attended your school, but moved in a totally different clique and now lived an unimaginable life. He had a naivety that was boundless, believing all of life's secrets could be found in the lyrics of John Lennon, and he was foolish and idealistic, and - most preposterous of all - of an immeasurable happiness; he had good friends and a pretty girl who loved him, and he knew that somehow he was special and that because of him, the world would be a better place. Nick scoffed at the youth. He had never made the world a better place, only an emptier one.

It dawned on him then, how neatly the ocean had cleaved his life in two. And now he was starting over. Again. And feeling a growing weight upon his chest, he closed his eyes and tried to silence an anguished mind.

II

19.141: An Introduction to Mammalian Mating Processes

Eight years earlier and only three months prior to commencement, Nick had learnt that none of his friends would accompany him to university. They had been talking of their tertiary study for as long as he could remember, and in particular, of their plan to flat together. There was not a single trifling detail that hadn't been discussed ad infinitum. They already knew how they would assign bedrooms, manage budgets, share chores and allocate cooking duties. It had even been solemnly accepted that Friday dinners would always be fish, not due to them being Catholic, but because it necessarily would accompany their chips. Also decided was the best way to maintain morale, organise weekly parties, eject clingy overstayers, prioritise bathroom access, detoxify malodorous toilets and minimise the incidence of curly hairs in the soap. But, as was now quite obvious, all that cogitation and conversation had been utterly wasted.

The latest defection had taken him particularly hard, and for days, he possessed all the vim of an inebriated sloth. Finally, on the third morning, having considered the matter long into the night, he woke to find a plan fully formulated in his mind and his energy restored. At the tick of nine, he telephoned Massey University, transferred to the accommodations department and enquired of a hostel room. Although little remained, he was advised he could be billeted to a shared room in one of the blocks, which was seemingly of such antiquity it hadn't even a name, only the designation, "A". He accepted gratefully.

Two weeks later, he received a letter detailing his assigned roommate. David Kwan, 18, Male, Havelock North.

Nick had always lived in Tikorua, a town of such unappeal that even the emigrants of third-world dictatorships evaded its charms, so there were no "ethnic" restaurants or dusty stores of unrecognisable foodstuffs run by curiously attired women with unpronounceable names. In Tikorua, if you were not Pakeha, you were Maori, and if you were not Pakeha or Maori then you were Pakeha and Maori. In fact, Nick had only ever encountered Asians in B grade movies as nimble-footed sidekicks or libidinous honeypots.

Endlessly, he pondered how his roommate might be, frequently embarrassing himself with the unenlightenment of his thought process. At one notable low point, he even visualised himself suffocating David with a pillow, having finally been pushed over the edge by his incessant pen-clicking during late night study sessions, and the continual mangling of the penultimate consonant of Nicholas.

Consequently, when he first visited his hostel the weekend before classes, having expended so much nervous energy on the persona, he was somewhat deflated to meet Dave. As it happened, his family had lived in New Zealand for generations, and his accent, attitudes and ablutions were indistinguishable from his own. If anything, Nick considered, given his feverish adoration of the All Blacks and an unfathomable predilection for canned Tui, Dave made a superior Kiwi than he ever would.

Inevitably Nick found him extremely likable, and on that very evening they ventured together to their first hostel party, and only hours later vomited at great length and volume in adjoining toilet cubicles. Leaning upon each other for support, they made their way back to their room, woke with exceedingly violent hangovers, swore their university days would no longer be marred by such recklessness, and then did it all over again.

Once their classes started, they managed with surprising adeptness to find the perfect balance between devoted study and mindless wassailing. It helped that Nick had classes that were exceptionally interesting. Not the ones he'd selected of course, which were so monumentally dull he'd inevitably spend his time plotting ways to fashion his writing implements into a crude weapon to assassinate the lecturer.

Knowing he was destined for great things, but having absolutely no conception of what these things actually were, Nick had chosen courses on linguistics, political science and philosophy. However, his best friend had immediately dismissed this selection as insufficiently rounded, which in this context, was clearly some kind of code indicating how immensely unappealing they sounded. Whether this meant to girls or future employers, he didn't say.

So Nick elected to learn a language, which naturally would be Spanish, as this was widely regarded as the most sensual of all the tongues, but Vince had overruled him again and suggested he choose Japanese instead, joking, "They are the future. So it is better you learn their language now than when they become our overlords."

University began to change Nick too; absent of his mother's tiresome admonishments, he let his hair grow long, and dressed in an abstract, non-conforming manner, just like all his peers. Through Dave, who had joined a varsity rugby team, he also got involved with sports, viewing primarily, but always keen to assist with post-match drinking too. Having rarely attended a game since his grandmother was about, it soon became a Saturday ritual.

* * *

If there was anything about Dave that Nick found alien, it was his considerable pre-occupation with food. Despite an abhorrence with the standard of hostel cooking and a slight build that didn't offer much in the way of stowage, Dave could polish off a meal in moments, and would then start on anything that Nick hadn't eaten or wasn't quick enough to defend. Shortly after returning to their room, he could then be seen swallowing the crumbly cigar-shaped biscuits he drew from a stockpile of red tins beneath his bed, which arrived in an endless stream of parcels from his mother. In the short periods when his mouth was not otherwise occupied, he would beg Nick to accompany him to a restaurant in the city for some real food.

For several months Nick successfully evaded the request, concerned that such a shock to his unsophisticated palette might induce the gastronomical equivalent of a heart attack, but, one evening when they learned that for the sixteenth Sunday in a row they would be dining on gelatinous beef meatballs and realised they had completely run out of jokes to make the experience bearable, Dave cornered him. "I know this great little place. It has the best Orange Beef in the Manawatu," he said, before feeling compelled to assure him, once again, that the suggestion that a restaurant might substitute cats for chicken was nonsense and, frankly, quite unsustainable. Not that Nick had ever voiced his concern on this point.

Minutes later, he found himself in his car being directed down unfamiliar side roads until he finally parked opposite the softly glowing facade of the Jade Dragon.

Nick, who was instantly aware how sheltered was his upbringing, had never seen the interior of a Chinese restaurant before. Its walls featured massive hand-painted Asian scenes, though this was frequently discorded by gushing flows of scarlet drapery emblazoned with Chinese characters. Above each table hung a bulbous rubescent lantern, and in the centre of the room, a towering stone waterfall complete with miniature pagoda trickled mellifluously. The effect was so very overwhelming that Nick was backing toward the door when they were accosted by a waiter and directed to a table at the rear.

Studying the menu, he rattled off several dishes of recognisable ingredients, but Dave merely scoffed at each suggestion and substituted something unpronounceable in its place. When the dishes duly arrived, naturally Dave insisted he use chopsticks. Vociferously, he protested how wholly unsuitable was a pair of twigs for the conveyance of food to one's mouth, but under Dave's tutelage, he quickly mastered their usage, and by the third dish was even conceding that for bite-sized morsels they were actually quite adept.

The food really was exceptional too, and it was not long before they were scoffing, quaffing and gabbing like a pair of overpaid ex-pats in a Kowloon Da Pai Dang.

Dave was possessed of a cheeky smirk that was only ever displaced by a guilty grin, and even his anger was always kept at arm's length. There were frequently things that irked him, but he would vent most emphatically for a time and thence was seemingly quite rid of the burden. Nick could not fathom such easy detachment.

That evening, he was bemoaning the meteoric rise of a politician of little substance other than a calculated pandering to smouldering xenophobia. "You know how they're always arguing against immigration because they say it will dilute New Zealand culture?" Dave exclaimed. "So tell me, when has that ever happened? How many times has an All Black said he can't play because the match falls on the fourth? When has the broadcast of a ping pong tournament ever displaced the cricket?" He paused to edge the hind-quarter of a duck into his mouth, before continuing, "They've got it the wrong way round; it's the immigrants that always lose their culture. My grandma's always like, 'Ai-yaa, you're such a banana,' because I'd rather eat sausages than gaoji, and I can't study when there's rugby on the box..."

"Banana?" Nick queried with a skewed eyebrow.

"Yeah, you know, looks yellow on the outside, but is actually white."

"Oh. But surely it would be a shame to lose all your culture, wouldn't it?"

"Of course, I'm quite happy to keep red envelopes, yum-cha..." He was counting off items on his outstretched hand, when Nick suddenly stiffened.

"Oh wow, don't look now, but how gorgeous is she?"

Dave twitched in confusion, before slapping his hands on the table with exasperation. "Dude, choose your racehorse and stick with it. Is it Don't-Look-Now or How-Gorgeous-is-She?'"

While still locked in surreptitious admiration, Nick whispered, "OK, turn slowly, but just pretend you're checking out the specials. Use only your peripheral vision."

Frowning, Dave spun a full 180 degrees, but when his face returned, it was gnarled with disgust. "Ugh, you're kidding, right?"

Nick examined him queerly, and then the girl, trying to determine what massive flaw in her beauty he'd overlooked. Her jet black hair framed a pretty Asian face, and her lips, though unadorned with lipstick, pouted alluringly as she spoke.

"What do you mean?"

Through a sigh, he said, "She's my cousin. This is my Auntie's restaurant."

"Really?" Nick exclaimed, buoyed by the narrowing degrees of separation. "So call her over and introduce us."

"Yeah, nah, I don't think that would be wise," he advised coolly, seemingly oblivious to Nick's elation.

"Oh, I get it. Your family's too good for me?"

"Yes, they are," Dave said with a laugh. "But that's not the reason." He delicately balanced his chopsticks on the edge of his bowl, and then explained, "She's first generation. Her parents and her brother, they all came out here just before she was born. They're very, very Chinese."

"Very Chinese? What does that even mean? They don't own silverware?"

Dave moaned again, as if the conversation was taxing some part of his brain he found laborious to use. "They're just really... conservative." It was a serious side of him that Nick had not previously seen, and he found it infinitely less appealing than his regular persona. "What I'm trying to say is that I doubt Tessa dates, and even if she did, I doubt she's allowed to date your type."

"My type?" Nick balked, unaware he was so easily categorised.

"You know, not... Chinese."

Nick slumped in his seat. Of course, he expected that dating outside his race would cause ructions in his vanilla, upper-middle class family, but hadn't considered that such feelings might run both ways.

Observing his disappointment, Dave immediately mustered a conciliatory tone, "Don't worry, Nick, there's plenty of Kiwi girls out there."

For some reason, this angered him more than anything else that had been said. "Perhaps I'll just ask her myself." Then he reached over and nudged Dave's rice bowl from the table. The hardened plastic hit the tiled floor with a loud, satisfying clang, and avoiding Dave's glare, he noted with delight as she reacted to the cacophony.

"Dave," she said warmly as she approached. "Good to see you. What happened?"

"Hi Tessa. It would appear," he hissed through a forced smile, "that I carelessly bumped my bowl while explaining how friendship is about respecting boundaries."

She bent down to scoop up the rice, which had remained a single homogeneous mass, despite bouncing several times toward a neighbouring table. With her head dipped, Nick and Dave then engaged in a particularly animated conversation that consisted solely of gesticulation and the sort of sign language one encounters in a pre-match showdown between two hearing impaired boxers. As she rose again, Dave gestured half-heartedly to Nick. "Tessa, I'd like you to meet Nicholas, a former friend of mine."

She acknowledged him for the first time with a hesitant greeting, to which he responded in kind, and after a few aborted attempts, they each simultaneously proffered a hand. Nick examined her nails, which had been painted a vivid hue of violet and contrasted so intensely with her orthodox attire, then he clasped her warm hand in his, savouring its touch, and shook weakly.

Self-consciously, she quickly withdrew from the grip and said, "Former friend? You didn't steal Dave's shrimp dumpling did you? He's been known to knife someone for less."

Much too nervous to laugh, Nick issued a high-pitched guffaw, much to the surprise of all three of them. In the awkwardness that followed, he uttered, "I don't know where that came from."

Thankfully, she gave a bubbly giggle, allowing him to study the exquisite way her eyes narrowed, and the pale skin flexed over her cheekbones.

Sensing that Nick was concocting a suitable solicitation, Dave quickly interjected, "Would you mind fetching me another rice, Tessa?" And after her departure, he breathed, "Don't you dare!"

"I only want to ask her out," he pouted.

"Oh please, I know what you're after. I saw how quickly you hooked up with that frightful vet student last weekend, leaving me to sleep on the common room floor."

"Nothing even happened. And you slept on the floor because you were so paralytic that every time I tried to move you, you threatened to throw up on my shoes. Besides, it's different this time..."

"That's right, because I won't let you."

"You won't let me?" Nick hiked his eyebrows, then paused to consider his strategy. "You do remember that I drove you here..."

"You wouldn't..." Dave piped.

Their conversation was halted by the reappearance of Tessa carrying a bowl of rice and a large dish. "Mum says you can't leave without trying some spicy pork ribs, Dave," and she lay the oversized portion between them, and in doing so, gave Nick a coquettish smile which emboldened his courage almost as much as it inflamed his loins. His mouth opened to speak, but his throat became so parched that he grabbed his emptied glass and shook the last of its contents into the void, only to find he was equally incapable of swallowing. He could feel a panic rising from his abdomen and fearing that all confidence might escape him at any moment, he blurted, "Tessa... Would you, perhaps, consider going out somewhere. With me. Sometime. Or other?"

Her face drew and she backed slowly from the table. "I'm sorry," she stammered, and then disappeared.

Nick shoulders drooped, and in his stomach, he could feel a team of acrobats warming up for what promised to be a stellar performance.

"Ouch, dude," Dave offered compassionately, and realising how desperately Nick needed to leave, he quickly polished off the pork ribs, finished the orange beef, consumed the last of the poached fish, and gulped down his bowl of rice.

At the counter, Dave introduced him to his auntie. She was tall for an Asian woman and immaculately dressed in an almost perfect facsimile of Western elegance. "Now, I'm only charging you for three of the dishes," she said as she totted up the bill, and then they argued the point for several minutes until Dave convinced her to charge them for four.

As Nick paid his half, she regarded him with concern. "Are you OK? You don't look so good. I do hope it wasn't the food," she said, and then gave the sort of laugh that implied just how preposterous was the suggestion.

"Oh, don't worry about him," Dave replied. "He just got a B-minus on his mid-term."

"B-minus?" she balked, recoiling with a shudder.

Nick shrugged, then cast his eyes about, hoping he might see Tessa again, quite aware it would only heighten his discomfort if he did. But she was gone, and downcast, he exited to the street.

Dave braced himself against a parking meter to massage his distended abdomen. "Why did you let me eat so much?"

"Sorry," Nick said without commitment. The acrobatic performance in his stomach had concluded, but apparently as way of finale, a hundred chimps were re-enacting the battle scene of Braveheart.

"Nicholas," a voice called from behind, and he spun to see Tessa, who urgently pushed a note into his hand.

"Call me tomorrow at 4," she beamed. "At four!" she repeated more emphatically as she departed. Nick didn't reply, just unfolded the page to stare at seven of the most beautiful digits he'd ever seen, a smile stretching slowly across his face.

"You son of a bitch," Dave observed once she was beyond earshot, but he was now grinning too.

Within a breath, Nick became upbeat and garrulous, and all the way home and deep into the night, he pressed Dave for her every detail.

Tessa Chou was a first year bio-technology student at Massey. She had graduated top of her class at Palmerston Girls. She lived at home and commuted to varsity each day. She helped in the restaurant at the weekend. She'd never had a serious boyfriend, as far as he knew. But, watch out for her brother, he will cut off your cajones and have them served as the daily special.

* * *

From first light, Nick had been observing the menacing sky with an undisguised hatred, and frequently directing contemptuous barbs toward the higher power accountable at a volume that was exceeded only by the echoed admonishments from Dave, who was nursing a particularly insidious hangover and had long since buried his head beneath a pillow.

Two days earlier, at precisely 4pm, Nick had called Tessa to arrange their first date. All his recent liaisons had involved no more groundwork than a slurred, "Boy, this sure is a great party," so after much anguish, he had elected for a picnic. With his mother, he'd once watched a movie where a young couple had found love on a blanket while gnawing croissants and sipping bubbly wine. It was the most romantic thing Nick had ever seen, though not being a fan of the genre, frankly, he didn't have a lot of material to draw on. He was so enamoured with his plan that the practicalities wholly evaded his thought process until Dave voiced his discordance with, "You're fucking kidding? A picnic in May? Jeez, I needn't have worried so much about introducing you, because you've got no fucking show."

Since then, Nick's mood had parallelled the vicissitudes of atmospheric conditions and reached their lowest ebb that morning at the sight of a growing band of dark clouds that offered little promise of continence.

Encumbered by picnic supplies and - in lieu of a blanket - his bed quilt, he made his way to the park ahead of their agreed time. When he had last visited in February, the sun had streamed through the tree canopy dappling the grass in a blissful glow, but now those same spots seemed only dank and gloomy, so he sought a location open to the meagre warmth of the sun yet girded by enough bush to mitigate the chilling wind.

Tessa had insisted on handling the food, leaving the beverages to Nick, so after spreading the quilt, he produced four bottles from his bag, two of sparkling wine, and - unsure of her stance - two of carbonated grape juice. These were followed by plastic wine glasses and an assortment of disposable plates and cutlery, which he arranged in two placements. Once satisfied, he ran to the arranged meeting point and found Tessa lumbering with two overfilled plastic bags.

She wore tight jeans that accentuated her slim legs, but with begrudging deference to the weather, a puffy white jacket with a mock fur trim. Unlike their first meeting, she was also adorned with eye shadow and ruby lipstick, which he sought to dismiss as an unnecessary diversion to her natural beauty, but could not deny the sexual allure it delivered.

He'd become motionless in his admiration, but observing her eyes narrow into a wince, he remembered himself, quickly made his greeting, and offered to assist. He lead her back to the bush clearing, where he discovered, with a horror that revealed itself as an effeminate squeal, that a freak gust had scattered his tableware and it now decorated the surrounding trees like they were magnolias in full bloom. Dropping his cargo, he promptly dashed about in fevered recovery, while unleashing another silent tirade toward the heavens. It was all going so horribly wrong that he wished only to disappear into the undergrowth and never speak of this date again, but, after giving up on the last plate, which evaded his retrieval by bouncing ever higher as he leapt, he returned his gaze to find Tessa ineffectually smothering a giggle. His face glowed with embarrassment, before he too was overcome by the absurdity of his predicament, and was seized by laughter.

They sat on the blanket, the four corners of which he anchored with his bottles of wine, both real and faux, and then Tessa commenced unloading her packages into three separate sections, which Nick assumed to be courses. There seemed an endless stream of containers of such plenitude that Nick began to fret she had mistaken the invitation and was expecting the imminent arrival of Dave and a dozen of his most ravenous friends. Then she started flipping open lids to reveal a selection of dishes that he recognised as food but would hitherto have never considered eating alfresco, fried rice, noodles, translucent white rolls, wontons and some kind of poultry. She caught his expression faster than he could suppress it. "I didn't know what you'd like," she explained.

"When did you find time to cook all this?"

"I got up at five, before my parents woke, and some of it came from the Chinese market. Do you see anything you like?"

"It all looks good," he confessed, recalling the gusto with which he'd consumed his first Chinese meal.

She smiled, relaxing again, and started apportioning the dishes onto Nick's plastic plates.

"Wine or grape juice?" he asked and with a sinful smirk, she requested the wine.

He handed her a glass and gave a toast to their first date, which he instantly regretted as rather naff, but she didn't appear to notice. She took a large swig, and then, surprised by the sudden return of carbonation, pressed a fist to her lips.

Nick had mentally prepared a list of topics he might broach whenever the conversation was lacking. It grew so long and unwieldy that Dave suggested using a mnemonic in the same way he'd memorised all the planets, but trying to recall it now, all that came to mind was, "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas." So he gulped away at his food making appreciative grunts and gestures whenever it seemed appropriate, until one finally occurred to him. "Dave told me you study bio-technology..." he enquired in a necessarily vague manner, having precisely no idea what bio-technology actually was.

"Yes, I am. It's quite enjoyable if you have an appetite for details."

Nick feigned a knowing nod. "So science was always your favourite subject then?"

"Oh no," she said quickly. "It was art when I was at school. I used to love to paint and sketch."

"Really?" he replied with surprise. She had positioned and served their dishes in such a precise and methodical manner that he struggled to imagine her absorbed in a task so frivolous. "Yet you studied bio-technology?"

"There's no career in art," she retorted dryly.

Nick chomped on a bun, expecting it to be plain, but instead found it sweet and tasting faintly of coconut. It really was quite confusing, and he silently wished for a warning label on each dish so he might adequately prepare his taste buds. He briefly considered rephrasing the observation as a joke, before dispensing it as too risky, and again the silence became uncomfortable.

"So what's Dave like as a cousin?" he soon blurted.

It struck her as a curious question, but finally she replied, "He's a great guy, but my mother worries he has too much freedom, and whenever she worries, she becomes stricter on me."

"Oh," he said sympathetically. "So what did your parents say about today then?"

"Well I didn't tell them, of course. They think I'm studying at varsity." And she revealed again her guilty smile.

He nodded, trying to look understanding, but this was rather tempered by a flush of delight as he bit into a white roll and was greeted by its flavoursome content.

Her face warmed anew. "That's cheungfan," she advised.

After swallowing his mouthful, he parroted, "Cheungfan." She smiled broadly, and with his encouragement, announced the Chinese name of each dish in turn and complemented him as he practised. Though occasionally she would stifle a laugh at his more clumsy attempts.

He was in such a rapturous state that he had forgotten the spite with which the gods regarded him until the first few raindrops peppered his scalp. Momentarily considering his options, which all leaned heavily on the miraculous appearance of lumber and roofing iron, he finally grabbed one end of the quilt and drew it over the two of them like a tent. He then proceeded to stare forlornly at a view obscured by a solid wall of water.

They sat there in silence for a time, but as it became unbearable, he confessed, "I'm sorry to give you such a terrible date."

"I can say quite honestly, that this is the best date I've ever had."

This brightened him immensely, but then with a trace of concern, he asked, "Have you been on many dates?"

She didn't reply, but he felt her hand brush against his knee and when he turned, his face aligned with hers. He knew he should kiss her then, but he hesitated. Everything that followed might depend on these few seconds, he realised. Also, her teeth were trembling immeasurably, and he was wary of the untold risk this presented his tongue. "You needn't be nervous," he said, hoping a confession might assuage his own anxiety.

"I'm not. I'm just cold," she protested. So he didn't kiss her; he clutched her so very tightly that her forehead rested beneath his cheek, her warm breath tickling at his neck and the exquisite fragrance of her hair filling his nostrils.

Soon he could feel the nuzzling of her cold nose, and unable to restrain himself any longer, he drew her lips to his.

* * *

But they were not intimate that day, nor in the weeks that followed, and this generated in him an emotional desire that exceeded even his physical one. Of course, his physical urges could be abated by frequent recourse to an omphaloskepsis of sort, while his emotional needs demanded regular contact, hushed phone calls and endless fruity missives.

In fact, complete intimacy did not arrive until a wet Monday in early June.

He'd been waiting in their usual lunch spot when he caught sight of her dashing through the crowd.

"Have you heard?" she frantically implored as she neared.

"Heard what?"

"They've opened fire on the protesters in Beijing."

"Who?" he replied, still failing to appreciate the gravity.

"The Chinese army! The government is shooting their own people." She pulled him to his feet. "Come on, we must go to your hostel. There's a TV."

She sprinted off, with him trailing behind, and did not falter until they burst into the hostel. The common room, normally empty during the day, was packed, and they needed to shuffle to the front and squat on the floor.

Save for the harrowing account on the flickering screen, the room sat still and speechless, though this was often punctuated by gasps and muffled sobs. Soon Tessa was crying too, and so he reached across and wrapped her in his grasp.

His body ached with anger, at the cowardice of those who would fight words with steel, and sadness for the needless deaths of people like him who wanted only to be heard, but more than anything else, he felt the pain that afflicted Tessa so deeply. Was this love? he wondered, that her suffering was his suffering?

Overwrought with emotion, he coaxed her back to his room. She lay down on his bed and he curled up behind, locking her tightly with his arms. In her ear, he whispered, "It will be OK." It seemed such a wholly pathetic sentiment, but he remembered how his mother would say it to him. How could she possibly know it will be OK? he would always wonder, and yet somehow those words would make him feel better. "It will be OK," he whispered again.

He could never say how it started, and could scarcely recall the moment now, but in a sudden frenetic blur, they fought at each other's clothes and exchanged a feverish coupling. When it was over, her face lay upon his chest, and he could feel a growing dampness, and knew that she was sobbing again, but he was much too afraid to ask of it.

Afterwards, as she napped, he could recall most vividly how he'd gazed at her naked body and felt such a sublime happiness that someone so divine was his. Gently, he reached out to touch her, mindful that she might wake, and slowly traced his fingers down the curvature of her back, pausing to touch a small birthmark above her buttock. It was in the shape of a half moon.

She was desperately embarrassed when he later pointed it out, but he explained how it resembled a lowercase N, which proved she was meant for him.

* * *

Their early meetings were always rushed affairs, a few snatched hours between lectures or a brisk weekend afternoon. Evenings were the most rare and precious of all, as Tessa needed to conjure a new excuse for every absence. With their hours together so brief, and its physical aspects so time-consuming, the core of their relationship was built upon the scraps.

But Dave and Tessa had woken another burgeoning lust within him, that for gastronomical gratification. For Nick, eating had only ever been a daily chore, like brushing one's teeth, or ferretting out a clean pair of underwear. His childhood meals had generally hovered in the grey area between palatable and actually requiring a bucket, and even those foods he found particularly tasty could never evoke sufficient desire that he would commute distances for, or - God forbid - hand over thick wads of currency. Before meeting these two, it had never occurred to him that dining could actually be a pastime; that one could spend an afternoon describing with orgiastic detail a recent culinary liaison, before prowling the streets in search of even greater ecstasy. It also made Tessa more open, as she was never more free and loquacious than when overwhelmed by a feastful aroma.

That afternoon they were sitting in a cramped Malaysian eatery on the outskirts of Feilding. Tessa was entreating Nick to sample a spicy soup by ladling a spoonful to his mouth. "It's quite good," she implored in a voice especially reserved for such falsehoods. "But we better eat up fast; I need to help out at the restaurant tonight."

Nick exhaled with exasperation through his nostrils, not realising just how toxic was his breath until he felt the chilli sizzling his nose hairs. "I thought you said you'd get tonight off."

"I know, but they have a full booking."

"That's four nights this week. I hope they're paying you extra for all this."

"Oh, I don't get paid," she clarified with such incredulousness that clearly the very idea that there might be financial reward for her efforts had never occurred to her.

He glared in disbelief. This was a task that devoured some twenty hours a week, not to mention several hours of downtime whereby she would describe in interminable detail the failings of each of her most horrid customers. Yet, apparently, it was done without a modicum of reward. "So why do it?"

"Because my parents need my help," she explained, her incredulity yet to abate.

"But it's not right that you don't get paid."

She shrugged. "They give me money whenever I ask; why should they pay me?"

"What about your brother? Doesn't he ever help out?"

"He's busy with his own work."

"Work?" Nick probed, suddenly recalling Dave's warning about the precarious state of his genitalia, and thus wondering if her brother's vocation provided ready access to sharp instruments.

"He runs a market-garden with my uncle."

Nick nodded equivocally. "So what's he like?"

She gave a miniature groan. "He's quite overbearing, which drives me crazy at times. I think he's afraid I will become too much like a Kiwi girl." She stabbed a triangular parcel of pastry and transported it to her mouth. "How about you? Any siblings?"

"Just an older brother, James, though I like to call him Jimbo because it irritates him so much. He's six years older than me and we're nothing alike. He always excelled at everything, school, sport, girls... Then after graduating, he returned to my hometown to join my father's law firm and marry his sweetheart. He's actually pretty awesome, or so he tells me anyway." Nick's face had wrinkled with disgust, though this was due, in part, to the discovery of coriander in his laksa. "My parents think so, too. In their eyes, he can do no wrong."

"Wow, that must be hard."

"Not really. I just stay out of his way..."

"I meant for him," she clarified.

"How so?" he balked.

"Your parents obviously heap a lot of expectation upon him."

Nick silently gauged the merits of her argument, one which he had never previously considered, before promptly dismissing it. "No, you don't know what he's like. He lives for that shit. There is nothing he likes more than rubbing my face in it either. Do you know how much he laughed when telling me how he selected his wedding date so it would fall the weekend before my School Cert exams?"

Tessa nodded gravely. Then, as if sensing a southerly shift in the conversation, she abruptly snapped her chopsticks around a prawn that Nick had been wrangling, and laughed heartily at his bewilderment.

"That's the last one," he wailed, trying to recover the morsel as she deftly avoided each of his lunges. Finally, she took a small bite and with an appeasing smirk, fed the remainder into Nick's grateful gape.

As he consumed it, he gazed upon her with adoration. She always sought to smile, and hold her eyes wide and absorbed. She always arched her face toward the sun, kept the conversation light, and managed a laugh, even when the humour escaped her. She must be the happiest girl he'd ever met, Nick concluded.

* * *

With Dave away at a rugby function, Tessa lay naked upon Nick's bed beneath a thin sheet. She was thumbing through a dense physics textbook and explaining the concepts to Nick, but he was struggling to feign an interest. His vigour had renewed, and so he tugged upon the sheet until her pale buttocks were revealed. He took one in his palm and kneaded it salaciously.

"Don't even think about it," she said coyly. "Look at the time. You need to drop me back."

His hand steadied, and he placed a kiss upon the reddened cheek. Softly, he said, "Stay with me."

"What do you mean?"

"Stay with me all night. You've never done that."

"Don't be silly. In this little bed?"

"It's plenty big enough for lovers. I want you to fall asleep in my arms. I want to feel your breath upon me as you dream. I want your smile to be the first thing I see when I wake."

She sat up and modestly clutched the sheet to herself. "That sounds divine, but you know I can't."

"Why can't you?" he fumed abruptly. At first, the clandestine nature of their union was a source of excitement and camaraderie, but after four months of secret rendezvous, missed dates and aborted phone calls, it had grown tiresome.

"You know what my parents are like. They are getting more suspicious too. They're forever quizzing me on my alibis."

"Why should we be sneaking around like there's something wrong with what we're doing?"

"We're not sneaking around, we're simply not telling my parents," she pouted.

"But why hide the way we feel?"

Sympathetically, she laid a hand upon his arm. "Because you know they would never accept it."

"Perhaps if they met me..."

"If they met you?" she derided, immediately withdrawing her grip. "What possible difference would that make? They have plans for me, which most certainly do not involve a white boyfriend."

"You don't know that."

"Of course, I do. That is one thing they have made very clear."

"But they could change."

She scoffed. "Weren't you the one that said change was like exercise; everybody talks of it but nobody does it?"

"But surely you must try. How can this be fair to us?"

"Fair?" she replied curiously, mulling over the concept for a time. "Where does that come into it?"

"Because you have a right to be happy."

Her eyes rolled skyward. "Nick, if you want me, you must stop pushing me away from my family."

"I'm not trying to push you away from them. If anything, I'm trying to push myself in."

"That's the same thing."

"No, it's not. I'm quite sure Newton's third law does not apply to love."

She smiled weakly. "I didn't think you were listening."

"I always listen."

"Then please hear me when I say that I'm giving as much of me as I can. The rest is not yours to take."

Darkly, he shook his head. "You better get dressed then."

But releasing the sheet, she exposed her flawless breasts. Then she reached out and drew him closer. "Perhaps if you're quick, there might be time for another," she breathed.

3

Sunday

It was a new day when Nick's plane glided into Auckland, and by the calendar, it should also have been a new season, but a dreary grey cloud hung over the airport, denying any glimpses of the morning sun or reckless thoughts of summer.

The flight from Osaka had taken ten hours, of which he'd slept for two. For the remainder, he'd occupied himself by staring at the seatback in front of him, examining the inside of his eyelids, and occasionally prodding at the in-flight meal to guess its mammalian origin. All this time, he'd been troubled by a scarcely perceptible irk appealing from a distant corner of his brain. He sought to ignore it, but despite a diminutive size, it was clearly of significant weight. He then spent several hours trying to apprehend it, chasing it down dark back-streets and half-remembered alleys, but never caught even a peek at its form.

Beleaguered from the pursuit, Nick finally sought appeasement. He would restrict himself to the neo-cortex north of the frontal lobe, while the irk had carte-blanche over the murky depths. This worked in the rarefied air at thirty thousand feet, but once he landed and joined the lengthy queue for customs, the irk grew inexplicably elephantine, and while still unseen, the increasing constriction of its lair was triggering unexpected physical manifestations, of which, the sudden tightening of his airways proved the most distressing.

As he reached the front of the queue, his foreboding deepened. He cast an eye at the official, weary from a long shift, and beyond his enclosure, to the guard, a towering Polynesian giant who wore an expression revealing a deep antipathy for his station, and was, by a significant margin, larger than anyone Nick had encountered in all his time in Japan.

Unconsciously, he stepped back a pace, and found himself bowing apologetically to a pair of Asian honeymooners for trampling their bag. "Sumimasen, sumimasen," he blurted, before realising that English should now be his default tongue.

"Next," the official repeated, more forcibly this time, and Nick sucked a gulp of air through his throat, which was now so tight as to register a whistle. He advanced to the desk, stretched out a sweaty hand and dropped his passport on the counter. Grunting an incomprehensible greeting, the official surveyed the document with excessive deliberation, then stared at Nick, and then back to the passport for a lengthy stint. Abruptly, he turned away and whispered into a telephone.

This was it. He had to run. But where would he run? Back to the plane? And then what? He couldn't pilot a paper dart, let alone a 747 on a whiff of gas.

The phone conversation was inaudible, yet mercifully brief, but when he swung back, he appeared more perturbed than ever. "The Japanese let you onto this flight?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Your passport expired in October," he scolded.

"Expired?"

"Yes, in October."

"In October?" Nick repeated. He was desperately trying to affect the manner of a kindly, yet forgetful gent who was prone to such lapses but otherwise quite harmless, and should thus be promptly sent on his way without further examination, digital or otherwise.

"Do you have any ID?"

Nick thought for a moment and then ferreted about in his wallet for his driver's license, which had long been folded into a small square and stashed in an unused compartment.

The official disregarded it with a glance. "Photo ID?"

Vexation drew across Nick's face, but it evaporated quickly. "How about a gaijin card?"

There was no reply, just the heavenward arching of a single eyebrow.

"It's my alien registration card...," he added helpfully.

The other eyebrow then elevated, immediately instilling in Nick the fear that a deeply penetrating enquiry was looming. In panic, he fetched the item from his wallet, sputtering, "It's an ID that gaijin, that is to say, foreigners in Japan, must carry at all times."

The official examined it at length, and then was lost in thought for such an exceedingly long time that Nick could sense the sweat pooling beneath his skin and feel each individual droplet as it squeezed from a myriad of swollen pores across his forehead. He was torn between leaving them be or expunging them at risk of drawing attention to his anxiety. At that point, two or three globules comingled, and then wound a torturous route down his brow, gathering reinforcements on their path before finally pausing on the inner extremity of his eyebrow. Nick could feel it hanging heavily, threatening to make a break down the bridge of his nose and a final Thelma-and-Louise leap from the tip, so he feigned a cough, and bringing his hand up, seemingly to shield it, he evacuated the offending droplet. Feeling justifiably satisfied with his ingenuity, his eyes rose to meet those of the official who was now intently focused on his sodden face, and for a time, the scornful glare remained. It almost seemed that he were actively willing Nick to hazard a dash for the exit. An idea, as it happened, that was already seated firmly at the forefront of his mind and he only relented for fear that his jellified legs would not comply.

Finally, the official gave a sniff and stretched his lips over his teeth. Then his hand appeared, seemingly from nowhere, gripping Nick's passport and gaijin card. "Welcome home. Do not attempt to travel on this passport again."

* * *

In the early afternoon, he touched down in New Plymouth, and observed in silent conflict that his hometown was now within a hundred miles.

He hadn't eaten at Auckland Airport as he assumed there would be a meal on the domestic flight, so it was with abject horror that he greeted the supply of milky tea and an indescribable lump of dough, which he had consumed without protest, and then fortified with a handful of neon hued sweets provided for the descent. Walking across the concourse, he caressed his aggrieved stomach sympathetically.

The airport building had all the architectural ebullience of a shoebox, but without any of the charm. Inside it was utterly utilitarian; the designers, with inordinate skill, having exorcised any trace of artistic whimsy from their plans. There were no potted palms or quaint leather loungers, and the closest thing to art was a wall-sized ad for the kind of retreat where absent husbands took their bored housewives to rekindle a long extinguished fire. There was a cafe in one corner, but it was empty and unlit, which his stomach greeted with a mournful wail, so in desperation, he sought out a small store to procure a muesli bar or similar approximation of food.

At first glimpse, he feared the store too was unattended, but upon entering, he observed a dumpy woman perched on a stool in a dark recess effecting the removal of a large nasal blockage. Awkwardly he stood there, trying to attract her attention with a piercing glare, but utterly absorbed in her valiant quest for nasal disencumberment, she remained unaware of his presence. Despondent, he cast his eyes over the newspapers that lined the counter.

In his years in Japan, he had been utterly oblivious to local happenings and the headlines now seemed as real to him as the shorts for an upcoming movie. All the editions focused on a single event and so he unfolded one to reveal the full page. It read only, "Wanganui Occupation - Country Divided." Beneath was a broad colour photo showing a group of Maori emblazoned with moko frozen in belligerent gesticulation at suited Pakeha flanked by police.

"Bloody trouble-makers," a stubby man spat as he grabbed a copy and deposited a few coins on the counter.

Nick nodded gingerly and returned the paper to its pile. Fortunately, the sound of coinage brought the attendant from the rear in ungainly bounds, and she happily exchanged a large sum of money for a very small parcel of dubious nutritional merit.

Exiting the building, Nick lugged his suitcase to the bus stop, which was marked by a rusting sign and adorned with a dozen people propping themselves upon barriers, leaning against posts or squatting on baggage. His final journey would be a ninety-minute, southbound bus that doglegged through his home town of Tikorua. Nick reviewed the schedule and noted that the next bus was 3:30, one of only four southern departures for the day. He checked his watch and observed it was over forty minutes away.

"And it'll be late," a voice grumbled from behind. It was the stubby man with the newspaper sitting atop the only seat available, a black plastic utility box.

"Excuse me?"

"The buses, they're always bloody late. We'll be lucky to be out of here by four."

"Oh, that's unfortunate."

"Ha ha, yeah, unfortunate, that's what it is."

Nick smarted. For reasons he could not place, it bothered him greatly that this unknown person should converse with such familiarity.

"So where're you from?" the stubby man asked when Nick failed to hold up his end of the conversation.

"Tikorua."

"Yeah, but originally, from what country do you hark?"

"I'm from here," he exclaimed, not appreciating how much his accent had diverged in his years of absence.

"Hey, don't take it personally, mate. I've got nothing against immigrants."

Lacking a reasonable reply, Nick headed toward an available pole, but averted course when he spied a taxi. Leaning in the passenger window, he enquired of the fare to Tikorua.

"From here?" the driver clarified, and then, realising an answer would not be forthcoming, he pursed his lips and inhaled, causing the air to hiss through a sizeable gap in his bunny teeth. "That would really cost you an arm and a leg," he intoned dramatically.

"Just how much are we talking?"

"Well I suppose, I could do it for..." His brow furrowed and one eye stretched skyward to a place where he stored his numbers, and as he cogitated, his face contorted and his lips quivered. It appeared as if he would select a figure at random, promptly dismiss what could not be uttered with a straight face, then choose another, sneer at its inadequate recompense and thus augment it by several price points. Finally, his face relaxed and his jaw lowered, and for a moment, he was silent as he held the figure in his mind's eye and cowered in its awesome glow. "$57.30," he announced with a suppressed chortle.

Nick quickly made a mental conversion to Yen and noted with satisfaction that it amounted to neither an arm nor a leg, in fact, barely even a pinkie. "OK," he said, and pushing his suitcase into the backseat, squeezed in beside it.

"What's the address?" the driver enquired as he pulled away from the curb.

Nick gagged, for he had not an inkling of the motel name, or even the street upon which it stood. Oblivious to the incoming traffic an interrogative face then turned toward him, so he sputtered the only New Zealand address he could recall, his parents' house, "49 Waipapa Avenue."

With wordless acknowledgement, the driver ratcheted up the radio volume, which apparently had been calibrated on exponential gradations, and then with both hands, took a tight, twitching grip of the steering wheel as if it were the shoulders of an unruly child.

Nick examined the posture with unease for a time, then withdrew the muesli bar from his pocket. He was still wrestling with the packaging in covetous anticipation when they emerged from the suburbs, and the car suddenly burst forth in blazing vigour. Instantly, it dawned on Nick with the kind of alarm that silenced any discontent from his abdomen, while simultaneously alerting his rectum to the potential for a rapid exodus, that this was only the driver's day job, and clearly, his true passion was piloting the getaway vehicle for a local crew of bank robbers.

There was not a road too straight to inject an unexpected turn, nor a corner too tight to barrel through without dip in velocity. Every pothole needed to be struck, every cattle truck overtaken on a blind bend, and every approaching speed sign ignored until the very moment it aligned with the front bumper, whereupon he would brake with sufficient violence to leave Nick peeling his face from the rear of the driver's seat.

He had no doubt that his life was in imminent danger, but he dared not speak out, just gripped the muesli bar within his white knuckles until it burst at both ends. To distract himself, he attempted to catch a glimpse of Mount Taranaki, which would always deliver him such a thrill on the northern journeys of his childhood, but its grandeur that day was obscured by broad, leaden cloud.

At steady intervals, they would roll into a town and the pressure upon Nick's chest would lift sufficiently to gasp a few quick breaths, before the road soon opened up and all his wind would once again be stolen. Each of these tiny settlements came to him like a childhood teacher, oddly familiar in name, but evoking only the scantest of memories.

Then finally it was Tikorua, and so to get a better view he lurched forward in his seat, aided of course, by the driver abruptly stabbing the brake pedal with both feet.

Tikorua, for those unfamiliar with its majesty - which is to say everybody outside of southern Taranaki - is a small inland town nestled in the crook of a mountain range, ideally positioned to catch the clouds that blow in from the coast and then wring them of every ounce of moisture before dispatching them north. It is not troubled like so many better-known locales by such pesky distractions as attractive parks, sun-baked beaches or pretty tracts of native bush. It exists seemingly, as it always has, as a place where cockies can satiate their appetite for cheap beer and easy women.

The entrance to Tikorua is actually quite welcoming if you are in the market for a refurbished tractor or have a pressing need to retro-fit a dog-box to your quad-bike, sadly for the rest of humanity it is the most unexciting part of the A&P show spewed out over a four mile stretch. Its ugliness, Nick noted, had not been diminished by his absence, and he struggled to suppress his disregard for the same old tattered signs affront the same old rusted sheds.

Following this are the endless blocks of cheap housing. The narrow, tattered cottages provided as state houses or sold as starter homes; though, either way, they saw most residents through to their end. The area is called East Side, but anyone who had ever seen a map and was possessed of a certain disposition would endlessly point out that it was significantly more southerly than eastern.

Nick gave a pained glance to the driver who was easing the frustration of his speed containment by strumming his fingers mercilessly upon the steering wheel. Clearly though, he was sufficiently acquainted with the town not to be suckered by the signage that would ensnare the unwary in the shopping district, and he detoured down a handy side street.

The home of his parents was in West Tikorua, where the roads seemed wider, the cars shinier and the trees more bountiful. The taxi soon turned into his old street, a tidy avenue of large houses and immaculate sweeping lawns, and Nick stared intently at the sights he passed, waiting for the flicker of something within, but feeling only that he was touring a reproduction of the street of his youth, perfectly constructed in every detail, but utterly devoid of the emotional attachment of the original; an apple tree that looked so very like the one he'd pilfered a thousand fruit, a letterbox not dissimilar to that his friend had once overturned as they snuck home in the dead of night... This was not his street, nor his home, it dawned on him, but its uncanny resemblance was deeply unsettling.

Then, as they crested the incline, his parents' home loomed before them. Even in a street of oversized houses, theirs seemed especially grand. "Whoa," the driver uttered, but his face was dark; the gleam having worn from his golden fare. The taxi rounded the driveway and then braked with an unnecessary abruptness that Nick had fully anticipated and braced appropriately.

He ejected himself from the vehicle and through the driver's window, he thrust three twenty dollar bills that had been out of circulation for half a decade. With an outstretched hand, he awaited his change, which he had calculated as $2.70. Shortly a few coins were dropped into his palm and as he paused for the two dollar note to follow, the driver slid the car into gear and speeded round the driveway and into the street.

"Hey!" Nick screamed to none but an apparition of exhaust fumes, and then, slowly, he examined the two unrecognisable gold coins amongst the shrapnel in his palm.

Approaching the towering double door, he reached for the handle, but realised even before he touched it, that with his mother away and his father gone, it would be locked. Impotently, he rattled it anyway, cursing as he was proven correct. Now what? The taxi was long gone and even the howl of its tortured engine was scarcely audible. Then a thought occurred to him, and he reached down and inverted a rock in the porch garden to reveal an iron key. He recalled how his mother had positioned it there specifically for this purpose, a single, grey river rock in the midst of flowers, much to the chagrin of his father who remarked that even the halfwits that graced his court would not be fooled. It was the only time that Nick could ever remember agreeing with his father about anything.

He swung open the door with a heavy push, and was immediately awash in an unmistakable scent. A day earlier, he'd have thought it impossible, but it occurred to him now that even bandaged from foot to head saving only his nose, he would instantly recognise this place. But the conclusion did not trigger a flush of emotion or a wave of nostalgia, only a drawn out sigh, and wearily, he dragged his bags into the foyer.

* * *

The house was so large as to invite all kinds of hyperbolic comparisons to the castles of distressful damsels and narcoleptic princesses, and yet, oddly, it was much smaller than he remembered. When he had lain on his semi-double bed in his tiny Japanese apartment, this dwelling had seemed palatial in his mind's eye, but now it was just a faded old manor with an endless succession of hallways to disused rooms and pointless cubbies. And everything, but everything, wore a thick layer of dust like it were a muslin drop-cloth.

He made his way to the first room on the second floor and regarded it for a time. It appeared to be his bedroom, in fact, in its layout, it was identical to his bedroom - the same curious entrance that required a dog-leg around the wardrobe, the miniature window with its arresting vista of the neighbour's chimney, and a single bed abutted by a stubby chest of drawers - but stripped of all the artefacts of his youth, it most certainly was not his bedroom at all. Indeed, the only hint to its history were the rectangular halos on the faded wallpaper, which betrayed the posters that once adorned it.

Nick dumped his suitcase on the bed and paused to examine a painting that hung in the former haunt of Jim Morrison; it was a pleasant oil landscape depicting verdant mountains of native forest. Clearly, it was a quintessentially New Zealand scene and yet, to Nick, it was more evocative of the lush valleys of Tokushima than the hills of South Taranaki that had long been denuded for truculent farmers and their flatulent beasts.

Briefly, he considered the prospect of unpacking, before promptly dismissing the suggestion as preposterous, and so he descended the stairs again in search of food. While his stomach had long abandoned its fruitless pleas, he suspected it would soon find more primitive ways to achieve its end.

As he entered the lounge, he was arrested by the pungent smell of pine, and observed in the familiar spot, a Christmas tree propped up in a half barrel. Alas, it was long past its best. Its branches were limp and the needles that weren't already brown, littered the floor like a diorama of miniature haystacks. It was decorated with the same thinning tinsel and tired ornaments of his youth, and the star atop the tree was missing one of its points, and for no particular reason, this saddened him the most.

He approached the stereo, a device of brushed metal and wooden trim of such antiquity that it pre-dated even the futuristic technology of cassette tapes. Anybody else would have scoffed at such a relic, but to Nick there was solace in something quite devoid of complex digital readouts and arrays of obscure buttons, and he knelt before it and flicked through the records encased behind the louvred doors at its base. He was searching for something to lighten his mood, but there was only the kind of horrid stuff that advised its unsuitability for auditory enjoyment with a full cover photo of an overweight tenor with his arms outstretched and his mouth agape, looking for all the world like he was about to ingest his audience. At length, he located an album adorned with four anthromorphic creatures emerging from a rainbow, and placed it carefully on the turntable.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly...

Through the glass double-doors, he entered the kitchen. This was his mother's sanctum, not that she was one to wile away her hours baking biscuits and polishing silverware in the manner of a traditional homemaker - though undoubtedly this was an impression she liked to impart - far from it, rather, it was that the kitchen was set away from the main thoroughfares of the house and an infrequent destination for her family and so she could sip her tea and stare out at the rear garden without petty distraction. Naturally, she had proved herself an ideal mother, a regular chairperson of the local homemaker committee, endlessly involved with the PTA and active at every school fundraiser. Much less so, however, with the thankless task of child-rearing itself with its ill-defined hours and fluid job description.

The kitchen was pristine, not a cup or dish had been left out, the benches were all immaculately wiped, and even the fruit gave the appearance of having been recently buffed. With a demonic grin, Nick spied the wine cellar, which was accessed by way of a miniature door. He entered, and yanked a short cord to illuminate his father's wine collection. These were his babies, they were not for drinking, they were for doting and coddling and flaunting before gushing house-guests. Each one had its place and any unexpected relocation or dust displacement would have brought swift repercussions, but now Nick just pawed them recklessly. Favouring primogeniture over youthful exuberance, as was the way of his father, he surveyed the older vintages and selected a Coleraine, one of his fair-haired children.

Next, he sought out the wonderful contraption that his father had acquired to pop the cork with minimum effort and maximum flourish. Nick had never actually used it to open any wine, obviously that was verboten, but as a youth, he would frequently tinker with it when his parents were out. On one particularly short-sighted occasion while demonstrating it to friends, he managed to decapitate a bottle of L&P and douse the neighbour's cat in a torrent of soda, much to the amusement of everyone present.

He clamped the device over the top of the bottle and with a strong palm, ratcheted down the handle. Once it achieved maximum tension, he flicked a release and watched it perform a jerking mechanical dance and at its crescendo, eject the cork with a satisfying plonk. Then he placed the opened bottle on the countertop to breathe. After a period, he grabbed a glass and filled it, maximising the aerating splash, then took a large sip and rolled it in his mouth, savouring the lingering warmth as it washed down his throat. This was not a practised behaviour - he rarely drunk the French dregs they imported into Japan - but the mimicry of a distant time when he'd watched it done. He took another swig. Even to his unsophisticated palette, it was an undeniably sublime drop, and it riled him to concede his father could be so discerning.

He approached the refrigerator and reviewed a short note.

Dear Nicholas,

So lovely to have you home. There is plenty of food in the fridge. Please help yourself.

See you soon,

Love Mum.

To his surprise, the fridge was full of food. It was stacked with Tupperware containers that were each filled to overflowing and precisely labelled with the name of a neighbour or friend. He peeled them open in turn to inspect the contents, frequently recoiling as he was overcome with pungent malodour, or gaping at wonderment at salads featuring ingredients he never imagined would happily comingle, such as grapes with cheese, or beetroot and bacon bits. He finally settled on the one that least offended his senses, a pasta dish, which, in obstinate defiance of its Italian heritage, included sliced sausage and a creamy curry sauce.

This, he shovelled onto a plate and directed to the only cooking appliance with which he had an intimate acquaintance. At his command, the chamber light engaged and his prey spun meekly as it succumbed to nuclear bombardment.

He refilled his wine glass, took another sip, and gazed wearily at the view of their back garden. It was significantly more overgrown than he expected, and the old gazebo was frightfully weathered. He found himself drawn to the garage with the realisation that it irritated him greatly, he couldn't say why precisely, because of all the locations in a house the garage would seem the most innocuous, but it irritated him none-the-less.

At the chime of his mechanised chef, he fetched his dish and carried it through to the dining room. He seated himself at the head of the table. Naturally, Nick's presence here would have been quite unthinkable in the past. It was the indisputable throne of his father, where he would prop his bulging mass and glare down upon his subjects. But, of course, that was not something that need concern him now.

* * *

After dinner, he was torn between expending his remaining energy washing the dishes or imbibing the last of the wine. He had, of course, opted for the latter, so by the time he dragged himself up to bed, it took little for him to plunge into a deep sonorous slumber.

But it was only moments before he was thrown awake with a slipshod redraft of the same dream, pounding upon her bedroom door, gagging on the words he longed to ask.

He threw open his window and leaned into the night, gasping at the cool air until his racing heart abated. Finally, he returned to his bed, but there was little sleep to be had. The sandman abhors the desperate, he had once heard said.

Thus, the night stretched on for an eternity, and when his alarm sounded at 6:57, he jumped up with relief. By 7:10, he had showered and shaved, by 7:18 he was fully dressed, his tie knotted, his hair combed and his teeth gleaming. At 7:21 he presented himself to the kitchen, activated the electric kettle and poured himself a bowl of cereal, but as he sat there, masticating authoritatively, it dawned on him that for the first time in his long as he could remember, he had precisely nothing to do. Not that day, nor the next, probably not even for the foreseeable future, and this unnerved him greatly. His daily schedule was the immutable structure upon which he had built the last six years of his life. He hadn't wanted to live that way, to burden himself with the expectation that every single day would be identical, but doing so had provided the certainty that he could endure it, because - by definition - it would never be any worse than the last.

Having lost his appetite, he deposited his dishes in the sink, and removed his tie, which clearly had no place in a day that had no schedule. Then he made himself a cup of coffee. Inhaling its delectable aroma, he heaved an exultant sigh and brought it to his lips. But taking a sip, he instantly recoiled. With unrestrained disgust, he glared at the insipid brew before him, then shaking his head in confoundment, added three more spoonfuls of coffee. Still finding it insufficient for his palette, he shovelled in half a dozen more.

This, he carried through to the dining room and placed - without coaster - upon the table. Once again, he had perched himself in his father's seat.

* * *

His father had been an especially occupied man; he was an esteemed district judge, after all. Most lamentably, he'd lacked the time to involve himself in the trivialities of family life, fully engaged as he was with the unenviable task of making the world a safer place for decent folk, and rounding the final nine under par.

Nick's most regular encounter with him was at the dinner table. In fact, he would often say that the family meal was his father's favourite time of day because he could spend it with the three he loved most: food, wine and the sound of his own voice.

As it happened, the food was not particularly good and its content invariable, chewy meat, salty potatoes and vegetables boiled until they would hang limply over a fork. It wasn't that their mother was necessarily a poor cook, just that their father had little taste for anything else. Occasionally she'd attempt an exotic dish from one of her magazines, much to the delight of Nick and James, but his father would simply pick at the bits he recognised with the expression of someone rescuing their car keys from a pool of vomit. He would then push back the half-eaten meal with a "Valiant effort, my dear, but perhaps it best you stick to the dishes you know."

His meal was always accompanied by wine, and you could gauge precisely the day he'd had from his first touch of the glass. On a good day, he would take a slow measured sip, but on a bad one, he would guzzle as if desperate to extinguish the rage within. And once alcohol displaced the torpid blood from his brain, his mouth would start to flap like an over-revved machine, and he would commence an endless speech without pausing to breathe or swallow, his mouth agape with half-masticated peas and potatoes.

Naturally, his father held his every utterance in high regard, he was a judge, and so - by law - it carried great weight, and while his patter flitted maddeningly over a wide range of topics, if there was one encompassing theme, it was the erosion of the moral fabric of New Zealand society.

When Nick was younger and could barely grasp his father's words, he would gaze up at the hushed, blank faces of his mother and brother and assume they were entranced with awe. That was before the dawn of a deeply unsettling realisation, that their silence was only held for fear of catching a barb from his sharp tongue. This came at a time when Nick's appetite for reading had grown prodigiously and he was seeing increasing parallels between his father's incoherent ramblings and the caustic mutterings of the malevolent characters in his books.

Nick had been particularly taken by the auto-biography of Heath Zumna, an orphaned African boy who grew up in Victorian London. It was his first awareness of the importance of race. In his naivety, he had thought it only about skin pigmentation, eye shape and frizzy hair, but apparently, these were simply the physical manifestations. It seemed - for reasons his brain was yet too juvenile to comprehend - that it could actually be the basis upon which one was educated, employed or espoused.

Of course, there was no racism in their home, such a thing would never pass his father's lips, but there was an undercurrent to his stories to which Nick was oblivious for the longest time, but once it was seen, it could never be unseen, and from then on, it grated him with its clumsy predictability.

His father often spoke of the miscreants, who gamed the system to live off undeserved benefits, or the incompetent meatheads who had inexplicably risen through the ranks of public service, and the angry young men who beat their wives, and the delinquents who committed a string of petty offences because they lacked the compunction to kick a drug habit. And in these stories, the reprobate was inevitably identified if he were Maori.

And then there were the men of calibre, shuffled from their position in favour of someone younger or more "PC"; otherwise upstanding lawyers who had made a few questionable decisions vis-a-vis their clients' life savings and found themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving court despite the victimless nature of their crimes, and - quite memorably - a principled religious leader harshly convicted of sexual offences against his step-daughter despite her "dubious moral history." In these narratives, the protagonist was always white.

Amongst all the indistinct memories Nick held of his father, there was one that he could recall with utmost clarity. The first time he dared interrupt one of his tirades.

It was during the infamous tour by the South African rugby team when the second test was cancelled under the weight of protest. "Throw them all in jail," his father was bellowing, "for making New Zealand look like fools before the world."

Abruptly, Nick announced, "I wish I'd been there." The words themselves, alas, were not nearly as monumental as he would have hoped for a scene that would forever occupy a central position in his mind's mantelpiece.

His father, so used to having the stage to himself for his raging soliloquies, scarcely noticed the outburst and Nick feared that he hadn't the strength to repeat it. He cast a glance at his mother, who was silently admonishing him, and his brother whose eyes had narrowed.

But then his father froze, his jaw hanging slack, his tongue still curled about a large chunk of half-chewed pork chop, and slowly, he edged his bloodshot eyes toward Nick.

"Excuse me?" he demanded, the last of his greying hair pulsating wildly in the lee of his gigantic twitching ears.

"If I was old enough, I'd be protesting too. It's not the cancelling of one silly game that is damaging our international standing, but our support for a regime that so mercilessly oppresses the majority of its people." Proud of his eloquent assertion, Nick paused to let his father consider it, and for several seconds the room was oddly quiet, but then the table shuddered with a dismissive guffaw.

"In which of your silly books did you read that?" his father tutted derisively. "Even for your youth, the extent of your ignorance staggers me. Do you really think this is about the rights of a few black chaps eight thousand miles away? This is simply about Maori agitating for more political power."

"Well, I think..."

And those were the very last words that left his mouth, as his father launched into such a blustering attack that it seemed there was nothing else in the room but his thrashing mouth and burning eyes and flying particulates of pork.

His father had demolished him. Effortlessly, he'd reduced Nick's argument to the befuddled words of an insolent child. It should have been the last time Nick spoke out, it would certainly have made life simpler, but now he found it harder to do nothing than attack an unassailable enemy. From then on, in Nick's recollection there was rarely a dinner that did not disintegrate into a verbal brawl. It made his father worse too, as if he were goading Nick, daring him to speak up so he could tear him back down. Of course, his father had spent a decade as a judge and two as a lawyer, and all of that and more, as an utter prick, and so Nick couldn't hope to match his debating prowess. His technique was well proven, first you destroy your opponent, then you destroy his argument. "What would an uneducated white brat who has led a privileged upbringing possibly know of the poverty of Northland Maori?" he would reply sardonically. And so rather than arguing your points of merit you were invariably drawn into a battle whereby you defended your right to even raise them.

The great irony, Nick considered, was that in a house where so much was said, nothing was ever talked about. His brother reviled him, he knew not why, and never thought to ask. His mother became a very different woman around his father, but for some unspoken reason, it had always been that way. His Auntie Carol shared a wee bed in a wee cottage with a Welsh girl, and for fifteen years, it never occurred to him that they were anything more than very close friends. His father would often drink till he was bloodshot and bellicose, and no one would ever warn him of the damage to his liver, and that he was a boring old buffoon and no one actually wanted to hear a single thing he had to say.

Quite obviously, family issues could be resolved with utmost efficiency by ignoring them completely, because if you never spoke of a problem then clearly it did not exist, and in this way, everyone could bask in the collective glow of absolute domestic bliss.

4

Monday

Nick drew the lounge curtains, and the muted sunlight was enough for the remaining needles of the Christmas tree to surrender their feeble grip. The Tikorua sky was still overcast, but it did not hint at rain, and so he decided he would trek across town to reconnect with an old friend.

There were two primary schools in Tikorua. The one that Nick attended on the west side was Pikiheke Primary, which was predominantly white, unlike Tikorua East Primary, which was more mixed. Naturally, there was a pitched rivalry between the schools whenever they clashed in the ritualised battles of the sports field, and guerrilla actions outside the local takeaways. The Pikiheke students were nicknamed "Pigheads," while they in turn said of their rivals, "East is Least," which while more literary, indisputably lacked the same punch.

All of this would come to head when the pupils of both graduated to the only intermediate school in town. While they were expected to assimilate, invariably the eastern kids were disinclined to mingle with the soft western pupils, and thus the old school cliques generally persisted through the remainder of their education.

The more affluent parents, who feared exposing their angels to the great unwashed, would send them off to vastly superior schools out-of-town. Nick's brother, James, went to Wanganui Collegiate. His best friend, Harvey, a ginger-haired boy with an exceptionally spherical head that went bright red at the first hint of sunshine, or even a particularly well-amped night-light, and always appeared in Nick's memory as a giant toffee apple, was sent to New Plymouth Boys. Nick, however - for reasons that were never sufficiently elucidated - found himself at Tikorua Intermediate. Devoid of his old friends, he faced reacquainting with the same kids he'd disassociated from at Pikiheke, or falling in with eastern ones.

He soon met a boy named Vince, who had a mid-length crop of jet black hair with an unruly fringe he always flicked to one side in a rakish manner. This gave him a certain 007 look that the girls seemed to find exceptionally dashing. Combined with his silver tongue, he was a magnet for the fairer sex. Vince's best friend was a shy lad called Maxwell, who was half Maori from which he inherited his features, though his complexion was pale, and that came from his father's side. These two became Nick's best friends, and he loved them like they were brothers, unlike his actual brother, obviously, who he abhorred. Together they would have made the perfect trio, were they not, in fact, a quartet.

The fourth member of their troupe was a boy christened Stephen at birth, but seemingly from that point, was forever referred to as Sneakers. While he was a long-time friend of Vince and Maxwell, Nick's feelings for him ran the full gamut from tolerable grudge to begrudging tolerance. Not dissimilar to his relationship with James actually.

Vince had married young, and in a hurry, as his girlfriend didn't wish her swelling belly to forever blight her wedding photos. He'd entered the employ of the local meat works, and with his new bride, bought a house in the burgeoning hill suburb of Umataha. By all accounts, he should still live there, and as a shift-worker, he might well be home. While it was a reasonable hike, Nick could think of nothing more pressing to fill his day, and so he locked the house, deposited the key beneath the conspicuous grey rock, and set off.

* * *

The quickest route across town cut through his old high school. It was empty for the holidays, and he soon found himself pacing its silent walkways, occasionally stopping to press his face against a class window to examine its interior, hoping it might spark some upwelling of emotion. But devoid of screaming students and scornful staff, and with the wind whipping the dust and refuse about his ankles, the school felt not of hiatus, but of abandonment, as if all those souls had been snatched away, just as he had. Equally desolate were his memories of the place. Even the common room, where he had flitted away much of his final year playing cards and chatting up Vanessa Simmons, evoked nothing.

Already weary from his minimal exertion, Nick made his way to M Block and shimmied between a gap in the buildings to appear at the top of a bank that overlooked the sports fields and the distant sea of houses beyond. He sat himself down.

The four of them would come here often in their teenage years, invariably laden with intoxicants. Sometimes it would be warm beer or a caustic spirit, but more frequently, it was weed, which due to an extensive retail network and slipshod inspection of IDs, was much more readily acquired.

Their conversations were always much the same, Vince bemoaning that if only they would gather all the empty beer cans they had secreted beneath M block over the years and take them to the recycling centre, then they would be millionaires, while Sneakers would lament that the love of his life was scarcely even aware of his existence.

"Gloria Abbey?" Nick would clarify, because if every one of the girls he was obsessed were to be his love for life, then he'd need more lives than a dozen cats.

"No, she's a slag. I mean, Katie Holden," he said with the same face that undoubtedly graced him when thinking of her while lathering up in the shower.

Maxwell nodded appreciatively, but Vince quickly retorted, "Katie? You've got no fucking show. You want her, you've got to be cool, rich and well-hung."

"I guess one out of three isn't bad," Sneakers replied with a shrug.

"Oh? When did you ever win the lottery?"

"Get fucked," he said through a grin, and receiving the joint, he drew it deep into his lungs, then leaned back and exhaled toward the stars. "It sucks though; the cool crowd's got all the best girls."

"Don't worry," Nick piped. "You know what they say, 'Cool in School; Lose in Life.'"

"Who says that?"

"People..."

"What people? I've only ever heard you say it."

"And I'm not people?"

"Words are easy," Vince announced with a theatrical flourish, "like the breaking of wind; smutful girlfriends are hard to find." He was a great fan of Shakespeare and there was not an utterance of Hamlet, nor a soliloquy of Macbeth, that he could not glibly misquote.

That was the evening a mutt had appeared in their purview, which someone immediately pronounced as a police dog. Hyperactive and paranoid, they accelerated into the bushes and cowered for several hours before deciding that a Poodle-Doberman cross was an unlikely breed for the local constabulary.

Nick sought to laugh at the recollection, but it was more a recommendation than a command, and soon the moment had passed. The problem was obvious, he realised. As tantalisingly real as the memory might seem, it lacked any emotional connection, and thus the only reasonable conclusion was that they weren't actually his memories at all, but merely an inheritance of the body he inhabited.

He retook his footing, which required a surprising level of expenditure, and made his way to the concourse. It had occurred to him there existed irrefutable proof of his history. Beneath one of the outdoor tables, he had once etched the initials of his first love. He found the canteen area without difficulty, and recognised the same tired tables of his youth, but despite his fevered searching, he could not find an inscription of "NF + RB 4eva," encircled by an asymmetrical heart.

As it happened, forever proved a surprisingly lengthy period, and they rather failed to attain that milestone. In fact, they struggled to make it three weeks. With a groan, Nick collapsed on one of the seats from his exertion and the arrival of the particularly crushing conclusion that this actually qualified as his third longest relationship.

Her name was Rachel... Rachel something. He couldn't even recall her surname now, which was rather disappointing considering her lofty ranking in his love life.

* * *

When Vince and Dayna sought their first home, they each approached their parents to help raise the deposit. They could have waited to save it themselves, but the hill sections of Umataha had just been released and everybody wanted in on what would be Tikorua's newest suburb. By the time the mortgage had been extended on each of their parents' houses, the sections were in such demand that the prices had trebled. But after much negotiation, they got the site they wanted and built the home of their dreams. Nick's last visit had been to attend their housewarming.

He could still vividly remember the advertising for Umataha, which showed artists' renditions of gently winding hillside streets of designer housing upon broad sections, where pretty people sipped chardonnay while their happy children played pétanque on the lawn.

Obviously, a certain amount of artistic license was natural and Nick believed he had sufficiently adjusted his expectations, and yet he still found himself wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he ascended their street. It seemed that in the last six years the only thing that had been erected were "For Sale" signs on empty, overgrown sections, while the houses that had been built were falling into curious states of disrepair and invariably featured at least one unsavoury lawn ornament, like an upturned shopping trolley or a car absent of random body parts. And there were no children playing happily, in fact, it was utterly devoid of life, as if some modern-day pied piper had entreated them all into his lair by whistling the tune to Super Mario Brothers.

He had worried earlier that he might not recognise the house, but theirs was the only one in the cul-de-sac, and the same old car inhabited their driveway. It was a grey Nissan stationwagon that they'd bought cheap to mitigate their financial burdens. At the time, all were in agreement that it was a complete piece of shit, but looking at it now, clearly those were its glory days.

As he approached, he spotted a woman pegging items to a rotary clothesline. It was Dayna and this cheered Nick immensely.

He called to her and she paused for a time, observing his approach, before finally rushing out to meet him. At the letterbox, they exchanged a warm hug.

Dayna had clearly endured a lot of frigid winters since he last saw her. Her breasts had commenced their precipitous descent south, and like two rolling snowballs, had gained significant mass on their path. Elsewhere, the snowdrifts had piled high, and a landscape that had been so finely contoured in the spring, was now obscured and decidedly impenetrable, and stretching from the corner of her eyes, an abundance of wispy lines etched her porcelain features like portentous cracks in a frozen pond.

Yet, once she smiled, he was reminded instantly how often she had visited his pubescent fantasies, sometimes even accompanied by her friends.

"Nick, it's so lovely to see you."

"It's been a while."

"It has been a while," she confirmed in a way that was faintly leading.

"Is Vince home?" Even as he spoke, somehow he knew the answer. But he refused to believe so blatant a lie unless she voiced it.

She issued a sigh, and then said, quite dispassionately, "Actually, Vincent and I are no longer together."

Briefly, he lost his stepping, and once he had righted himself, he gripped the fence for support, weary that his motive skills might escape him again. "Really? Whatever happened?"

"We just grew apart," she answered automatically. This was another line she had practised endlessly before the mirror in the weeks leading up to their separation.

"I'm really sorry to hear that." To which, she gave a little shrug that made it seem she had long stopped being sorry about it at all. "So how's Georgia?" he asked, quickly changing tack.

With a prideful beam, she called out, "Georgia, come quick. Look who's here." Immediately a girl appeared, brimming with anticipation, but then she stopped short and her warm smile became rigid. The feeling was mutual as Nick was palpably struck by the many years that had passed; the infant who strutted about authoritatively and called him "Ningy" was now approaching her teens and this made him feel old and disconnected.

Dayna caught his expression, and dryly, she observed, "She's not a baby any more, Nick."

He nodded heavily.

"Don't you recognise your Uncle Nick?" she asked the girl. "He's an old friend of your father."

Shyly, she responded with a skeletal greeting, and this was followed by a period of awkward silence, which Nick finally shattered by blurting, "Perhaps you can give me Vince's address..."

"Actually you already know it," she said, revealing a trace of humour.

"What do you mean?"

"He's in your father's flat on Turing Avenue."

"No. Really?" His father had a dozen rental units around town for extra income, and the shortcuts that were taken on maintenance where widely spoken of. In fact, Vince had often jokingly referred to him as a "slumlord."

"It was all Vincent could afford at the time," she advised indifferently.

Nick was feeling oddly nauseous, undoubtedly attributable to the Italian curry, and he retreated a step toward the road. "I better get going, but it really is great seeing you again," he said warmly.

"Sure. You too." And then she leaned toward him. "Perhaps you'd like to come round one evening... For dinner?"

Even in his diffuse state, he could decode her subtle proposal. There was something in the hoarse manner she had enunciated "For dinner" that made it quite clear that gastronomic matters might only be the entree. He froze for a moment. A younger Nick would have ravished her like a fat kid attacking a Milky Bar, and damn the consequences, but now at the suggestion of sex, all he could think of were the consequences.

"That might be nice," he finally said, without conviction.

It appeared she was about to add something further; presumably a second attempt at solicitation without such opaque subtlety, but then she glanced at her daughter, who was regarding her curiously, and her smile quickly transformed from seductive to aloof.

五

Steal from pessimists and give to optimists.

That way everyone is happy

Nick arrived in Japan in ninety-one. His first memory was dragging himself from a taxi and being enveloped by such cloying mugginess that he felt he were flailing in a vat of molten marshmallow. Yet, despite the heat, there was no sight of the sun, just a menacing band of dark cloud with a tenuous grip on a large scoop of the Pacific Ocean.

Forty-three hours earlier, he had curled up in a semi-luminated corner of New Zealand's busiest airport in the hopes of catching some sleep. Six hours after that, he had boarded a plane and squeezed between an overweight Japanese man whose appetite for whiskey was infinitely more capacious than his bladder, and a twitchy civil servant who could scarcely fight his awareness that "from a technical perspective" planes should not stay aloft. In all that time, he'd met with the sandman twice, but they were brief encounters over coffee rather than romantic liaisons that dragged into the early hours. Since then he had travelled by ferry, train and finally a taxi journey so exorbitant that for several minutes he assumed he'd misplaced a decimal point while calculating the conversion.

Those final few days had been frenetic. There were so many details that he'd spent several hours itemising them on the back of a McDonalds receipt, and then stubbed them out with a grubby finger once accomplished. Some had been surprisingly easy, including lying to the face of his brother, while others proved a nightmare. Firmly in this category was draining the money from his bank account, which apparently had raised some kind of red flag and he was promptly snatched away to a windowless room, and for several hours, subjected to the most heinous interrogation in the hope he'd reveal what it would take to keep him on as a customer. He finally exited with his fortune, which while not vast, was conveniently portable, and converted it to yen, receiving a pile of brown notes that could have been no less alien were it a purse of doubloons. When he had first gripped that wad it had seemed limitless, the kind of money that would sustain him for several months as a student, but in the last few hours he had seen it whittle away to a few crumpled bills and a handful of shrapnel.

His new home was a three-story apartment block seemingly punched from the same concrete mould as a dozen other buildings he'd passed on his approach. Clearly, it was once bedecked in gaudy yellow, but after an eon of weather and dust, where it was not jaundiced taupe, it was a denuded grey. A poorly knitted wire fence encircled the frontage, which was devoted entirely to car parking. There was no garden or trees, in fact, the only plant-life were the weeds that snaked the cracked pathway.

Peering again at the address he'd meticulously transcribed onto an airport-parking chit, his eyes worked their way up to the third level, second apartment from the end. Then he regarded himself; his clothes dirty from days without change, his cheap suitcase hollow but for a few items he'd secreted from his home, and his pockets crammed with the last of his worldly possessions, passport, money and an undeveloped roll of film.

For the first time in days, he was utterly unsure what to do next, and with the arrival of this knowledge, the last of his energy drained and his body felt heavy and languid. All else he had to proceed was the name and phone number of the high school where he would work. Due to the hasty arrangement of his employment, no one could meet him for his arrival and he hadn't even a key for his apartment. With no other choices available, and an apprehensive glance at the weather, he rolled his case toward the steps.

He rang the bell and had enough time to consider the habitation options presented by an upturned suitcase when a face appeared before him. It was European with a smattering of poorly tended stubble. "You must be Nick," he said with a generous grin. They exchanged handshakes and he introduced himself as Tony Bonland, before entreating Nick into the apartment, gesticulating as he did to remove his shoes and slip on a pair of vinyl house slippers.

"Boy, am I ever glad they found you," Tony advised. "I thought I might need to stay another semester."

"Really? Was the role that hard to fill?"

Tony's eyebrows elevated a little. "I should probably start with a quick geography lesson. You're in Shikoku, the smallest and least populated of Japan's main islands. This town, Inoshiri-cho, has a native population of 10,000 and gaijin population of one, and it's basically an oversized housing complex for Japanese salarymen who can't afford to live in the city or any of the pretty suburbs." He shuffled Nick towards a small dining table. "On your left are mountains," he said, placing his hand on the table in the form of a small mound, "On your right, more mountains," And he put his other hand beside the first. "Your humble apartment is on the only train line out of Tokushima which follows the valley formed by the murky Yoshino River. So, to summarise, you have landed here," and he tapped his thumb to indicate a point in the cleft between the two mounds, "a stinking little mole, in the hairy crack, of the ass of Japan."

"Oh," Nick uttered, trying to affect solemnity. Actually, he was much too tired to be fazed by such melodramatics, and his eyes wandered around the apartment in search of a bed. The whole unit appeared to be little more than the room he was in, which combined the functions of kitchen, dining room, and study with a bathroom off to one side, and a secondary room with a floor of woven mat furnished only by a low square table. Thinking he must have missed a hidden door somewhere, he enquired, "Where's the bedroom?"

Tony surveyed him incredulously. "This is your whole apartment. We're standing in the kitchen, and there," he said, pointing to the small tatami room, "is your living and sleeping room."

Nick realised with a sickening disquiet, that there was no bed. Tony had obviously sold it and now the only furniture left for his respite was a padded metal desk chair. He thought for a moment that he might sit in it and sob.

But then, as if stumbling upon a recollection of how it was to be alien in this land, Tony led Nick through to the tatami room and threw open the sliding door of a deep wardrobe. "I better show you how to do this," he said, shifting the low table. Grabbing a futon, he unfolded it and commenced making it up with a sheet and bed cover. "It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but you'll get used to it."

Nick nodded gratefully, then paced about the room, stopping at a squat, teetering shelf, which was crammed with a plethora of dusty trinkets: porcelain sumo wrestlers, a hand-cranked music wheel, carved wooden animals and other detritus of his long-forgotten predecessors. Returning to the kitchen, he navigated Tony's suitcases, then paused before a secondary pile of seemingly unwanted items, including a tall box of magazines. "Ooh, Popular Science," he piped, delighted by the sight of English reading material.

"Actually I was just about to throw that old stuff in the trash," Tony said, rapidly moving to intercept him, but he was not quick enough and as their hands clashed, the pile toppled, revealing the remainder to be of a much more prurient nature. The title of the topmost emblazoned, "DEKAPAI," and showed a thin Asian girl squeezing her massively oversized melons between her arms so they appeared even more massive and oversized. An italicised sub-title entreated one to read further with "Sexy Hip Shots."

Tony laughed uncomfortably and hastily recomposed the stack. "I'm sure gonna miss Asian girls," he said as way of explanation.

Nick was much too desperate for bed to offer any empathy or interest, and with a distinct lack of subtlety, he edged Tony's bags toward the foyer. "So you're flying home tonight?"

"No, actually I'm staying with my Japanese girlfriend. Tomorrow, we're heading off for a two-week trip around Kyushu. It's kind of our last hurrah."

"Oh? You're not taking her home with you?"

"No," he scoffed, and then observing Nick struggle with the notion, he exposed his palms like he were imparting some universal truth. "Japanese girls aren't keepers. They're attentive, fun and sexy, but those are all qualities of a girlfriend, not a wife. It would never work back home."

A bad taste fomented in Nick's mouth and he knew he should argue the point, but he was just too tired, and so he gave a dismissive shrug.

"Look, you have to understand that living in Japan is not reality," Tony pouted. "It's a wild, alcohol-induced dream, where you get to live as a movie star. You'll drink until your eyeballs burst, and fuck like an Arab in heaven, and nobody will ever try to stop you, but nothing here means anything, and none of it is permanent, so have your fun and get out before you become one of the old gaijin who can't go home anymore because it's become too foreign for them."

"OK," Nick said, trying to look earnest.

"Remember who you are," he continued. "Foreign culture is exciting, but insidious when it gets into your bloodstream."

"OK," Nick repeated, though much less emphatically. Tony appeared to be grasping for the memory of a speech he'd once penned while sobering up from a particularly imprudent bender, and Nick feared he would soon be expected to fetch a pad to note down the sage advice.

"Don't lean too much on the other gaijin either; they never stick around for long. Japan is not a destination, just a port of transit for people without ambition who are desperate to stave off adulthood."

Nick nodded again, but as he did, a groan escaped from his throat, which he unsuccessfully tried to disguise as a cough.

Tony stared at him for a time. "I should probably let you sleep," he said, reaching for his suitcases, which had inexplicably made their way to the door.

As he bade him farewell, Nick was suddenly gripped by panic. "How will I find the school?"

"Oh, it's nice. Kindly staff, good kids, short hours. But you will need a suit," he added quickly, examining Nick's dishevelled attire with a dubious eye.

A suit? He had never owned a suit and couldn't bear the thought of wearing one. "OK, but how will I actually find the school?"

"Oh. One of the teachers will come by to collect you."

"Tomorrow?"

"No," he chuckled. "End of July. It's the school holidays."

"That's five weeks away. What am I supposed to do till then?"

He shrugged, and then gestured weakly toward the magazine pile.

"I'm gonna go mad, aren't I?"

"Yeah, quite possibly. We lose a lot of guys in the first few weeks. But there's a support group I can recommend called the Aka-Oni."

Tony grabbed a pen, wrote Aka-Oni on a screed of paper and underlined it several times. "Saturday nights are best; beers are half price and it's full of gaijin."

Thanking him again as he departed, Nick pulled the curtains, stripped down to his underwear and stretched out on the futon. Even beneath a thin sheet, it was still oppressively hot, and every bit as hard as he imagined sleeping on the floor would be. And the pillow too was a sack of something that provided the consistency of frozen peas, but without any of the benefit of frigidity. He tossed about for a time, though fatigue soon won over discomfort, and he fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The doorbell had rung a second time, but Nick remained prostrate on his futon, unable to move. He felt every bit of a hundred years; his bones arthritic, his organs riddled with cancer, his breath shallow and weak, and his mind, swirling in a torrent of tar and muck. He closed his eyes again, willing the chime to silence, and noting with relief that it did. Now he could just let himself go, and no one need raise a hand as he slipped away.

But before him, loomed a figure, which, after struggling for a time, he recognised as Tony.

"Get up you lazy fuck! We have a party to attend."

"I'll pass," Nick groaned. "I really don't feel up to a party."

"Oh, come on. Things can't be that bad."

"How do you know they can't?"

"Because," Tony remarked with gravity, "you can't appreciate just how shitty your life is until you've met an asshole who has everything."

At length, Nick rose, grimacing as his joints protested his election to sleep without the benefit of spring technology, and thus making a mental note to splurge his first paycheck on a bed.

His anger at the abrupt awakening was tempered somewhat with relief, as in the few waking moments he'd spent in his apartment, he had already learnt that several of the appliances were well beyond his comprehension. Foremost was the toilet. Nick freely conceded that items of an electrical or mechanical nature were not his forte, but even he would never have expected to be so bamboozled by a device that exists solely to whisk away one's bodily emissions. Midway through his nap, he had risen and emptied his distended bladder, only to realise with alarm that rather than the usual knob or chain to initiate a flush, it offered a console of buttons that weren't labelled in English, which would have been helpful, or Japanese, which would have been expected, but rather, with mysterious symbols that had undoubtedly been sourced from an alien spaceship: Wavy lines emanating from a rounded W, a palm tree with drooping branches and a figure eight spouting some kind of antennae. In desperation, he clicked the one that implied the least danger and gazed into the bowl with some amusement as a twitching mechanical arm inched into its centre. He barely had time to consider its purpose, when a jet of water squirted from its tip, delivering a cleansing wash to Nick's left eyeball. Quickly, he recoiled, and then urgently bashed at the control panel, observing with unrestrained delight that the stream halted and the arm retracted, but his horror redoubled when it shortly reappeared in a slightly forward position and commenced again to bathe him. He briefly contemplated his lot, before arriving at the one nugget of technical knowledge that had never failed him, and after groping about for the power cord, he gave it a concerted yank.

Nick led Tony to the bathroom to show him the floor, which was deep in liquid that was clear, and the toilet, with liquid that was not. Tony regarded it with an excessive amount of humour before showing him that unseen on the right of the cistern, was an innocent chrome knob, which he engaged with a satisfying mechanical flush.

Feeling renewed after showering and donning clean clothes, Nick followed Tony from the apartment and when they reached the car park, he was led to a diminutive red vehicle with the keys still in the ignition.

"You can have my car if you want," Tony offered. "It's a gutless piece of shit with woeful air conditioning, but it will get you into the city, and often all the way back."

"You're giving it to me?"

"Technically, you're taking it off my hands. It's due for its first big sha-ken, so I couldn't sell it now if I tried."

"Great, thanks."

"Oh, you won't be thanking me when you see that first bill," Tony remarked as he walked toward the road.

"So we're not driving?"

"Hell no. The Japanese police have zero tolerance for alcohol. As a gaijin, they might turn a blind eye because they're afraid of the paperwork, but if your school ever found out you'd be fired, or as they say here, kubi," he advised, slashing at his neck with an open hand.

"But I'm not planning to drink..."

"Oh trust me, you're going to need a drink."

By train, it took forty minutes into the city, which proved quite inadequate for Tony's interminable relaying of advice, but Nick was soon able to lose himself in the scenery, which would alternate between rice paddies and ugly concrete towns indistinguishable from his own. Finally, they eased into Tokushima, a clean, pleasant city with wide roads and shiny, nondescript buildings of the Lego school of design. From the station, Tony escorted him through the city, endlessly pointing up indistinguishable streets to dubious attractions of an inebriating or licentious nature, before they finally neared a towering glass edifice, which he announced as their destination.

To the left of the entrance, was a roller-door of perspex, and Tony entreated him to gaze within at a gorgeous red convertible with a sculptured cream gash on its side.

"It's nice."

"Nice?" Tony snapped. "It's a 1962 C1 Corvette with right-hand drive. They never even made the C1 in a right-hand drive."

Nick gave the same sober nod that seemed to mark all his conversations with Tony, and then followed him into the elevator.

"Which floor?" Nick asked.

"The top."

"Of course, because he has the penthouse apartment, right?"

"No, Nick," Tony clarified, "He has the penthouse floor."

The elevator opened into a glitzy foyer with a long bronze counter, above which shone in red, MikoWare. During the day, Nick imagined, a heavily made-up woman would sit at the reception, directing him to one of the tasteful chaise lounges while simultaneously engaging a phone call, masticating a wad of gum and bending paper clips into chrome hearts, but at this hour all that greeted them was a small sign that read, "Party ->"

Tony, who'd clearly had previous attendances, darted down a long hallway and up a short staircase, talking all the way. "This side is his company, but the rest is all residence. You should see his girl. Boy, what I wouldn't give to stick her in the..."

"Can't I take your jacket?" a waiter enquired as they crested the final step.

It had opened onto an expansive rooftop garden illuminated only by fairy lights and crowded with an even mix of gaijin and Japanese, formally suited and criminally casual, politely sober and wildly drunk. They both grabbed a beer and repaired to a table, but no sooner had Tony taken a sip, than a man approached who appeared an extreme outlier even for the broad categories of criminally casual and wildly drunk.

"Tony Baloney!" he bellowed over the din of music and laughter.

"Christopher, you old limey!" And together they disappeared into the throng, leaving Nick to quaff his drink alone.

The table was of a style that was frightfully fashionable, having undoubtedly been exported directly from some pursed-lip designer in Italy by the name of Culodolce, or some such thing. It was much too high for chairs, and indeed none were provided, and yet too low for anyone of Nick's dizzying height - which is to say, middling - to lean upon in any way that was not awkward and unflattering.

While contently wallowing in his boredom, he was interrupted by the shrieking laughter of two American girls at the neighbouring table, who were dressed in the kind of attire a prostitute would unquestionably disdain as too trashy. "Well that one is cute," said the taller girl who was arching forward under the weight of her artificially inflated mammary glands.

"Yuh-ah," trilled her shorter friend, who, despite having clearly elected for the deluxe option, avoided such pesky orthopaedic issues by resting hers upon the table, posing significant threat to an arrangement of nuts.

"But my friend Amy - you've met Amy haven't you? She's the one with the ridiculous hair - was saying that Japanese men think American girls care only about shopping and fucking."

"Wow, really? That's messed up."

"I know, right!"

"But I really do like shopping," conceded the short one.

"Yeah, me too."

"And fucking, God, I love fucking."

"Yeah, me too!"

Nick suddenly desired a very large gulp of his alcohol, but discovered with irrepressible disgust, that his glass had emptied, leaving him to consider whether to seek out a waiter or make an early return to his apartment. He favoured the latter, but wasn't entirely sure he knew the way back to the station, and was loathe to pay another exorbitant taxi fare. While vocally weighing these options, his eyes rose to discover an attractive brunette wrapped in an exquisite silk dress. She was the sort of woman that was so beautiful it was literally painful to behold, because any man who gazed at her would undoubtedly receive a swift corrective jab from his significant other.

Instantly Nick's shoulders broadened, his posture righted, and his jawline tightened, but this had all been commanded from a level below his consciousness. As it happened, he couldn't find in himself the slightest interest in making a play for this woman. Or any woman, he considered, as he snared some of the random thoughts that had been flitting about his mind. And it wasn't because of what happened with Tessa. That wasn't his failing; in the same way that a child cannot be blamed for the sins of his father, he reasoned, because that wasn't him at all, that was New Zealand Nick. Here he was, in a new country, where nobody knew of him or his misdeeds. He could be reborn, a new Nick, that would be detached and guarded, and above the vagaries of affection, and the fragilities of love. And in this way, he concluded with a breathless realisation that cheered him greatly, he would be immune from pain.

He was so busy congratulating himself on his breakthrough that he had forgotten about the girl until she interrupted. "Your host has lured scores of young Japanese girls here with the promise of free alcohol, unlimited Hello Kitty merchandise and fresh gaijin meat, and you're sitting here alone..." She had a detectable southern accent, but soft enough that in the right setting it would be inescapably seductive.

"Yes, I don't seem to be in the mood," he said, his voice considerably deeper than he recognised.

She was not deterred; she looked the healing type. Unexpected in one so attractive, he thought. His eyes examined her lips, before wandering down the cut of her dress to her ample décolletage, then remembering himself, he stared again at his empty glass.

"Don't worry," she said brightly. "There's plenty more where that came from."

At that point, a man appeared and heaved forth his chest. "Oi you! What d'ya think you're playing at?" he spat in a particularly thick accent that sounded Northern English, but with a smattering of cockney and a hint of Gaelic. "Are you making a move on me missus?" His lower jaw shot out. "Per'aps, you and I better head downstairs?"

Nick recoiled with dread. It was immediately quite obvious why someone so beautiful should be here with him. Clearly, she had an insanely jealous boyfriend and got her kicks from watching him set upon anybody who glanced in her direction. "It's not like that at all," he stammered unconvincingly.

The man's scowl quivered, before he exploded in a paroxysm of laughter, which did little to assuage Nick's concerns. Finally, in a measured American accent, he said, "I'm just playing with you."

Nick chuckled uncomfortably.

"I'm Briece." He thrust out a hand. "And I see you've met my lovely wife, Gabrielle."

"Hi, I'm Nick."

"Where are you from? No, wait, let me guess." And he hovered his hands over Nick's forehead with his eyes closed, as if in deep concentration. "Perth," he announced. "Am I right?"

"Oh yeah. That's quite the gift you have," Nick replied, his voice replete with sarcasm.

"Well was I close?"

"Unnervingly. A blind monkey throwing darts at a map couldn't have been closer. Possibly."

Briece laughed loudly. "I'm just kidding, you're a Kiwi, right? You've got that whole rugby-isn't-a-sport-it's-a-religion thing going on," he said effecting his voice and gesticulating flamboyantly.

"You got it. And you're American, I assume?"

"Quite, but you needn't sound so overjoyed." He grabbed a peanut, flicked it from his thumb, and caught it in his mouth. "I haven't seen you around,"

"Yeah, I'm taking over for Tony Bonland. He's the one that brought me here."

"Oh Tony," he replied, betraying a hint of distaste. "So how are you finding Japan?"

"Well, you know, I only flew in last night and about the only thing I've seen is this rich bugger's building, which I strongly suspect has a bathroom larger than my whole apartment. As best as I can determine, he only drags people here to rub their noses in his wealth."

Gabrielle choked momentarily on her drink, and when Nick turned back to Briece, he was scowling again. "So let me get this straight, you come to my party, eat my food and drink my beer, and this is what you call gratitude? Just what kind of a prick are you?"

Oh fuck, Nick thought to himself, could this night get any worse? He started to blurt an apology when he was arrested again by Briece's laughter.

"Actually, I'm known as a bit of an asshole myself, so we should get along swimmingly!"

By way of a single eye flicker, Briece transmitted a silent message to his wife, and she leaned forward to touch Nick's cheek. He froze instinctively, suspecting it the initiation of something sexual, but her movements seemed more functional than seductive, as she adjusted his face to consider it from different angles. "I'd like to paint you," she finally said, withdrawing her hand.

"Oh," was all he could utter, having mentally prepared the response to an altogether different question.

"Don't worry, it won't need a sitting. My focus is on the essence of a person rather than their physical manifestation."

"Oh," he said again, unable to comprehend a word she was saying.

"She's very good," Briece injected with a prideful glow.

"Do I need to do anything?"

"I only require that you answer me one question. Is that OK?" Her voice was so sweetly harmonic that he thought it likely he would agree to anything she might desire.

She studied him intently and her mind whirred, as if searching for the perfect question to match her subject, then finally, she gave a little smile. "I need you to clear your mind," she said, her tone becoming low and resonant, "and picture your very first memory."

He thought for a moment, before nodding.

"Now describe that scene for me."

The hot sun shone down on him through the cracked roof of the old wooden gazebo. He wasn't sure of his age, perhaps five or six, but he sat in the prime seat of a table bedecked in red-checkered cloth and covered with plates of lamingtons, chippies and cheerios. Around him, restless kids licked their lips, or screamed in delight from obscure vantages. Then his mother appeared at the back door carrying a cake, and proceeded to place it before him. It was a square supermarket cake with plain white icing and recklessly positioned candles, and it disappointed him immensely. His friends too, eyed it with scorn. "I thought you said it would be a Batman cake," the one with the big head jeered. It was supposed to be, his mother had been promising him as much for weeks. She lit the candles and encouraged everyone to sing Happy Birthday, but immediately, he blew them out. The sooner it was gone, the better.

When Nick finished, his face flushed with embarrassment. But Gabrielle gave a contented nod and thanked him, then she said to Briece, "I think I'll leave you boys alone now, and go chat with Naoko."

A waiter appeared in her wake and provided beers and a plate of pastries that Nick could only guess at the flavour, yet inexplicably knew were named vol-au-vents.

"This really is quite a party," he offered, hoping to smooth over his earlier brashness.

Briece examined him for any trace of his former sarcasm. "Thanks. Every year we turn a profit I have a bit of a shindig, an offering to the commerce gods, if you will. It's a complete waste of fucking money, of course, but it's all tax deductible."

"So where does this money come from?"

"Software," he announced, while gazing at the neighbouring table, seemingly absorbed by the mountaineering prospects it presented.

Nick nodded curtly, but fearing the conversation might veer into water beyond his depth, he quickly changed tack. "How long have you been in Japan?"

"Going on four years."

"Really? Your Japanese must be excellent."

"Oh, God no, I couldn't beg for a glass of water if my ass was on fire. I'm more of a computer-language than human-language kind of guy."

"So, why Japan then? Why not California or Seattle?"

"Ah, it's a long story," he said with the flick of his head and a sigh that did not quite jibe; apparently it was a story he never tired of retelling. "In my third year of university I had a thing for this beautiful Japanese girl, named, not inappropriately, Miko. She was always complaining that she couldn't view documents from her Japanese friends on her American PC. So in a desperate bid to impress her I wrote a small program that added Japanese font support to her word processing and spreadsheet software. It worked so well that I put it up on some electronic Bulletin Boards and charged users $5 a pop. Soon there was so much money rolling in I had to drop out of school to devote myself to it full time. Within two years, MikoWare had become much too big for one man, so I decided to lease an office and hire more staff, and it only seemed natural to do it here. Now we have a dozen staff and distribute to more than thirty countries."

"And what happened to the girl?"

"Ha ha, funnily enough, I was so involved with the software that we never got together. Last I heard she'd eloped with a country music singer."

"Oh well, you seemed to have moved on OK," Nick said with a nod in the direction of Briece's wife, who was now engaged in animated chatter amongst a group of Japanese girls.

"Yes, I've done alright there," he replied with a satisfied grin. "Though it was actually my Mom who introduced us, because she worried I was working too hard. Gabrielle's the daughter of one of her church friends, ironically."

"Ironically?"

He gave a quick wink, and then his arm shot up as he gestured to a newly arrived guest. "Isaac, you bible bashing bandicoot."

"Briece, you garrulous geek!" A short male with dark wavy hair and a wispy beard joined them, and was immediately set upon by a waiter offering a tall orange juice.

"Hi, I'm Isaac O'Brien," he said, presenting his hand to Nick. "How are you finding Briece? Alas, he's quite an acquired taste."

"No more so than me, I suspect."

"Well blah blah blah"

In actuality, Isaac did not say blah blah blah, and he may not even have called into question the likability of Briece, but that was Nick's facsimile of the events. As these things go, Isaac would later claim he wasn't at the party that year as he was stateside visiting family and didn't meet Nick for several more weeks. But the manner of their introduction had no effect in the greater scheme of things, so the discrepancy can be dismissed without undue prejudice.

* * *

It is appropriate at this juncture to learn of the Aka-Oni Bar, not because it was an especially fine drinking establishment, as most definitely it was not. Nor because Nick spent much of his time there, though for some years he did go most Saturday evenings. Rather, that much of Nick's recollection of his life in Japan focused on the hours spent there with his good friends. Certainly, he had memories of classrooms and parties and even walks in the bush, but those locations were generic and indistinct in his mind's eye, and it was only at the Aka-Oni that his whereabouts were beyond doubt.

The Aka-Oni could be found between two shiny apartment blocks off a side street in Akita-machi, the drinking district of Tokushima city. From the outside, its appearance was quite unappealing, with its fading wooden cladding and eaves plastered with an eon of accumulated guano and muck, but naturally, once you entered through the door of cracked frosted glass, you would immediately realise just how flattering the exterior was.

To the left of the entrance was a narrow, crowded area for drink distribution, food preparation and management glowering. Following this and mirrored on the right side were two long columns of squalid stalls, then at the very end was a raised platform of dirty tatami flooring with four low tables surrounded by grubby cushions, each uniquely patterned with questionable staining. Hidden beneath each table were channels where one could dangle their legs, though during the winter, through some arrangement with Satan, the proprietor would open a ducting vent to the bowels of hell and it was impossible to hang one's legs for more than eight seconds without suffering third degree burns.

It was, quite obviously, the worst place in all of Japan for drinking. Firstly, seating on the platform offered no backing, so by the end of a long evening, half the gaijin could barely prop their limp bodies above the height of the table, and the remainder would be fast asleep on the tatami, having invariably been decorated with unwanted sushi and marinated pickle by their enhumoured drinking buddies. Also, when you were half asleep and fully drunk, it was a long way up from the floor to attend to bodily functions or avoid being manhandled to the exit at closing time.

It was run by a man named Renichi Sano. Needless to say, owning an aging, out-of-the-way pub without regular local clientele engenders a proprietor with a certain gratitude for his customers, which flows through in the quality of his offerings, and a polite and endearing manner. But that was not Sano. He was gruff, poorly shaven and surly; the kind of man who would never say in two words what could be shouted in ten. To all intents, he particularly appeared to hate foreigners. He was constantly yelling at them for sleeping on the tatami, spilling their beer or talking too loudly. He had absolutely no grasp of English whatsoever and all attempts to order in any language other than Japanese, including by desperate gesticulation, would be met by a limp flap of his hand and a guttural, "Wakaranai."

No one could ever remember why they drank at the Aka-Oni and each week there would be discussions of some superior location that had actually been cleaned since Hirohito drew breath and where the staff didn't treat you like poorly disguised dog shit. Sometimes these conversations would become exhaustive in their planning, involving the recitation of bus timetables and the distribution of maps etched into serviettes. But the next week they would all appear back at the Aka-Oni with only a cursory reference to the alternative plan, which invariably proved too hard to find, too close to home, too full, too empty, too Japanese, too foreign, or had simply slipped their memory.

But the Aka-Oni did have its benefits. Firstly, it was cheap, and despite the huge wads of cash that a foreign teacher pocketed each month, invariably the cost of alcohol was converted into one's home currency, and on that basis, a night out in Japan was like a major surgical operation; it cost the earth, you woke up feeling grotty and your liver would never function as well again. At the Aka-Oni, a large beer - and the first words every gaijin learnt were "Dai-biiru, ippon" - still cost an extortionate 800 yen, but it was immense enough to bathe an Irish baby, and so by your third, you'd forgotten you ever cared.

Secondly, while the proprietor undoubtedly hated them with a burning intensity, come Saturday night, without fail, all the locals would be shuffled off the tatami platform so that it would be available for the exclusive use of his gaijin clientele.

A further matter of the Aka-Oni warrants mentioning and that is its toilet, which was widely regarded as Tokushima's dirtiest, exceeding even the highly reviled, "Black Hole of Kawauchi," an alfresco latrine beneath the Kendo Bridge fashioned from an upturned apple crate.

Its one saving grace was that it was a squat toilet, so that at the very least, no part of your body ever physically came into contact, but this was also its problem. The distance, combined with the disorienting effects of alcohol, meant that over the years, a good quantity of ordinance had fallen wayward of its target, and attempts to clear the debris had failed to keep pace with the bombardment.

But this is not the reason for its mention, rather it was the fact that each week, upon the rear of the internal door, was scrawled a pithy commentary. On Nick's first visit, it read, "Steal from pessimists and give to optimists. That way everyone is happy." Naturally, the graffiti caused much chagrin to Sano who would promptly overpaint, scrape, burn or otherwise affect its removal, but inevitably, with the arrival of the gaijin the next week, a new scrawl would appear.

Most curious was that no one knew the culprit, though obviously many theories abounded, and much discussion and finger pointing was had over the years. Some said it was an inside job, though this was easily dispensed as none of the staff spoke any English, save for their mastery of profanities. Briece was also a commonly considered suspect, but he too could be eliminated given that the scrawl appeared even on those nights when he was late (which is to say, every night).

While we are on the subject of the curious, apparently the female toilet was quite luxurious; an immaculately polished western loo with a heated seat and sophisticated bidet functions for the aqueous refreshment of one's colon. It even featured plush toilet slippers and a small machine that simulated the sound of flushing so one could urinate without the frightful inconvenience of being overheard by passers-by. Of the endless rumours that sought to explain the loo dichotomy, the most enduring was that Sano had once been infatuated with a comely Gaijin lass and built it as her sanctum.

Naturally Sano also provided a handicap toilet, though this required exiting via the fire escape and navigating an antiquated, spiralling staircase with a precarious grip on sparsely adhered railing.

* * *

Depending on whose recollection of events you accept, Nick met Isaac for the first time at the Aka-Oni. It was several weeks after coming to Japan, and Nick was running late, so incredibly late, in fact, that he arrived even after Briece, and found him engaged in conversation with a short man with dark wavy hair and a wispy beard. It appeared to be a philosophical discussion over the nature of God, which struck Nick as quite odd, as it seemed about as far removed from appropriate pub conversation as he could imagine.

"So why in Judges 11:39, did God make one of his most humble servants, Jephthah, burn alive his only daughter as an offering to him," Briece drawled with an accent that had become profoundly Southern, as it seemed to do whenever he was agitated or drunk, which, Nick would discover, were two occasions with significant overlap.

"Yes, but you neglect to mention that Jephthah vowed to make the offering if God would grant him the power to defeat his enemies," Isaac countered.

"But what kind of God makes a father set fire to his virgin daughter?"

"Let us not forget that it was her that implored he do so because of his promise to God."

"Then what of God's tirade in Ezekiel 32, 'I will let the wild animals of the whole earth gorge themselves with you. I will strew your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your carcass. I will drench the land with your flowing blood up to the mountains.' How can this be the same merciful god that Jesus refers to in Luke 6:36?"

"The Lord is capable of infinite mercy, but he is also quite adamant that we fear him - Isaiah 8:13 - and that those who fear him will be rewarded with wisdom and salvation - Isaiah 33:6."

Visibly frustrated, Briece threw up his hands, and groaned, "Oh, for heaven's sake, help me educate this deluded zealot, Fairfield." When only silence ensued, he turned to Nick, his eyes bulging from their sockets and his jaw hanging limp like a swingbench in the wind, "Don't tell me that you're one of the faithful too?"

Did he believe in God? He hadn't been asked this since his faith had been called into question by his rambunctious behaviour in Sunday School. He'd been raised by parents who were strongly Anglican; dull conservatives who rarely went to church and only ever acknowledged God at Easter and Christmas. On a purely rational level, the notion that a supreme being created and populated the whole world, and then sat impotently while it degenerated into its current state, struck him as patently absurd, and yet he couldn't deny a certain warmth when he considered the awesomeness of a higher power, and an unmistakable comfort in knowing that if man is ultimately judged for his actions, it is by an omniscient deity with an infinite conception of one's motives.

Finally, he gave the only answer that was without trace of a lie, "I want to believe."

"You want to believe?" Briece replied with bare-face incredulity. "You want to believe?" he repeated while his brain slipped a gear and churned in neutral for several moments, before clunking back into position and bursting forth with a sputter. "Everybody wants to believe. Every cell in our simple little mind wants to justify our existence and imagine that an eternity of bliss awaits us when we die. Even the infallible Charles Darwin hated that his theories contradicted his faith and that asserting them was like confessing to murder. But wanting to believe, and silencing all the rational voices in your brain so you can believe, are two very different things. So what I am asking you, Nicholas, is. Do. You. Believe?"

Nick remained silent for a time, before shrugging his shoulders and exposing the whiteness of his palms. "I don't not believe."

Which had the effect of contorting Briece's face such that he seemed to be performing a frightful impersonation of a near-sighted man in a snow flurry baffled by the form of an approaching Yeti. "I don't even know what that means," he muttered, and ejected himself to fetch another round of drinks.

Nick assumed at the time, that this was just one of those odd conversations that spontaneously appear at the point of collision between alcohol and intellect, but as he soon discovered, this was how it always was with Briece and Isaac. They weren't arguments, they were formalised debates with an extensive set of rules strictly adhered to by both parties. Nick did not know whether these had ever been codified or had just evolved, because it happened well before his arrival. The format was largely consistent; invariably it was initiated by Briece, who would set the topic with a leading question to draw Isaac in. Then they would bandy about for a time setting the boundaries of the discussion: scientific, philosophical, historical, moral. Then finally, the big guns would come out with Briece reciting an expostulation that he'd been formulating throughout the day, leaving Isaac to throw together an ad-hoc defence.

They often invited Nick to weigh in, but his was mainly the role of a mediator to gauge the strength of a claim or adjudicate on the validity of a source, and on this point they were fastidious; If the basis of your attack was, say, the inherent unreliability of a tome that would suggest that the sun and its planets were created, the earth terra-formed and all its myriad creatures crafted in the span of six short days then clearly you must cite not only the relevant passages of Genesis but also make reference to credible scientific papers of impeccable peer review. Upon which, your opponent, if not of a literal interpretive nature, may well instantly negate your whole argument by citing Catechism 337, that the length of this divine work was purely symbolic and without question, that biblical section had been written in an allegorical manner.

Naturally, they were well aware that victory was quite unobtainable, as Isaac could no more surrender his belief than Briece would break bread, but for Briece it was an exhilarating mental exercise, and for Isaac an involuntary defence of his faith.

Briece soon returned with two beers and an orange juice. He was clutching them at an awkward distance that betrayed his anxiety that he might stain his tailored jacket, which seemed to glisten and flow like black gold. Excepting one day per year, he never flaunted his wealth - presumably because he feared he might be expected to spend some of it - but, even when he dressed down, he dressed well. His general appearance, though, was more akin to modern chic than classically handsome. He seemed infinitely more suited to overhauling the cooling fan on a Pentium server than the transmission on a Ford pick-up, and undoubtedly could name more iterations of Doctor Who than quarterbacks from his home state. Yet, somehow, his innumerable fortune allowed many women to see past such troubling deficiencies.

Once seated, he drew a square parcel from beneath the table and proffered it to Nick. "This is a welcome present."

Nick unwrapped it to find a small painting of a juvenile Batman bursting from an exploding cake. The detail was exquisite and the brush strokes sublime, and in the face of the hero, he could see his own, without significant resort to egoism. "That's fantastic," he gushed. "Please give Gabrielle my compliments."

"She painted one for me too when I arrived," Isaac explained with a wide grin. "It shows me brandishing a large cross and chasing a heretic, who looks surprisingly like Briece."

They chuckled loudly, except for Briece, who immediately leaned forward in excitement. "Oh Isaac, can I tell Nick about..." and then they shared a silent exchange until Isaac deferred to his judgement with a simple, "Sure," but then appended, "but only if I get to tell Nick something about you..."

Another subliminal argument ensued and once it concluded, Briece said to Nick, "There is some evidence I would like to present about the man you see here."

"OK," Nick responded awkwardly.

Briece enmeshed both his hands, save for his forefingers with which he touched his lip, and he stared at Isaac with embellished seriousness. "Tell me, Mr O'Brien, how often do you go to church?"

"Every Sunday morning, naturally, but I also attend on Tuesday and Thursday evenings."

"Uh-huh. And you regularly consult your bible, do you not?"

"Every single day."

"And prayer."

"Well, I always pray first thing in the morning and before bed at night, but of course, I also spontaneously pray throughout the day, such as earlier when I ordered the Tofu Steak."

"Of course. So we have no reason to believe that you are not, in fact, the most religious person we have ever encountered."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that..."

"Just a yes or no answer, please, Mr O'Brien," Briece said with a furrowed brow

"I'm going to go with yes."

"So answer me this, then, Mr O'Brien, for what reason did your former girlfriend call off your relationship?"

Isaac gave a self-deprecatory grin, "Apparently, I lacked sufficient faith."

"Really?" Nick suddenly interjected, derailing Briece from his mock trial.

"Yes, unfortunately she was from a traditionalist catholic sect and her family were very conservative. They could not accept the strength of my beliefs, and convinced my girlfriend I was coming between her and God."

Nick nodded with the sobriety of someone well acquainted with the overbearance of meddling parents.

At that point, Isaac leaned forward and attempting to ape Briece's prosecutorial performance, said, "Now, Nick, you probably know the man before you as Briece Lauringtan, do you not?"

"I do."

And then turning to Briece, he scowled, "but that, in fact, is not your real name, is it Mr Lauringtan?"

"It's a contraction," he defended.

"A contraction of what, pray tell?"

Briece locked his lips especially tight for several minutes and then, with an unexpected strength, he blurted, "Breyton Viceroy Lauringtan."

"Breyton?" Nick scoffed, losing himself in the kind of irrepressible, riotous laughter that makes beer squirt from your nostrils and dribble from your ears.

六

Intelligence is simply an evolutionary adaption; it doesn't make us any more special than the electric eel or the gangling giraffe

For his first month in Japan, Nick fended completely for himself. A task, all considered, he'd managed quite well, having avoided the dual dangers of alcohol poisoning and hirsute palms. So it was quite a surprise when he first heard a peculiar chime from beneath a dense pile of discarded laundry, which upon further examination proved to be a telephone. The caller presented himself as Nick's supervisor, Daisuke Ueno, and apologised profusely for his negligence in not calling earlier on account of his holidaying with his family. He suggested he visit the following afternoon, to which Nick agreed, despite realising it gave him only sixteen hours and eleven minutes to make his apartment look rather less like the stomach contents of a goat.

The next day his doorbell rang two minutes later than the arranged time, though given Nick's experience with Japanese punctuality thus far, he thought it safe to assume it was his watch that was in error. He welcomed Ueno, and after their introductions, Nick offered a cup of tea - having recently mastered the gas cooker - and they sat at the table discussing the details of his employment.

"Ours is a typical country high school of moderate size," Ueno advised, "With students of a level that averages at middling, and staff who are largely pleasant and agreeable. Your salary, I understand, is fair, and your hours are quite standard, with a workload that is regular."

"Well it certainly sounds like you won't be disappointed by my performance," Nick joked, not oblivious to Ueno's avoidance of any adjective that might cause alarm.

"I'm sure we won't be," he said, nodding agreeably, and somewhat to excess. He had an especially skittish disposition and seemed in constant examination of his shadow for any sign of ill-intent. The relationship with his spindly arms appeared equally fractious, as if he was never quite sure what he should do with them. So to prevent their flailing about, he would bind them in a tight knot across his chest, or tuck one firmly under his chin and then grip the elbow with the other, and any time he sensed disenchantment, he would reposition them with short, disconcerting jerks like he were a poorly constructed animatron.

Despite his nervous affliction, he was incredibly friendly, perhaps overly so, as if the way in which he'd conquered a natural tendency toward shyness. He was also very helpful, suggesting Nick petition the school for an air conditioner, advising him on a few appliances he was yet afraid to approach, and even examining a tiny electrical device that was plugged into a kitchen socket, glowed eerily and very occasionally emitted a soulful ping. After a good deal of investigation, he conceded he hadn't the slightest clue what purpose it served, but his wife had one, which was left on at all times, and so he best not touch it.

As they sat back at the table, Ueno asked, "So I understand you speak some Japanese?"

"Yoku benkyo shimashita ga, amari shiyo shite inai no de, zenzen jouzu de wa arimasen," Nick replied, modestly underselling himself, but with skilled intonation and fluency. The irony of this initiated a peculiar twitch in Ueno's brow, which took several moments to resolve itself.

"Hmmm, no matter," he finally said, "I expect you will pick it up before too long."

"I do hope so."

"There are really only three Japanese phrases you need know to survive. Firstly, whenever you meet someone you must say Yoroshiku o-negai-shimasu: I request your kindness. Next, to anyone who assists, use, O-sewa ni narimashita: Thanks for taking care of me. And most importantly, when you screw up, you say, Moshiwake gozaimasen: I'm sorry, I have no excuse."

"Thanks, I'll remember that."

Ueno heaved at a volume that was so unexpected that he abruptly curtailed it and then cast himself a rueful glare. "In Japan, teaching is one of the most honoured of occupations," he cautioned heavily, selecting each word with interminable deliberation, "which does imply certain expectations of your behaviour."

"Oh?" Nick queried, encouraging an elaboration that never arrived, though in lieu, Ueno nodded most solemnly for a time.

* * *

The first day of school term, Nick had risen at 6 am, slipped gingerly into his new suit, affixed a necktie he'd spent several hours preparing the previous evening, and gulped down his breakfast. At 6:25, he descended the steps to await collection by Ueno, only to find him already loitering in his idling vehicle.

When Ueno had earlier advised they would have so much to do their first day that he should pick him up at 6:30 am, Nick had thought it riotously funny, only to discover after several moments of awkwardness that he was quite serious. When he later relayed the incident to Briece and Isaac, he was gravely informed that the Japanese have no concept of sarcasm, which rather took Nick aback, not least because it struck him as such a glaring omission from his Japanese language classes.

Though it was only a short distance, it was the first time Nick had encountered the school, given it did not lie on the well beaten path between his apartment and the train station, nor the route from his apartment to the little street of his favourite eateries.

The school was housed in a drab set of buildings that instilled in Nick an inclination for truancy rather than matriculation. Its central block was four stories high and of a featureless design and an ineffable hue. In fact, total ocular surrender was only averted by the presence of four monstrous golden characters reading Inoshiri High School. On both sides, the building was flanked by smaller ones, whose ugliness was only mitigated by their size, and off to the left was a misshapen sports field that had been carved from the hillside. Though, field was an exceedingly generous moniker given what was basically an expanse of yellow dirt, utterly devoid of grass.

They entered through a tall set of double-doors, where Nick exchanged his shoes for a pair of school slippers. From there, he was introduced to each of the office ladies and then led up the stairs to the staff room. It was unexpectedly vast, with innumerable iron desks laid out into eight lengthy grey islands. Each was stacked high with books and piled in paper, except for one conspicuous for its nudity, and it was to this that he was led. "Here's your desk," Ueno offered, "Next to mine." Then they sat and commenced writing an introductory speech.

By eight o'clock, the room was filling with teachers, who would inevitably present themselves in introduction as they passed. After a dozen or so, Nick had given up trying to remember their names, though one then arrived, whose name he'd be unable to forget.

Morita was introduced as a physical education teacher. He was young, tall - by Japanese standards - and excessively preened; naturally he took great pride in his appearance, though apparently he took no pride in his naturality. His hair was slicked back and he wore short sleeves to emphasise his toned limbs, such that he resembled to Nick, an Asian Arthur Fonzarelli. His skin, too, glowed with such a curiously citric hue that Nick strongly suspected he had a penchant for illegal muscle enhancement products of a highly radioactive nature.

This in itself would merely have made him remarkable without being memorable, but as he walked away, he quipped, "Didn't even finish his study; yet gets paid the same as us."

This irked Nick immeasurably. It wasn't so much what he'd said, which was clearly not without foundation, but the manner in which he'd said it; not as a muttered aside, but an admonishment audible to all. Also, it was said in Japanese, which meant he was openly talking behind his back, or most certainly worse, knew of Nick's proficiency and wanted him party to it.

Immediately Nick remarked, "Even with my meagre study, I expect I'd be more than qualified to teach gym."

The room hushed, and Morita spun on his heel and inspected Nick caustically. "Nante ittan desuka?"

As he rose to reiterate his jibe more forcibly, Nick was abruptly dragged back to his seat by Ueno, who then promptly blurted an apology on his behalf. With a rueful nod, Morita accepted the words and then departed.

Before Nick had time to justify his outburst, Ueno cautioned, "Morita is your sempai, your senior; you can't address him like that!"

"I'm sorry," Nick said, surprising himself with his contrition.

The morning continued its downward trend at the assembly, when Nick was drawn up on stage to make a speech to the students. Hesitantly, he approached the dais where he was met by 800 faces, which was precisely 782 more than he had ever addressed at one time. Ueno, who undoubtedly often had nightmares of a similar nature, was urging him on with smiling encouragements and frantic gesticulations in the direction of his speech notes. After something approaching an eternity, Nick finally gripped the dais with a shaking hand and issued a hearty, "Ohayo gozaimasu," which entered the microphone, exited the speakers and then bounced around the room several times in the ensuing silence. Finally, once the collective shock had dissipated, the entire room echoed their response, leaving Nick with little else to do but stumble through the remainder of his speech.

At the conclusion of the assembly, he was ushered into the principal's office, which was very nearly half the size of the staff room, and offered a leather sitting area, a massive wooden desk and a wall of cabinets containing a plethora of shining cups and medals. As they approached, the principal leaned forward onto his hands, elevated himself from the chair, and tottered toward them with a piteous, stilted gait. He reached out, took Nick's hand and shook it earnestly, but clearly unfamiliar with the protocol he continued shaking long after tradition would dictate it necessary, or even socially permissible, and Nick was forced to extricate himself from the grip, grinning madly to avoid ill-will.

The principal was of such an advanced age that his hair had long stopped being salt and pepper, had given up on white, and was now very close to translucent. Though it seemed his follicles were making their last stand further south where his massive grey eyebrows jutted obliquely from his forehead like rocky outcrops on a well-weathered cliff. Undoubtedly, only the most calamitous of events would ever quake its ancient, crevassed expanse.

"This is Mr Yoshio Handa. You should call him Koucho-sensei," Ueno advised and the principal gave them a brief bow, which was actually little more than a scarcely perceptible flick of his head. They were then directed to a leather sofa and invited to sit, while the principal eased himself into the lounger opposite.

Ueno commenced with a detailing of Nick's particulars, including the repetition of his name several times, checking the pronunciation and confirming which was the surname and which the first.

This culminated in the arrival of an office lady with a tray, who placed a miniature, handle-less cup of green tea before each of them. They then sat in silence and all that was audible was the principal's lustful slurping. When he was finished, he unsteadily put down his cup, lifted his face to Nick, and asked if he was encountering any difficulty in his Japanese life.

'Well, my apartment's halfway up a mountain and never falls below 40 degrees. What's up with that? And why do I need to wear slippers at school? And while we're at it, why the hell does petrol cost 120 yen a litre?' he desperately wanted to say, but instead he just shrugged and advised that everything was OK.

After they left, Ueno enquired why he didn't request an air-conditioner.

"I didn't wish to seem ungrateful."

Ueno jerked his head in surprise. "Nihonjin-teki ya na. I think you will fit into Japan very well."

By this time, it was nine-thirty and after three frenetic hours, Nick was desperate to catch his breath, but dutifully he asked, "What time's my first class?"

"Oh, we haven't made a schedule yet; you probably won't start teaching till next week."

"So what should I do instead?" he wailed.

Ueno cocked his head to one side. "I don't know. It doesn't really matter just so long as you look busy!"

Before it even chimed ten o'clock, Nick realised just how much more agreeable frenetic had been.

* * *

That week when he presented himself at the Aka-Oni, he found Briece consorting with a young woman. To Nick's recollection she was named Momoko, or possibly Miki, though for that matter, it may even have been Etchiko, but he would have undoubtedly remembered it correctly if it was. As the night progressed, it became apparent that there was something decidedly intimate about their behaviour, and this put Nick on edge.

He tried to imagine she was one of Briece's staff. Yes, that must be it. She was a programmer and he'd taken her for a post-work drink to unwind, he decided, before several niggling concerns promptly surfaced. Foremost, she was freakishly attractive, not at all how he pictured someone from the realm of information technology, and her choice of conversation, while certainly not base or uneducated, could easily have been mistaken for base and uneducated, but what finally drove it home was that with fingernails approaching an inch in length she would have a shameful lack in keyboard proficiency.

Yet, their familiarity was unmistakable; if not workmates, then friends perhaps, close, close friends. "Like a sister to me," he imagined Briece describing their relationship. But as quickly as he was polishing this verdict, her behaviour forced him to dismiss it, because there was nothing sisterly about their relationship at all, certainly not north of Gore anyway. With a growing frequency, her hand would disappear beneath the table and find a particularly erogenous spot on the inside of Briece's thigh that never failed to deliver him a salacious grin.

What was especially odd was that Isaac - who Nick imagined would be the first to condemn such impropriety - seemed utterly oblivious, or if anything, was actively averting his gaze.

Desperately, Nick snatched at other alternatives, but was forced to discard each in turn as they grew ever more incredible. Finally, having abandoned a working theory that she was a personal physical therapist with a speciality in upper thigh work, he was left with only one conclusion, and the realisation made his stomach twist and his head saunter, though all this unanticipated mental exertion may also have been a factor.

Nick had found Briece's wife exceptionally lovely, though he must admit, somewhat quirky. She didn't deserve this. She was beautiful too, he suddenly concluded; he couldn't imagine any valid reason why this should have a bearing, but for some reason, it did. Within him swelled a wave of moral indignation, the particularly vehement kind that seizes a hypocrite.

Obviously with her present, Nick could not say anything, so he just glowered, which cast an awkward pall over their conversation, until Briece finally held her out some money - his wedding ring conspicuous on his finger - and asked if she wouldn't mind purchasing them all a round of drinks. As soon as she was beyond earshot, Nick stabbed him with a finger. "You coney-catching rascal."

"Excuse me?" he responded with elaborate surprise.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, you philandering freebooter. How can you betray Gabrielle like this?"

"Nick, I'm afraid you are quite mistaken. I have most certainly never betrayed my wife. Betrayal would imply I lie about my activities, but I can assure you she is fully aware."

"I don't believe you."

He gestured toward Isaac, who gave a nod as solemn as it was pained.

Nick was incredulous. "But why would you do that? Your wife is a goddess."

"Why does any man chase women? Men are sex addicts; it's in our DNA. It's only a question of how well we manage the addiction."

"That's not true."

"Oh, come on. There have been faithful men throughout history, but their short-sighted focus on begetting offspring within wedlock significantly impeded their genetic contribution. No, the lion's share of our genes have come from all the lotharios, lords and libertines that bedded everything that caught their eye. That's the baseline, so anytime we don't throw ourselves at an available woman we are playing above our handicap."

Nick threw up his hands in derision. "Oh please, don't blame science for your lack of self-control."

After pausing to stroke his chin, Briece then said, "Well, let me put it this way, Nicholas, if your wife didn't mind, wouldn't you?"

"If I had a wife, I'm quite sure this is not the sort of thing I would ever ask of her."

"Fair enough, but let us imagine that one day she happened to mention she was OK with it..."

Nick wasn't prepared to consider such a base suggestion, so he took a swig of his beer and reverted to his glowering.

"If it's any consolation, I'm no hypocrite..." Briece added after a time.

The revelation struck Nick with no less stupor than if Briece had dropped his pants to reveal a face crudely drawn on each arse cheek and commenced a "Who's on first?" impersonation. "Gabrielle does this too?"

"That was our agreement, but to be honest, I don't know. She has an art student named Yoshi with whom she often departs for long walks, but whether they are discussing the works of Georges Braque, or flattening the grass in Jisen Park, I cannot say."

"And you never wonder what they are doing?"

"Well, I suspect that for him it's a cunning ploy for better lingual expertise. For her, quite possibly the opposite. Frankly, it's not something we tend to talk about."

"Oh my god, you're jealous?"

"Of course, I am. Jealousy too is an evolutionary trait, but a vestigial one that I choose to ignore," he replied, almost achieving credibility.

"Why is it always about evolution with you?" Nick groaned.

Briece's face drew with the same horror that so often afflicted Isaac. "We are precisely as we are because we've been honed over millions of years of evolution. Every feature of your body and every aspect of your personality can be explained by how it benefits your genetic output."

"Not everything. There is so much of human behaviour that defies all explanation."

"So I take it you're a believer in monogamy then, Nick?"

"I like the idea of monogamy," he sighed, "but I'm agnostic about its existence."

Isaac, who had remained silent during their intercourse, chose at that juncture, to clear his throat and take a measured sip from his OJ. After a long contemplative pause, which lingered dangerously close to long awkward silence, he said, "I was once the best man for a close friend, but on the day of the wedding, he wanted to call it off. He couldn't promise to be faithful to one woman for the rest of his life, he confessed. His father put a hand upon his knee. "Monogamy is easy," he said, "because you don't need to be faithful your whole life, you only need to be faithful today. Every time you find yourself tempted by some pretty wee thing, say to yourself, I'm not going to cheat on my wife today. I don't know about tomorrow, or next week, but today, I choose to be faithful. You do that every time and you'll be just fine.'"

Looking rather miffed by this contrary input, Briece retorted, "Being faithful to your wife is imperative, monogamy is not, because it's the betrayal, not the coitus, that wounds." Then he rose from the table to cement his closing argument and assist his concubine, who was struggling to grip a drink tray with her talons.

* * *

By the end of his second week at Inoshiri High School, yet to teach any classes, Nick had become so monumentally bored that he begun to invent activities to entertain himself. One with which he was particularly taken was the daily sorting of the items on his desk. Naturally, to make it more interesting he dispensed with such trite factors as weight or size, and instead focused on the esoteric: its perceived performance in a wind tunnel, its suitability as a weapon in case of zombie attack, and, most recently, its propensity to injure when tossed at one's face.

He was actively nursing a particularly frightful lump on his forehead, when Ueno appeared and plopped a piece of paper before him. Nick examined it with interest. It was prolix and delightfully formatted, but more importantly it was malleable and could potentially be folded into any number of dangerous configurations which cast his current ranking into total disarray.

His supervisor stared at him quizzically, as if trying to perceive what peculiar thought process was occupying him so thoroughly and causing him to paw the offered document like it were a dirty handkerchief. "It's your schedule!" he announced cautiously.

"Oh, Ueno-sensei," Nick replied in the manner of one who'd been awakened from an interminable slumber by a kiss.

"Yes, eighteen classes a week. You will be busy."

Nick nodded pensively as he visualised all the preparatory work ahead of him. "When do I start?"

"Now. With me. That's why I'm here."

He accompanied Ueno to a distant class, and as they entered, all the students immediately stood and bowed respectfully. Every one of them had adequately studied, listened politely while Nick spoke and responded keenly when prompted with queries. They were, quite obviously, perfectly behaved, in the way that Nick imagined all Japanese students would behave.

That afternoon, he was then beckoned by Fujimoto-sensei, though perhaps beckoned is not quite the right way to describe it; Nick had been studying his teaching guide with flagging interest and had spun in the direction of the coffee pot to find an older lady hovering behind him. She greeted him with a smile and bowed in introduction, managing not to expend a single word in the entire transaction. Nick invited her to sit and they discussed their plans for the class, though for the most part, he was winging it because she rarely vocalised at a volume even close to audible. The one remark that Nick had retrieved from their conversation, and only by intently reading her lips, was that the level of her class was "lower." Alas, this term probably could have been substituted for something better, perhaps an evocative toponym such as Bedlam, or possibly even Gomorrah. At least then, Nick would have suitably prepared himself and only a slight downward adjustment to his expectations would have been required, instead of the precipitous fall he was delivered.

The class greeted their arrival with the same sort of reaction one might apply to an errant ray of dazzling sunlight, and they did not so much bow, as grunt in unison. The only students that were not chatting in huddled groups were those who were sprawled across their desks actively dozing. There was a single boy who sat upright and focused, but that was because he was playing an electronic game of the ilk that endlessly beeped and whirred. After much fracas, Fujimoto extricated it from his grip and so he determined to stare out the window for the remainder of the lesson as way of protest.

Following his introduction, Nick invited the boy to ask of him a question. He immediately spat back in such colloquial Japanese that Nick utterly failed to comprehend, though it did succeed in raising the class to pandemonium. After the lesson, under significant duress, Fujimoto-sensei translated it as a medical inquiry into the frequency of Nick's bowel motions. Thus, all his conceptions of the model Japanese student were shattered.

Fortunately, having seen both extremes, the remainder of his classes proved unremarkable. He soon learnt to pitch each lesson at the appropriate level, and over the following months he grew in confidence and experience, and though a foreigner was strictly prohibited from teaching without a Japanese colleague, he began to increasingly shoulder the workload. As his colleagues' input diminished, so did their presence. It started with them watching passively from the rear; then they began popping out occasionally for a cigarette or coffee, followed by them popping in occasionally to check all was well, until the final inevitable conclusion, when they stopped attending altogether.

七

Sometimes you grab life by the short and curlies.

Sometimes it grabs you

Encompassed in Nick's teaching role was visiting outlying middle schools to expose them to a native English speaker. The closer schools might get one visit a month, while the more remote received only a few a year. For all practical reasons, Nick should have detested such a jarring effect on his precious routine and often entailed rising early enough to pre-empt the sun, but the reception he received would more than make up for his privations.

A genuine, gobbledygook-gabbing gaijin was such a curiosity that the students were always excited, and frequently events would be timed specifically for his arrival. Thus, it was not unusual for Nick to find himself playing baseball on their sports day, or acting the friendly giant in an impromptu school production.

Of all the mountain schools, his favourite was Haruyama, which was so very remote that a breakdown would have you praying for a quick death due to the poorly chosen trajectory of a flying squirrel, rather than a meandering demise from starvation and ineffable boredom.

Haruyama Middle School was entered by way of a narrow, wayward path seemingly hacked from the undergrowth by a drunken ninja with a crooked katana, but as you ascended, it would open onto a verdant field, and then you crested a rise to be greeted by a brace of ramshackle buildings of a beauty that was as breathtaking as the dubiousness of their structure.

At most of Nick's mountain schools, the English level was quite mediocre, but at Haruyama it was sublimely abysmal. Its eighteen students were of farming families, and generally did not aspire even to leave Tokushima, let alone Japan, and so English held as much use to them as Latin or Klingon, but for Nick's visit they would always put what little vocabulary they knew to best use.

The English head, who was also dean of the Science and Math departments, not to mention the deputy principal (education being the one bastion in Japan where it was not unusual for a woman to hold such an esteemed position) was an older lady named Hiroguchi-sensei. She had a very matronly air about her, polite but officious, and while not easily likable there was little to dislike either. Though perhaps that is overstating the point.

What grated Nick about Hiroguchi was her odd predilection for ending each and every sentence with the exclamation, "Na," which is a dialectal word whose purpose is difficult to explain, suffice to say it is the vocal equivalent of writing "?!" if that makes it clearer, which most assuredly it does not. This became particularly vexing once Nick learned she had lived most her life in Tohoku, which favoured the much softer and more definable, "Ne." Such an affectation might have escaped attention were she not so endlessly vocal; there was not a thought that entered her mind that evaded elucidation, or a misdemeanour that passed her eyes that avoided denunciation, and every utterance was punctuated with a jarring, "Na." Even Nick, who had been known to adopt it himself, would never consider using it with such vulgarity.

But this shortcoming was insufficient to cast a pall over his visits, as the headmaster, who doubled as the entire staff of the physical education department and the bus driver on Fridays, was an exceedingly agreeable man, who would always invite Nick into his office to eat lunch and discuss matters of the world outside his known parameters, which is to say Haruyama and the sixty-minute drive into the city. He was well-read and prone to introspection which reminded Nick of a dear old friend of Tessa's and undoubtedly, he thus inherited some of the affection Nick held for him.

Nick had very nearly sabotaged the friendship on his first visit when the principal had removed his necktie and insisted they swap to cement their relationship. As it happened, on that day he was wearing the one that Tessa had gifted him on their final date, a memento he would never dream of ceding. While the principal was quite understanding, there was an undeniable air of disappointment until Nick recalled that in his car he had an All Black cap, which he'd procured from an extortionate vendor at Auckland Airport. This was accepted with inordinate delight, as the principal knew the team well, despite having never observed a rugby game in all his life.

* * *

That Saturday night, as usual, Nick was propping himself upon an elbow at the Aka-Oni Bar, his collar unbuttoned and his tie hanging in a loose knot. He was on his second dai-biiru, which typically marked the transition from him no longer caring how much the night was costing to the worrying realisation that Renichi's Daily Special was not sitting altogether comfortably in his stomach and starting to make furtive leaps toward its point of entry.

Naturally, Briece was already into his opening arguments. "Isaac, my dear friend, answer me this; if you were born in Israel, what religion would you be?"

"Jewish, I expect," Isaac replied, recognising it as a trap, but curious to the nature of his ensnarement.

"And what if you were born in the Middle East?"

"Muslim, no doubt."

"And if it were India?"

"Hindu."

Briece nodded knowingly. "But you were born in the West, so you are..."

"Christian."

With a prideful smirk, he asked, "Do you see where I am going with this?"

"I do see where you are going with this," Isaac confirmed.

"Let me tell you where I am going with this," Briece advised. "Your religion is not, in fact, due to some divine universal truth, it's simply geography."

Isaac paused for several moments to sip his orange juice. Then with excessive deliberation, he gathered five edamame beans, placed them on the table, and nudged them until they were laid out in a perfect quincunx. He basked in the pleasing symmetry for a time, before consuming each bean in an immutable sequence and chasing them down with a swig of juice.

Finally, he smiled a knowing grin. "I'm afraid, Briece, my esteemed friend, that the flaw in your argument is that you assume my birth in the West was a product of chance and not part of His plan." He lovingly stroked the facial hair upon his chin, which wasn't so much a beard as a loose conglomeration of soft curls independent in proximity, but united by a desire to bow uniformly at the merest hint of wind.

The Edamame Quincunx was Isaac's favourite food-based formation. While it lacked the visual grandeur of his noodle Archimedean spiral, or the becalming intricacy of his chilli triquetra, its palliative effect was much more prompt and profound.

He had always found an inexplicable beauty in form and structure, and this fed his other great love of gardening. Undoubtedly, a person of such an affinity might have felt rather dismayed to be assigned an apartment on the fourth floor of a concrete building in a particularly unattractive quarter of Tokushima city, but Isaac had quickly commandeered a small corner of the vacant lot between his and the neighbouring building. He started by resettling a few houseplants he'd been gifted, but soon was regularly biking to distant nurseries and returning with towering shrubbery lashed precariously to his carrier.

His Japanese neighbours initially gave him a wide berth, visibly discomforted that he should so senselessly beautify a spot destined only for concrete embellishment. But then, one night, a pot plant appeared at his door, rang the bell, and said nothing else. It happened again a few nights later, and though it began quite sporadically, it was not long before they were arriving in such plenitude that exiting would often necessitate shimmying down the rear drainpipe. At first, he would dutifully find an optimal spot in his garden for each nocturnal arrival, and plant it with utmost care, but soon he had a massive unsightly backlog that caused him only consternation.

That was when the second miracle occurred. He had been away at a conference and returned home to find all that blooming flora had made its way to his garden, arranged itself quite splendidly and burrowed in. In the week that followed, there were no new plant deliveries at all, but there appeared a winding pebbled path, and the week after, a wooden bench, and then an elaborate water feature.

It was so beautiful and unimaginable, that it did not seem entirely real, and desperate to discover the culprits, be they elves or angels, Isaac snuck home early one day to observe from a distance. The culprits proved, as it happened, to be surprisingly anthropological in nature, there was the young mother from the ground floor with an ear out for her baby, the three chatty housewives from the second floor, and the twitchy old man from the third.

Naturally, he never revealed to them that he knew. The garden brought them happiness and he wasn't about to jeopardise that by exposing their duplicity. It was enough to know that in every hearty, "Ohayo gozaimasu, Mr Isaac," there was an undeniable hint of kindred joy.

Nor did he ever tell his friends of his passion. If they could not understand the infinite love he felt for his creator, he had scarce confidence they would appreciate the subtler aspects of his personality.

Briece shrugged. "Maybe the bible is right."

"Yes?" Isaac queried, his voice tainted with suspicion.

"Yeah, maybe there was a God that kick-started everything from the Big Bang forward, but if that is true then he is quite obviously long dead."

"Dead?" screeched Isaac, his curly fringe bouncing madly. There was always a certain wildness to his hair, not quite unkempt, but always skewed at some perverse angle as if he'd only just brushed it before being surprised by a freak gust of wind, or quite possibly a lightning strike.

"Yes, dead," Briece confirmed dispassionately. "You think about it; in his early years he was all about grand works projects, and seeding the whole world with his cockamamie creations. Then in his impetuous teen years, he kept starting wars that he couldn't win. But the writing was surely on the wall, when he couldn't even beat that shameless lech, Jacob, in a wrestling match. Fatherhood and old age mellowed God considerably, but it's been two millennia now since we've seen any trace of him. The only reasonable conclusion is that he's shuffled off his immortal coil."

Isaac was still sputtering as ineffectually as a decapitated rooster, so Nick quickly interjected, "But God is immortal, so how can he be dead?"

"Well, sure we say that immortals live forever, but who's ever been around long enough to verify? Perhaps when we say forever, we actually just mean they live for a very, very long time. Now if God has been around since the Big Bang then that would put him at well over thirteen billion years, so it would hardly be surprising if he'd done his dash, wouldn't you say?"

"Preposterous," Isaac finally blustered. "Every single day I witness God's hand in the beauty that abounds, and I can see the strength he gives to millions. Even you cannot deny that we so often hear of miracles that defy all odds."

"Yes, but for every child brought back from the brink of death by the power of prayer and the magic of modern medicine, there are a dozen that tumble into a pool while their mother's gaze is averted, or wander into the woods never to return. If we are to thank God for every miracle, should we also not condemn him for every anti-miracle?"

"I guess," Isaac confessed with a sigh. "God does have a plan, I know this to be true, but as He is omniscient, we lack the mental capacity to conceive Him."

"Look at the world around you, Isaac. How does any of this strike you as part of some divine plan and not just happenstance?"

"Because I have faith, and implicit to that faith is trusting that God knows what is best for us."

Briece's eyes stretched toward the ceiling, and losing his humour, he spouted, "Be rational, for Christ's sake."

Isaac smarted at the rebuke, which clearly contravened several of their unspoken rules, and every one of the nine hairs on his chin bristled. "It is impossible to explain faith to you, Briece, because you don't believe in anything you can't masticate, enumerate or fornicate. Trust me that some things you need only feel to know they are there."

"That doesn't make any sense at all. What you speak of is merely a quirk in our brain that makes us see shapes in clouds, and ascribe meaning to nebulous emotion."

"So what of love, Briece, do you believe in that?"

"Of course, it's a chemical reaction that occurs when meeting someone whose genes would benefit your offspring."

"Oh Briece, you old romantic, the girls must just melt for you," Isaac quipped. "My point is that it's neither logical nor quantifiable, you just feel it."

"You could measure the elevation of heart rate..."

"Granted, but I would wager that even you know of the love of your wife without needing to quantify it."

At that point, a woman appeared before them, and in a quaint accent said, "So this must be the Group W bench?"

"Sara! Long time, no see." Briece jumped up to kiss her on the cheek. "I believe you know Isaac, but not a fellow antipodean, Nick."

"Nice to meet you," she said warmly. "Can I sit down? I've just spent ninety minutes on the bus and had to fight for a seat."

While Nick had never met Sara Spark, he gazed up at her in awe. Perennial gaijin like her, who lived in the hills and rarely came down to the city, were always discussed in hushed whispers with no less fearful veneration than a Yeti. What's more, she was a woman electing to live in a culture that relegated her sex firmly in second place, and outside the city the problem was much worse. You needed a hell of a tough hide to weather all that and still come back for more.

Sara seated herself beside Nick, and he offered a handshake, which after eight months in Japan, had already begun to feel awkward. "So you're Australian, I gather?"

"True blue," she said, a little stilted. On the side that faced Nick, she tucked the hair behind her earlobe. It was of a hue that no one could ever adequately describe, being not quite brown enough to be called brunette, nor insufficiently ginger to be called red (in Japanese it was quite humorously referred to as kocha-iro, but this falls so flat in English as not to warrant translation). She always adopted a style that was short and nominally boyish, though obviously on a figure of such opulent curvaceousness there was little risk of it lending masculinity. It was easier to look after, she would tell anyone who asked; though in reality she believed it made her face appear less pudgy.

"So how do you like living in Kawamata?"

"I love it, it's just like Brisbane."

"You're kidding?" he protested. "Kawamata is a tiny village thirty kilometres from the nearest vending machine, populated by eight families, one gaijin, and a dozen frogs. How could it possibly be like Brisbane?"

She grinned widely. "Because I have a huge apartment with a great balcony and a four burner barbecue that overlooks the river. And that's just like the apartment back home that I could never afford."

"But you're the only gaijin for miles; you could never go anywhere without being endlessly eyeballed."

"What's so wrong with that? Everybody knows me and they never cease to be grateful. I could eat out every night of the week if I felt like it..."

"But don't you ever just want to blend in?"

She shrugged. "I doubt there is any risk of me being mistaken for a Japanese girl," she said rather depreciatively, and arched her palms toward herself. She was wearing a white tank-top, one of dozens she had bought before leaving Australia; suspecting, quite reasonably, that she would never find her size in Japan. This one, with its plunging, embroidered hem was her favourite, not because she desired to flaunt her best attributes - though unquestionably they both featured prominently in her top ten - but because she sought to draw attention from the less flattering aspects of her physique.

Unable to contain himself, Briece interjected, "You know, I was just thinking about Australia the other day. I was trying to recall the name of that great, big desert you have of nothing but sand?"

"You mean The Great Sandy Desert," she replied drearily.

"Oh yes, that's the one, and in Tasmania where they have that really big beach of pebbles?"

"The Big Pebbly Beach, I presume."

"Of course, and what about that really long sandy reef..."

"You know what I was struggling with as I came in," she interrupted. "What the name was of that smug yank with all of the dollars, and none of the sense? Brey... Brey... Brey... something, isn't it?"

Briece immediately clamped his jaw, and then cowered behind his oversized beer pitcher.

"Nicely handled," Nick announced. "I think you deserve a drink."

He warmed to her quickly. Naturally, there was the instant kinship and unabated familiarity that always afflicted antipodeans meeting in unexpected locales, but this was somehow more. Without pause, they talked until the early hours of their peculiar lives in this curious land. Shamelessly, Nick related his anecdotes of naive misadventures at the hands of Japanese students or in the company of drunken gaijin. He undoubtedly tried too hard, but when you've been treading water in a vast, empty ocean that long, when you see an island, you skip across the surface like Jesus on steroids.

Isaac and most of the other gaijin had already filtered home when Sara excused herself to the "little girls' room." Promptly, Briece leaned forward and slid a key across the table. It was for his secondary apartment, he advised.

Nick recoiled. "No, I can't," he said in a whispered shout. "I haven't been with anyone since uni'."

"Ooh, who's Yuni?" Briece asked with a salacious grin.

"Uni... versity," Nick clarified.

"Oh," he uttered with considerable distaste. "Well it's approaching a year now; it's high time you moved on."

Nick thought to explain that you don't just move on from the girl you planned to be with forever, but instead, he said, "I'm not sure I'm ready."

Briece edged around the tatami toward him. "Come on, it's just like riding a bike, I expect; a bike with honking great boobs, and a whole lotta fanny," he offered with a wink. "Just be yourself, but, you know, more worldly and seductive."

"So I shouldn't really be myself at all then?"

"Yes, good thinking."

He glared. "I'm not like you, Briece, if I'm going to be with a girl, I don't want just one night."

"Nick, Sex is just a mechanical process for fluid transmission, you shouldn't bring emotion into it."

"How can you not?"

With a shrug, Briece said, "Well, you've got to start somewhere."

Nick was silent for a time. The way she'd touch his arm when she laughed, and the scent of her hair when she neared, he could not deny the savage excitation it had triggered. Two divisions of neglected troops had been rallied and were already girding themselves for an almighty thrust across the Ardennes and deep into the southern reaches.

"You can hold onto that key; it's a copy. Just don't ever use the four-poster bed, that's for when I have friends over, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, Briece, everyone knows what you mean."

"Friends, plural, right..." As usual, he had all the subtlety of a bazooka at a snowball fight.

"Yeah, I got it." Nick allowed himself a smile, and crazed with nervous energy, he elbowed Briece as Sara reappeared. Then he closed his fist over the key.

* * *

Nick had only ever visited Briece's second apartment once. On that occasion he had been plucked from the Aka-Oni by a neighbouring tenant and urgently escorted back to the building. The tenant would not disclose the reason, only that Briece was having some difficulty, which he could not resolve due to the language gap. After being led through the neighbouring apartment it became clear that the difficulty was the fact that Briece was locked out on his balcony wearing nothing but a pair of socks, only one of which was on his feet while the other dangled elsewhere on his anatomy protecting the last of his dignity, though in the cool evening air that dignity was looking decidedly precarious. Fortunately with Nick functioning as an interpreter they were able to enter Briece's apartment and rescue him, but as way of explanation he would reveal only that there'd been a misunderstanding regarding the terms of disengagement.

On that evening Nick had been on his first dai-biiru, while on this, he was well past his third; a miscalculation for which he was silently chastising himself as he struggled to find the route. More than once, Sara actually clarified his choices, or gently urged him in an opposite direction, as if she had some foreknowledge of the destination, but he quickly dashed the troubling thought from his mind.

After several unrecognisable blocks, he was venturing dangerously close to suggesting they pop into one of the many themed love-hotels that lined the route, but mercifully, Briece's apartment finally loomed into view. They made their way to the third floor and after several interminable seconds where his ten fingers could find no consensus on the optimal method to rotate a key, he finally unlatched it. With an effortless nudge, the door then widely swung open; seemingly, a lot of money had been expended to ensure that it was so, and undoubtedly, the same was true of most the women that entered, but Nick dared not imagine all the comings and goings that this place had seen.

By way of parapsychology, or some such technology, the lighting automatically engaged as they entered, imbuing the room with a subtle warmth, if not a generous endowment of luminance. The interior was tastefully decorated, but sterile. Its pale walls were clad with generic prints of boulevards of Saint Michel and snowy peaks of Saint Moritz. Its furniture was aesthetic, but uninspired: two plump couches flanking a frosted glass coffee table, upon which was a fanned selection of magazines that gave no impression of having ever been read, and a wooden puzzle that imparted no hint of ever being attempted.

The only clue betraying the dwelling's purpose was the presence of two fluted glasses on the countertop. Nick grabbed them and approached the fridge, opening it to find not a single item of food, but rather several dozen bottles of champagne. On the top shelf, one bore a note that read, "For Nick and company." Beside it was a bottle of sparkling grape juice, labelled, "For Isaac and company."

He poured them each a glass and they sunk into the couch. Nick took one requisite sip before twisting himself toward her, and as he mumbled his defence, her lips closed over his. Without conscious effort, his hand then worked its way inside her jacket, navigated several layers of undergarments, and slid beneath a cup of her prodigious brassiere, inexplicably bringing to mind, a long forgotten childhood incident when he had snatched at the wrong end of a spinning power drill. She immediately broke from the embrace and then observed with palpable satisfaction the flushed anxiety that overcame him. At its apex, she announced she would freshen up. "Perhaps you'd like to meet me in the room," she intoned, affecting the voice of a Bond heroine.

He followed her directions and soon found himself in the second bedroom with little to do but fret whether she had birth control and indeed, whether it would be presumptuous even to ask. Struck with a thought, he opened a drawer of the bedside unit. There he found a box of prophylactics. Attached was a label that read, "For Nick." Beside this was an object for Isaac, a miniature bible that Nick observed was bookmarked at the Song of Songs, which Briece had once described as evangelical porn.

He pulled off his top, climbed into bed, and awaited the arrival of Sara. After a short period, she duly appeared and perched herself at the end with her back toward him.

This was always her favourite part, drawing out the seduction, knowing how it would make him crazy, knowing how much he would be desiring her.

Slowly, she peeled off her top and then, with a deft flick, her bra came loose and slipped from her shoulders. She raised her hands to adjust her hair, and he caught a glimpse of a breast and could not avoid an appreciative gasp. Then she rose, and as she eased her jeans down the length of her legs, a familiar scent flooded his nostrils, invigorating him with all the immediacy of a chilli enema.

"A I U E O," he enumerated silently, trying to divert the attention of his nether troops, which he feared might make a sudden rush for victory. "KA KI KU KE KO, TA CHI TSU TE TO..."

With salacious delight, he examined the soft red curls that peeked from between her thighs, and from there, his eyes ran slowly over the reaches of her buttocks until they converged at the top of her cleft, and then they stopped short. He had become inescapably absorbed by a small scar in the shape of an arch. Undoubtedly, it was the only evidence of an arresting story involving outback camping and an amorous kangaroo, but Nick found it strangely disquieting.

At that moment, she turned toward him to bask in his desire, but was struck instead by his agitation. Their eyes met and he uttered, "I'm sorry, I'm just not ready."

Her gaze dropped, and then a grin stretched across her face. "Well there's a bulge beneath the sheet that's suggesting otherwise..."

"Yes," he conceded as he exited the bed. "But he doesn't get a vote in this one."

An arm reflexively drew across her breasts, and she watched as he paced about the room, biting at his thumbnail. Realising this wasn't some coy game, her face reddened with anger.

Nick was quite aware of her rubricating complexion in his periphery, but he simply could not think of anything he could do or say. This was a horrible mistake, was the only thought that occurred to him. "It's not you," he finally said, but as soon as the words left his lips, he recognised just how pathetic they sounded.

She was already replacing her garments and at his comment, the hue of her cheeks deepened to crimson. Once fully clothed, she snatched her bag and bolted for the door. As she opened, she twisted toward him. "For future reference, there is no greater indignity to a girl than offering herself to a man and being turned down," she spat. "Let's face it, men are little more than six inch snatch seeking missiles dragging 180 pounds of worthless flesh, so if you reject a woman it better be because you're impotent, queer, or an impotent queer because there isn't any other excuse that will mitigate our self-disgust."

"I'm sorry," he said again, struggling to look at her. "It really isn't you."

"Nope, that doesn't even come close," she barked, and the door slammed.

Nick couldn't face the train journey home, and so he sat in the apartment and finished his champagne. Then he finished hers, and when that was gone, he poured them both another glass. As he drank, he pondered everything that had occurred that evening, until at length, he finally recognised it for what it was, a warning shot across the bow.

Promises had been made; behaviours had been decreed, and here he was, trying to circumvent the concordance. Daring to be whole.

VIII

16.404: Advanced Statistics and the Improbable Distribution of October Birthdays

For his first year of university, Nick lived in a hostel named only "A." It was a creaking, wooden structure of a sprawling single-level design, which somewhat resembled a squashed spider that had been quite cruelly severed half its limbs perimortem. While it housed sixty students, it had only a single telephone, and naturally, there was no operator or answering service, so when it rang, it tended to do so interminably, before someone in the vicinity would finally answer and then seek whoever was sought. Unfortunately, Nick's double-room was in a block located away from the main building, as if it were a shoe our analogic arachnid kicked off amidst its death throes. So retrieving him for a phone call necessitated a journey along the most gangling of the spider's remaining limbs and a short, but often bracing excursion into the weather. All for a frequently unrequited knock upon a door. That was one option at least; the other involved going back to the common room, having another few forkfuls of your instant noodles, and then returning to announce he was out and offering to write down a message.

For this reason, Nick almost never received a phone call, nor for that matter, did he ever get a message. What he did get were frequent admonishments from his fellow residents to call his mother. Obviously, he would do so quite dutifully, but on occasion he was busy with Tessa, or drinking with Dave, or working on an assignment, or any of the myriad other excuses he had accrued to excuse his laxness. By October, however, he had been so lax in calling home, that the demands about the hostel that to do so were increasingly vocal and palpably militant, and were often suffixed with threats involving his enwrapment in packing paper and the affixing of postage stamps to his posterior. What alarmed him was not that the threats were becoming less veiled, but that the level of detail was growing prodigiously.

When he did finally ring his mother, he was thus debriefed at significant length, just how many times her calls had been thwarted and how many of her messages had been ignored. Consequently, Nick found himself making some quite unexpected concessions, most notably, that he would be in attendance that weekend for a family dinner.

So, while Tessa worked in the restaurant that Friday, he made the journey back to Tikorua.

His father, who was clearly of the opinion that the occasion called for some kind of celebration, was well onto his second bottle when Nick arrived. As way of greeting, he slurred, "What kind of time do you call this?"

Nick explained that his classes had finished at five, so given the two-hour drive, the time could conceivably be called "quite reasonable," but his father gave a sneer that implied the least convincing excuse for lateness was such mindless adherence to temporal laws. As Nick was to respond, his mother's welcoming face materialised between them and after a brief embrace, she ushered him to a chair. Surprisingly, even James had made an appearance, and was seated opposite with his devoted wife, Linda.

James gave him a brief greeting, which was scarcely distinguishable from a scowl, while Linda enquired about his studies. As with everything in James' life, she was absolutely magnificent, in fact, such was her magnificence that one could be forgiven for secretly wishing she was befallen the sort of horrendous skiing accident that left her with legs of differing lengths and an inclination to walk in circles. But most troubling, was despite her delectable figure and outstanding beauty, she was modest and affable, which always made it terribly challenging for Nick to hate her at all.

The meal commenced surprisingly well. It was a lavish reproduction of a beef roast, which was normally a Sunday meal but had been brought forward on his account. His father, for some unspoken reason - though his abundant view of Linda's cleavage was undoubtedly a factor - was largely silent, which allowed for several delightful rounds of small-talk before James seized upon a lull to lament the many hours he'd been putting in since his rapid promotion to junior partner, and all the money he spent on fuel due to the plush interior of his new BMW which inclined him to long drives, not to mention the small fortune expended on shrubbery for their vast new property. It continued in this vein for some time, but fortunately, Nick soon managed to tune himself out.

"So, Nicholas," his mother suddenly remarked, "I heard through the grapevine that you've been seeing someone..."

The question caught him completely off-guard, though he couldn't decide if this was because it was actually abrupt, or simply due to his daydreaming when it was raised. "Oh, it's just a girl," he eventually stammered.

"So... who is she?"

Slowly, he examined his mother, who tellingly had returned her cutlery to their home positions, and was leaning toward him with her chin. "So this is why you invited me up here? To interrogate me on my love life?"

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic, Nicholas. I'm just surprised you haven't mentioned her."

He peered at his father, and then James, who were both eyeing him with interest.

"Well I would be happy to tell you about her, and you should meet her too."

"That would be nice."

"She's a Chinese girl, as it happens." And he paused to survey the reaction of his father, but well trained as he was in holding his emotions until they could be wielded with greatest effect, he revealed nothing and said even less. This disappointed Nick greatly. In his imagination, the disclosure had made his father so fantastically flustered his head had swollen up like a great red balloon and burst.

"Oh, is that right?" his mother clarified.

"Yes, we've been dating now for six months. It's really quite serious."

"Oh, that is lovely," she said. Though the word lovely had been uttered in the same pitched staccato style she had used on several other telling occasions, such as when he first announced he would buy his uncle's notoriously cantankerous Ford Capri. Nick should have found this result quite pleasing, but he was still vexed by his father, who continued to munch his carrots with little trace of recognition.

"In fact, we are looking to move in together," he added quickly. This wasn't an arrow he had planned to lob, indeed, until it left his bow, he was not even aware of it in his quiver, but with delight, he noted a flicker in his father's eyes; though this may simply have been a glance to see where the wayward shot had fallen.

At that point, it became quite clear it had struck his mother. She went to speak, but her voice had seemingly disappeared and when it returned it was precisely two octaves above middle C and everyone pirouetted in surprise to find the source of the falsetto. "I really don't think..." she began, before losing her way.

"...That I should move in with a Chinese girl?"

"No, it's not that, certainly not. But I just think we should learn more about her first. And her family."

"Actually, it doesn't matter what you think about this at all. It's my life."

"Yes, but you must understand that this affects us too."

Nick grinned widely in satisfaction, "And now we arrive at the crux of your concern, that my girlfriend and her immigrant family will be an embarrassment to your hoity-toity friends."

"Oh Nicholas!" she said, quite outraged. "Don't be so crass."

Thereupon the first rumblings were finally heard from the north of the table. "I trust you are using adequate protection?" the old man grumbled. "Who knows what her motives are?"

"Are you serious?" Nick barked, his anger fully gripping him. "What year do you think this is? 1955? What possible motives could she have?"

His father rolled his eyes in aloof derision. "Your youth begets your naivety."

"And your years defy yours," Nick spat. "Your problem is that you've spent all your life in court and now you have no idea what normal people are like." Flush with indignation, he ejected himself from his seat and bolted for the door. "I don't live here anymore and I don't need to take this crap."

Nick was already in his car, gunning the engine, when his brother jerked open the door. He was expecting a solid reprimand for his behaviour, but James said, "Are you sure you're moving in with this girl for the right reasons?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What I mean, is that you shouldn't underestimate the gravity of this decision. Moving in together is a big step. It's the start of a process from which you cannot easily extricate yourself. Don't go down this road unless you're confident she's someone you could spend your life with."

Nick scanned his face for hint of ill-intent, but with due credit to his Machiavellian finesse, the deception was flawless, and for a moment, he was almost taken in by it. Finally, he shook his head in disgust. "You always were their stooge, Jimbo." Then he stabbed his foot on the pedal and rocketed into the night.

* * *

Nick and Tessa spent the following evening at a party.

Earlier that week, Dave had suggested he invite a few friends to their hostel room that Saturday for drinks. It seemed harmless enough, so Nick saw little reason not to assent. That was Wednesday morning.

By Thursday afternoon, it dawned on Nick that everyone he encountered was gabbing wildly of "Danger Dave's Birthday Bash," which was being touted as the biggest hostel party of '89. This struck him as curious. Firstly, David had made no mention of it being his birthday, and secondly, the only danger he ever presented was to his own colon. Assuming there was some confusion, Nick sought to clarify who this 'Danger Dave' was, and without exception, he was described as a dear friend, but beyond this the detail grew inexplicably vague, though the terms Beer Hound and Party God made frequent mention.

Nick queried Dave, who was similarly perplexed, not least because of the innumerable people who'd invited him to his own party. Fortunately, by Friday the fervour was starting to wane, and all talk was of half price jugs at the Fitz. But then the chancellor stepped in. He announced via campus radio and a campaign of fliers that wallpapered the concourse, that under no circumstances would there be an "A" hostel party that weekend. It was a hoax, he declared, as their investigation of university records revealed no existence of anyone named Danger Dave, Dave the Dangerous, David McDanger, Double D Dave, or any of the other pseudonyms by which he was now variously known. But, just to be sure, every David on campus born of October would be ensconced in the Agricultural Hall for a presentation on the perils of alcohol immoderation and sexual impropriety, though fortunately this didn't include David Kwan, as his birthday was in January.

On Saturday morning, an endless stream of crates and kegs began to arrive at "A" hostel. They came in through rear windows, beneath billowing skirts and within poorly camouflaged piñatas. That evening, the modest dwelling was then descended upon by the residents of every alphabetically designated hostel on campus, not to mention, the ones with fancy-pants, polysyllabic names too. There were people everywhere, and it was so tightly packed that whenever someone burped a half a dozen people would cautiously apologise, and if you reached into your pocket you always discovered something new.

Danger Dave's Birthday Bash proved to be the biggest party in university history and would necessitate the addendum to the Hostel Occupancy Agreement of eighty-six pages of petty rules and odious regulations. For years, student activity would be curtailed because of it, and to be an October Dave was to be such an outcast that they began to huddle together in sprawling communal flats, where they would throw themselves birthday parties all year round, save for October when they cowered in the library and ranted incoherently about alcohol immoderation and sexual impropriety.

But no one who was there that night would ever stop talking of it. They spoke of the plenteous alcohol, which flowed in rivers down the hallways; they told of music so loud that the deaf could hear, and of dancing so wild that the crippled arose; they whispered of such debauchery there was not a horizontal surface that did not undulate with an orgiastic rhythm, and most especially, they lauded the amazing fireworks, of which there were none, save for an incident concerning the incautious ignition of flatulence.

Nick, however, did not enjoy it. Not because he had lost interest in alcohol as an entertainment in itself, although, quite frankly, the party offered little else in the way of diversion, but because he had a significant question for Tessa, and there was so little possibility of them talking, and even sitting looked decidedly iffy.

When he had invited her along, he'd felt supremely confident the crowds would not eventuate, and thought a few quiet drinks would provide a suitable backdrop for his enquiry. As soon as she arrived, however, they were elbowed into a wardrobe and spent an uncomfortable hour in the midst of an altercation between two burly Agricultural students, which started out as a fight and ended up in an arrangement that could most delicately be described as amicable.

The violent lurching of a rotund lass gripping a bottle of tequila in one hand and her mouth in the other finally opened a gap in the crowd. Hastily, Nick and Tessa made their exit, shouting a birthday greeting to Dave, or at least in the direction they had last seen him, which was now a thronging semi-naked maul, or quite possibly, a ruck. To be honest, Nick could never quite understand the difference.

He pulled his vehicle into the unlit car park at the rear of the botanical gardens, where they would often make out for a while before dropping her a block from home. But he was much too anxious that night for her embrace, and while she too, had sensed that something was weighing heavily upon him, she deftly feigned her ignorance. As with all his demands of her, undoubtedly it would prove to be idealistic and impractical, so what possible benefit could there be in discussing it, she considered.

They sat for a time in silence, watching the swirling fog that enveloped their cocoon.

"I'm sorry about tonight," he finally said. "I never expected it to turn out like that."

"That's OK," she replied with an abashed smile. "You know, I read a lot about ancient Rome when I was at school, though even by those standards, tonight was quite the eye-opener."

He turned and placed an affectionate hand upon her knee. "Dinner with my family last night was interesting..."

"Was it?" she said, examining him with suspicion.

"Yes, I told them all about you."

"Oh?"

"It struck rather a curious chord, actually. They really want to meet you."

"Oh, excellent," she advised unconvincingly.

He paused, seemingly to tighten the heating knob, which tended to jiggle loose if you let the car idle, and then respired heavily. "I may also have mentioned that we're planning to move in together."

"What?" she screeched. "Why would you do that without discussing it with me first?"

"Because I didn't realise how much I wanted it until it came out. I want to spend every day with you. And every night."

"But we've only been going out six months..."

"Why does that matter? Would one year, or two, make it feel any more right?" he gabbed with wild excitement. "We can tell your parents now too. We'll do it together."

"Are you insane? I could never tell them about you."

Her cold dissension quashed his euphoria, and he glared menacingly. "Why are you so scared of them?" he erupted. "How can anyone fear their own family? We own them; our every action reflects on them. In a single drunken night, I could embarrass them so badly they couldn't show their face at the club for a year. But what can they possibly do to us?"

As he spoke, her lips visibly tightened around her teeth, and at the first opportunity, she interjected, "You think it's such a big deal that your parents tut-tutted when you told them. But when mine find out about us, they will probably never talk to me again. Ever. I will be dead to them. So don't pretend we are in this together, because I'm the only one that's going to lose out."

"They would never do that."

"Of course, they would."

"Then, so what. You're eighteen; you don't even need them," he quipped.

"Don't be ridiculous. My family is everything to me."

"Everything? So what am I?"

She shrugged. This was the conversation she had desperately wanted to avoid and just as she had suspected, nothing good would come of it.

He scowled at her silence. "What am I to you?" he barked again.

"Just a boy."

"Just a boy?"

Her face was low, and her eyes, narrow and vindictive. "Just an average boyfriend; whose affections I pay for with grief."

The skin across his cheeks snapped taut. "I'm taking you home," he said, then twisted the ignition and backed onto the road.

She turned from him in her seat, zipping her jacket.

"I'll drop you at your house..." In his periphery, he saw her face fall upon him again.

"You don't know which one is mine," she countered, her voice faltering.

"Number 32. Rewi Avenue."

Her mouth fell open, much, much wider than the words would require. "Don't!" she begged.

But his gaze was fixed on the road before him, and soon, he was turning into Rewi and ambling down her block. When he stopped, he could hear her sobbing, but he couldn't bear to look, so he kept his eyes forward, observing the way his headlamps incited the flecks of mist into resplendent dance. Not a word was said, just the slam of the door, and then footsteps as she scurried up the driveway.

* * *

By the time Nick returned to his hostel, the party had been shut down. Presumably by way of explosives given the extent of the mess. He dug out his bed and climbed in, but his remorse was so vocal as to dash any suggestion of sleep. In fitful discomfort, he lay on his bed examining the ceiling in the stray luminance, while his mind flickered in retrospection and churned with speculation.

As the hours dragged, he would plead with piteous desperation for solitude, but such fleeting silence when delivered proved the perfect arena for remonstrative outbursts. And the less he slept, the angrier he became that he couldn't sleep. He'd never known such trial. Before the most vexatious exam, or following the most virulent parental confrontation, he'd always slept well, so why should a trifling fight with his girlfriend cause him such torment?

Finally then, when slumber did overcome him, it was with such vigour that it seemed nothing might wake him. Certainly not the artillery lobbed by his roommate in his attempts to silence his sonorous emissions, nor the blinding light of morning, or even the rueful slam of Dave departing for breakfast. In fact, he did not wake until late in the morning when there was a knock on the door.

It was Tessa, and though Nick was instantly awake, their conversation was at first rather mumbling and befuddled, before they both grew most apologetic. Though obviously, such words never passed either set of lips. But he invited her in with effusive contrition, and she requited too, in her own carnal way.

He didn't seek again for her to flat with him. The notion had been bludgeoned, not to be spoken of again, and only its malodour prevailed.

* * *

On the eighth of November, they met, as always, for lunch in the campus cafeteria, but despite the occasion, Tessa withdrew a fork and squat thermos from her bag. He ribbed her gently for her frugality, proposing instead to buy her the best the cafeteria had to offer. On Wednesdays that was a spinach lasagne, which in taste and texture resembled boiled socks. She demurred, uncapped her thermos, and proffered a mouthful of fried rice to Nick.

It was her nineteenth birthday, though when he suggested a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, she recoiled in embarrassment, so he placed before her his gift. It was flat and elongated, and encased only in brown wrapping, but it was the culmination of several months agonising and endeavour.

Like most overseas Chinese, Tessa had not only an English name, but also a dialectal one, which was Yu-Jie, meaning The Beauty of Jade. She was rather abashed when first revealing it to him, but he found it exquisite and would often use it with affection.

Through the university Maori group, Nick had sought out an old school friend of Dave and for a small koha, had her name carved on an elegant piece of totora driftwood. The character for "Yu" was shaped traditionally and embedded a minuscule shard of greenstone - the largest Nick could afford - in place of the shortest stroke, whereas "Jie" was of a Pacifica style, with paua for the three leftmost strokes, and the squarish radical at the southwest etched out as a koru. "It shows," he explained while she unwrapped, "the duality of your identity."

Expressionless, she held it before herself for such an extraordinarily long time that Nick began to calculate precisely how wide of the mark he had been, and indeed which metric unit one would even use for such measurement. But then a tear appeared on her cheek, and before he'd time to interpret its meaning, it was joined by more, and forgetting herself, she jumped up, reached across the table, and drew him into an eager embrace. "I'll do it," she blurted.

"Do what?"

"Move in with you, silly."

IX

14.223: Applied Economics and Domestic Harmony

Nick had the curious expectation that flat hunting with one's beloved would be a delightful, bonding experience, but quickly found that when it was not merely dispiriting, it was absolutely maddening. He had, at great length and extensive interrogation of their finances, penned a budget to determine what they could afford, only to find it woefully inadequate for the place they had pictured along a shady lane on the superior side of town. Indeed, it scarcely permitted a superior back alley on the shady side of town.

He was further confounded when Tessa did not advise until they had already visited and dismissed several units that, in fact, she required two bedrooms.

"Why do we need two bedrooms?" he asked incredulously.

"For all our stuff."

"What stuff?"

"And for guests when they stay."

"They can sleep on the couch."

"It will give us options."

"But the budget..." he whimpered.

"Nick," she said in a tone that implied she had absolutely no intention to negotiate, "it just won't feel like a home if it has only one room."

Finally, they came upon a modest villa on a quiet street, opposite a park. It was endlessly adorable, and so, of course, completely outside their budget, but Tessa announced immediately they would take it. Drawing her away from the landlord, Nick pointed out that by the figures she had steadfastly quoted him, there was no way they could afford it, but she brushed this aside, advising she would get more money. In his pocket, he fondled his sheet of calculations, and invisibly crushed it into a tight ball. It deeply concerned him how something so seemingly immutable was actually rather fluid.

* * *

As promised, Nick arrived at their new flat first thing Saturday morning - though in this case, first thing translated to a half after ten because Dave had insisted on shouting him to the pub as way of send-off - but he was dismayed to find Tessa not there. He checked if she'd dropped off some gear and then popped out; she had not, nor was there any note. Clearly, she was yet to arrive.

So he sat in one of his new chairs and waited. And with each passing minute the disappointment that had struck him earlier as peevish vexation transformed into nagging anxiety. He desperately wanted to call her parents' house, but she'd advised she would never forgive him if he ever did, and if there was one thing he believed of her, it was that. She had made it amply clear on several occasions, most notably, as the postscript of an otherwise amorous card affixed to a soft toy.

The chair incidentally was exceedingly uncomfortable. It was apparently of the school of design that favoured aesthetics over comfort, and Nick suspected he would find this true of all their furniture, as it had been selected by Tessa who was of the same mind-set. After signing up for the flat, they had taken two days off university to visit every second hand dealer in Palmerston and surrounding districts to find just the right housewares; a process that had created a hole in Nick's wallet of such magnitude that when he stared into it long enough, he swore he could make out the dim glow of a distant cosmos.

Nick checked his watch again and began to fret that something untoward had happened, most certainly as a result of the announcement to her parents that she was moving out, and he wished anew that she had agreed to him being there when she did. Undoubtedly the declaration had caused such uproar that she had been banished to her room in perpetuum, to which she had meekly acquiesced, and as a consequence, she would not be making an appearance that day, and in all likelihood, would be making no further appearances in his life whatsoever. And with this thought, his nagging anxiety morphed into a clawing despondency.

For several hours, he just sat there. He did consider unpacking, but it occurred to him that the one thing worse than being stood up by his girlfriend, was preparing their love nest and being stood up by his girlfriend.

At fourteen minutes after two, he heard the slam of a car door, and raced to the landing to find Tessa surrounded by a pile of bags with a taxi disappearing into the distance.

"Tessa!"

"Help me with my stuff," she implored, quite oblivious to her lateness.

"Six bags?"

"Yes," she admitted, a little embarrassed. "It was all I could take without creating a stir."

"Oh," he replied, thinking of the solo item with which he'd arrived. Once everything had been lugged into the house, he queried her delay.

"Well I had to wait until my parents were out."

"So you never told them?"

"No, I left a note."

"You left only a note to tell them about us?"

"No, I left them a note telling them I was going flatting," she explained laboriously. "With someone from my class. A girl. Named Cindy."

"Cindy?" Nick balked, gripping his temple to ease his confusion. Only moments ago, he'd arrived at the conclusion that no women would be moving in with him that day at all, and now it seemed, there were two. "Why would we flat with Cindy? I'm not even sure I like her."

"What have you got against Cindy?" Tessa protested. "She's not even real, so how could you possibly dislike her?"

"Because if she was so likable then surely you would have mentioned her before now."

"But I only made her up this morning."

"Why would you do that?"

"It's easier. They would never have let me leave anyway. This way they'll read the note and then calm down before I see them on Tuesday at the restaurant."

"But you can't expect to keep this secret from them."

"How will they ever find out? They work most nights and we're away at classes during the day, and just to be safe, we can furnish the extra bedroom."

"I thought you agreed that this would be the right time to tell them about us."

"No, I agreed that we should tell them, I never said that I would."

He glared venomously. Though only with his right eye, as there was a splintering pain behind his left one causing it to shutter involuntarily. "So when will you tell them?"

"I don't know," she screamed with the kind of frustration that revealed how unexpected was this cross-examination. He'd asked her to move in with him, and here she was, and by keeping her parents in the dark, they were happy too. How could he not see how perfect her solution was?

He remained steadfastly in wait for response, which deepened her anger. There was nothing that annoyed her more than an argument proceeding beyond the point that she had delivered her last word.

"I'll tell them when the time is right," she finally said, and unzipped one of her bags.

"The time will never be right. For you," he replied sadly.

Now she was really exasperated. She had already given her last word. Twice. So did this mark the start of a new argument or an addendum to the original one? Perhaps if she said nothing then this secondary argument would not count at all and she wouldn't be forced to find yet another perfect last word, or worse, lose the debate altogether and set some kind of horrid precedent that would carry through all their future disagreements.

Without saying anything further, she reached into her bag, grabbed a pile of towels, and carried them off to the bathroom. Wearily, Nick collected some flannels and followed behind.

Soon everything was unpacked and their flat arranged as a picture perfect replica of domestic harmony in miniature. Naturally, as part of their ruse they also furnished the spare bedroom, which was paid for - not by Nick, who had developed an inexplicable aversion to his wallet - but by Tessa, with money that seemingly appeared from nowhere whenever it was required. If anyone were to ask, Tessa advised, the spare room was hers as it was tasteful and studious, whereas their bedroom, the master, would officially be Cindy's.

Still irked, and more than a little perplexed by these shenanigans, Nick asked, "So why does Cindy get the double bed?"

"Because - just between you and me - she's a bit of a trollop," Tessa intoned heavily.

"Oh," Nick replied with concern. "I do hope this doesn't keep us awake at nights."

* * *

Their first night together was exquisite. Of course, it was sufficiently lustful for them to check the fine print of their bed warranty, but it was also delightfully tender; she did fall asleep in his arms, and her warm breath tickled him as they dreamt, and even though a small family of birds apparently set up home in her hair during the night, she still woke him with a smile.

He cooked her poached eggs on toast, which they ate in bed, and remained there until the sun rose high, then they carried a blanket to the park across the road with a bottle of cheap bubbly and a bulging bag of lychee. Nick sat under a towering rata, while Tessa lay in his lap, and together they peeled the fruit, dipped it in wine, and pressed it to each other's lips. Naturally, even in this, they competed to produce the smallest pip, and thus claim the prize of the largest and sweetest flesh. As always, she was victorious, balancing her winning entry upon the tip of her extended tongue, before masterly curling it back into her mouth.

"How do you do that?" he implored.

"Nick! Surely after all your practice last night, you can do that too?" she said, chuckling wildly.

Whenever she lost herself like this, howling with laughter, or raptured by sexual ecstasy, her eyes, which were normally an innocuous pale brown, would take on a hue that was very close to green. It enamoured him endlessly.

Her beauty that day was superlative, and the weather was sublime, and with irrepressible joy and a ridiculous grin, he announced what a marvellous day it was to be alive, as he was apt to do when such a moment of perfection was gifted him. Immediately, he was desperate for some way to preserve it. Obviously, his camera would deliver a shallow facsimile, but it could never adequately capture the glow of her face, or the scent of the trees, or the song of the birds, and more than anything, it could never immortalise the emotion that overwhelmed him like the most exquisite of drugs.

They stayed late into the afternoon and then finally, as the sun retreated, made their way home. At the perimeter of the park, Tessa paused and knelt before a small garden. From her bag, she drew one of the pips.

"What are you doing?" Nick asked.

"I'm planting a lychee. Then we can pick our own fruit."

"It'll never survive," he scoffed. "These are all native plants here. Lychee is a tropical Asian tree; the conditions aren't right."

"I'm pretty sure even an Asian can flourish here," she said, her enthusiasm undaunted.

Over the weeks that followed, the conventions of their cohabitation evolved. She commandeered the cooking - having rapidly discovered her constitution was incompatible with everything he prepared - they shared the dishes, and Nick held sole responsibility for the laundry. While this generally proved a supervisory role, he would keenly chip in as a coordinator or facilitator too.

He also discovered a few things; that she would never again forgive toast crumbs in bed, and that you don't wear shoes inside your abode, even if said abode has no carpet and its wooden floor is prone to splintering. Also, that Tessa wore a pair of thin black glasses while reading, which he found inexplicably sexy. This meant that while her study would start at the desk it invariably ended in the bed, or on the rug, or bent over the kitchen table.

In Nick's memory, these were the days that shone as the most blissful, the peak of his existence. They were certainly not to be clouded by such trifling matters as communication and trust.

X

17.491: Advanced Gastroenterology: The Limits of Human Digestion

"Quick. Jump out the window!" she begged hoarsely.

"What?" Nick queried, cautiously lifting his head from a book.

"You need to hide. Out the window. Now!"

He examined her frantic face, which was dominated by two overarching eyebrows, and struggled to interpret her motive. It was not as though he wasn't mentally prepared for such a request, it frequently appearing as an addendum to several of his fantasies, it was just that he'd never imagined it arriving at the command of his own girlfriend.

Urgently, Tessa wrenched at his immobile mass with the face of a desperate scream, but which, when it emerged, was low and muffled. "My parents are here!"

At that, he swung open the window, flew through it like a lion at a flaming hoop, and then lolled about in the dark amongst the long wet grass, examining his bruises and wondering how he came to be in such a predicament.

He retreated to a bush of sparsely crinkled leaves and from the vantage, observed Tessa welcoming her parents and then commence a tour of the flat, showing them first to her room, and then Cindy's too, tempering their disdain as she did. Then they sat around the table and commenced a debate of such longevity that Nick had time to inspect the status of the foundation piles and engage in a tense standoff with a particularly frightful spider.

It was well beyond midnight when Tessa accompanied them out the door, but even then their dialogue showed little sign of abating, and every time she edged them a step closer to their car, it would inflame with renewed vigour. Of course, it was completely in Cantonese, forcing Nick to interpret by way of expression and gesticulation. It was curiously odd and yet somehow quite delightful, as if watching a poorly dubbed movie of his life.

After numerous false starts, they were finally ushered into the distance and Tessa came to the garden in search of Nick, and - to his horror - stepped on the spider he had since befriended. Returning inside, he pressed her for an exposition, whereby she condensed an entire evening of conversation into just two lines, They wanted her to come home, but she convinced them to let her trial it for a few months.

Nick sought to interrogate her more, but she looked drawn and conflicted, and so he unwrapped the gift they'd left to reveal a crimson box of chocolates. After careful study of the documentation, he selected one, and was drawing it to his mouth when Tessa slapped it from his grip.

"Are you crazy?" she screeched.

He glared at her, wondering for a moment if perhaps she was.

"Chinese don't eat chocolate," she explained, "and yet they often exchange it as gifts. What does that tell you?"

After several moments of pondering, he offered, "That I don't need to share these with you?"

"No, genius. That this box has probably visited more Chinese homes than a Howick postie, and if it were any older we'd be stepping out of the room to quietly discuss retirement villages with glorious lake views." And then she snatched up the entire box and interred it in the rubbish.

Following that evening, Nick elected to learn Cantonese. He bought a study guide obviously, though it rarely shifted from the corner of his desk. Mostly, he would just try to decode Tessa's interminable phone conversations with her mother. He assumed he could absorb it as easily as he had Japanese, which had a byzantine yet logical grammar, and a pronunciation familiar to anyone who'd spent a lifetime wrapping their tongue around Maori pronouns. The problem with Cantonese however, was that despite its English-like structure and elementary grammar, its pronunciation utilised a myriad of tonal inflections, which meant that a simple phrase such as "da fogei" could be an innocent request for a cigarette-lighter, but just as easily, a threat to "hit the waiter," depending entirely on the subtle movement of the mouth. Nick soon realised he may as well be watching a concert pianist and expecting to be suddenly struck with the ability to play a concerto.

* * *

But those early days of endless lectures where all he could think of was returning to Tessa, to nibble on her salted offerings and graze upon her watercress, soon became weeks where their time together was brief and his appetite was satiated only by rushed engorgement before bed. As it rolled into months, Tessa grew preoccupied with work and study, and more often than not, Nick would find himself masticating alone. It was his first inkling that theirs was not quite the picture of domestic perfection that he had imagined. Naturally, at its core their relationship was sound, he would clarify to himself, as he sat in morning traffic. It was only that his inventory of requirements for an ideal mate now featured such a growing number of exclusions and amendments.

Foremost, Nick thought himself romantic, not hopelessly so, but sufficient that he recognised the need for a systematic structure to their affection. In this unbridled manner, he liked to embrace when they met, hold hands while they walked, and kiss as they parted, but in all these activities, she was markedly reluctant to comply. He also endeavoured to advise her of his enduring amour each night before sleep, which in his estimation was the epitome of endearment, so it irked him immeasurably that she never initiated the sentiment and that her response was always perfunctory. Consequently, as way of test, he abruptly halted his pillow proclamations and maintained a tally of the days before she would notice.

The tally resembled a shonky picket fence, and unable to countenance its decrepitude any longer, he announced one evening, to the back of her recumbent head, "Do you not realise, or even care, that for a month I have not advised I love you?"

She gave a little start, making out that she were in the midst of drifting off, then after consideration of his statement, she replied, "I had realised, but I don't care."

"You don't care to be told you are loved?"

She punched her pillow a few times, as if it were the reason she was yet to sleep. "Nick, the relationships you see where they are always fawning over each other and constantly professing their undying devotion, those are the ones that crash and burn. The relationships that last are where the love is felt strongly, but never expressed."

Nick lifted himself onto his elbow and glared at her, though its effect was undoubtedly moderated by the darkness. "So, to clarify, you believe love is a purely unspoken thing? So what if I like to speak of it?"

"Knock yourself out," she replied wearily, "but it won't make me love you any more than I do. And it might well make me love you a little less."

There were many other things too that never surfaced as overt anger, but instilled some kind of simmering resentment that manifested only by way of snappish retorts and withheld affections. Most memorably were the toothbrushes. Affixed to the wall of their modest bathroom was an ornate gilded toothbrush holder that would not have looked out of place in Queen Victoria's privy. Conversely, in a mid-twentieth century Kiwi villa of spartan furnishing and irregular upkeep, it was decidedly odd. Never-the-less, it was one of the flat's features - having warranted a special mention in the rental blurb - and so they saw fit to use it. But the curious aspect was that on their first day of cohabitation, Tessa had announced in a tone betraying both elaborate forethought and portentous significance, that the leftmost slot was his, the next was hers, and the two rightmost would remain empty for guest use. Having thus been proclaimed, it became an immutable law. There was never any debate; there was no rearranging to improve the aesthetic balance, or swapping them around just for a lark. She would simply roll her eyes derisively, and return them to their designated positions. Even when the act was performed in the dead of night, at some unknown point before dawn, the status quo would prevail.

Were it only the toothbrushes, he would have dismissed it as an amusing quirk, but she was like that with everything, the optimal configuration of sofa cushions, alarm clocks that must align with the front edge of the bedside table rather than inclined toward your recumbent head, and even the content of their clothes drawers, while invisible to the world, apparently necessitated a level of organisation that surpassed even that of the moon landing.

Admittedly, these seem such very petty complaints, but there were a myriad of irritants that were infinitely more trying. It was just that when Nick looked back on their time together, for the life of him, there were none he could ever recollect.

* * *

Out of the blue, Tessa announced she had invited an old schoolmate and her boyfriend around for a dinner party.

"Oh," Nick replied, skilfully containing the magnitude of his excitement. It wasn't that the evening promised to be endlessly dull, though obviously there were muted overtures of such, it was just that he'd failed to quash the memory of her most recent dinner party on the occasion of her father's birthday. "Shall I be allowed to attend this one?" he clarified.

"Of course," she replied, as if surprised by the accusation.

Tessa began etching an extensive list of dishes upon a pad, and then itemising each with a code, such as a question mark, a row of exclamations, or in one perplexing instance, what appeared to be a skull and crossbones.

"You know, we've only just finished all the leftovers from your father's birthday party," Nick said.

"Hmmm," she replied, as if guessing the most appropriate response to whatever trifling remark he had made.

"Do you think we'll need a bit less food this time?"

Recoiling with incredulity, she advised, "Oh, I shouldn't think so."

Before Tessa, Nick had only ever experienced his mother's dinner parties, where she would swan about in the kitchen, simultaneously sipping Riesling while attending to small grease fires. As such, he had not realised that the Chinese equivalent required the sort of planning one normally associated with the construction of pyramids or invasions of Northern France. For days, she would shop in the sort of places where an order invariably required the vendor to excuse himself while he stepped out back to bludgeon a pig. Nick would dutifully accompany her, in a role that was largely non-speaking, though was frequently shown on-camera lugging bulging sacks of unrecognisable produce.

She had also acquired a "Lazy-Susan," which, to those who don't frequent Chinese eateries, is a circular table-top that rotates freely so you can wrestle with fellow diners for access to the prawns. Tessa had chosen a tasteful glass one engraved with the ubiquitous characters for good fortune and long life, for a price, needless to say, that was absurd, but which was paid by the immediate appearance of cash from her bottomless purse. Inevitably, it proved much too bulky for Nick's car and so he'd carried it until he was beyond her purview, and then rolled it the rest of the way home.

On the day of the party, she rose at cock-crow or sparrow-fart or some other suitably maligned hour of which Nick was quite unacquainted, and by the time he appeared, she was already significantly advanced in her preparation and equally her irascibility.

You've probably heard that Asians are good at math, and this is frequently true, because it is the one subject where no self-respecting Asian parent would ever allow their child to underperform, but you may be quite unaware of the corollary, which is that if there was ever an examination requiring an estimate of the appropriate quantity of food for a small group of adults then every Chinese would fail.

As it progressed toward the evening, Nick observed with growing horror the multitude of dishes appearing on every available surface of the kitchen, and much to Tessa's exasperation, he frequently felt the need to confirm there were only four guests and she wasn't expecting extra visitors to materialise from the wardrobes. It just did not seem conceivable that so few people could consume so much food and then be reasonably expected to squeeze into a vehicle for the return home.

With exception to a plate of fish that eyeballed him menacingly, and some internal part of a cow that only rural folk and Guangzhou natives could consider appetising, it all looked exceedingly sumptuous, though she intercepted his every attempt to sample the tastier looking morsels. "Don't touch," she would say, either vocally or by rapping him across the knuckles with an elongated pair of cooking chopsticks. "There might not be enough!"

They arrived forty minutes late, though Tessa assured him that by Chinese standards that was actually a touch early, and she introduced Nick to Elaine, a stubby girl with a nice face, not pretty exactly, but somehow, quite agreeable; the type that would undoubtedly earn a small fortune from sympathetic embraces at a "$2 a Kiss" booth.

Despite the complete absence of her name in any of their past conversations, apparently, they had been friends for as long as she could remember. "And rivals too," Elaine hastily pointed out with a laugh, leaving Nick to wonder whether this was in the pursuit of education or the affection of boys. Elaine then acquainted them with Peter. "We've been dating for almost a year," she announced proudly, hanging off his arm.

Nick offered them a glass of bubbly, which she heartily accepted while dodging the glare of her boyfriend. Then they sat around their wee dining table dominated by the monstrous Lazy-Susan, though even this oversized platform proved insufficient to accommodate all the dishes that promptly arrived.

It took the most negligible alcoholic imbibing for Elaine to grow uncontrollably garrulous, and to Nick's surprise, she was quite unlike Tessa; she was humorous and effervescent, and didn't shy from drawing attention to her own inadequacies if she thought there might be a laugh in it. She was, in fact, rather beautiful, Nick soon adjudged, once you got to know her.

She was similarly distant from her staid boyfriend, who rarely spoke unless the conversation was about him, or could be easily steered in that direction. Though once he gained control of the floor, he was not easily persuaded from it. He was a first-born Chinese son and was seemingly waging an uphill battle to conceal the undeniable greatness this implied of him.

The evening progressed well. Though obviously, the volume of food was quite obscene. Scarcely a third had been consumed before they were sufficiently gorged that their eyes began to loll and Nick was contemplating the sort of heavy machinery that might be called upon to transport them to the couch.

"Have some more duck," Tessa entreated of Elaine, quite possibly in the hope it might stem the flow of air past her vocal chords, as she had no shortage of humorous stories of a younger Tessa, which Nick found immeasurably more amusing than she did. These were punctuated markedly by the dull soliloquies of Peter during which Nick, unable to feign an interest, would entertain himself with a mental game of his own devising whereby he'd replace features of the speaker's anatomy with food objects at hand. This was the reason he issued such a hearty chuckle at the culmination of one story, arriving as Nick imagined, from a face of fish-ball eyes, a springroll nose and two flapping chilli lips. Unfortunately, he could not explain this to the others who were left wondering how he'd found Peter's railing attack on student fees so damn amusing.

The party might have continued in this enjoyable manner were it not for Nick mishearing something Peter had said. To be specific, he'd heard what had been said quite correctly, but it was only by mistake that he'd been listening at the time.

Peter had been lamenting in excruciating detail and inexorable length on the matter of his group assignment, for which he had only received a B. "So this Samoan girl who was supposed to write the summary and bibliography was late, leaving us to do a horrible rush job that cost us an A. God, they are lazy."

Naturally, this immediately drew the ear of Nick, who had considerable experience with the upgrading of a trifling complaint to racial vilification, and he was forced to discard an audacious design where Peter's ears had been substituted by stuffed mushrooms.

"Who?" Nick said, to the surprise of everyone, who'd forgotten he was there.

"Bloody Samoans," Peter exclaimed. "I don't know why the university lets them enrol if they aren't willing to do the work."

"Do you know her background? Perhaps she has a family, or a job supporting her study," Nick suggested.

"Oh, who knows? She never turned up to meetings on time, that's for sure."

"OK, well perhaps she is lazy, bone lazy, and she did cost you a grade, but have you met every other Samoan and confirmed they too are lazy?"

"No, of course not," he derided.

"And yet you claim they are all lazy?"

"Well maybe not all of them..."

"So why say it? That's half a million people you've never met and yet you instinctively know what every one of them is like. Perhaps I'm just slow but I like to acquaint with someone before I form an opinion. Take you, for example, it took me minutes to conclude you were an obnoxious, self-centred bore."

Peter balked with such undisguised horror that Nick wondered if he had ever been challenged on any stupid thing that had ever passed his lips. Wordlessly, Peter then appealed to Tessa who was every bit as pole-axed as he was. For several minutes, not another word was said, until she finally sprung from her chair and started shovelling food onto everyone's plate. "Who hasn't tried the gaoji?"

From this point, the evening lingered with seeming conviviality but without ever attaining the same heady heights of fervour. Approaching eleven, the guests were finally shoehorned into their car, and Nick and Tessa returned silently to the mountain of dishes.

"Great dinner," Nick observed.

But when Tessa turned to him, her face was flushed and her eyes had narrowed. "Are you kidding me? You ruined it," she screamed.

In a particularly bold attempt at misdirection, he asked, "How so?"

Her eyes narrowed some more. "How could you be so rude to Elaine's boyfriend?"

"Oh, that," he replied, persisting with the ruse. "You heard what he said. If there's one thing I cannot tolerate, its intolerance. What was I supposed to do?"

"Bite your lip, just like I did."

"I can't do that. I don't know why, but I just can't. People say ignorant things because they've never stopped to think about it, and if I don't correct them who will?"

"I don't care who, as long as it's not someone at my dinner party," she said, visibly smarting at her confession.

"But he was a dick..." Nick implored.

"I may not disagree with you, but he's my best friend's partner, and now she'll avoid me until I make a grand apology for your behaviour. Do you understand that?"

"Well, I guess for that I am sorry," he said in a voice of dubious contrition.

Tessa gave a lengthy sigh. She didn't seem angry any more, just worn. "Go to bed, Nick, I'd rather do the dishes myself."

* * *

Nick arrived home early one afternoon to hear Tessa playing the violin. He had seen its case untouched in their room for months and assumed it was just a prop for Cindy; something she played between encounters with her paramours, one would presume.

He listened outside the bedroom until she finished, then entered and complimented her virtuosity. She thanked him modestly.

"What's the piece called?"

She shrugged. "It's just something I like to play," she advised without joy or pride. "I've never given it a name."

He regarded this solemnly for a moment before deciding not to pursue it further. "How long have you been learning?"

"Since I was six. My mother would make me practise every night. I guess she imagined I'd play the Royal Albert one day. God, it made me miserable. When I left home, I swore I'd never touch the darn thing again." She stared at the instrument in her outstretched arms as if it were an ugly baby. "But somehow, I've missed it." Bringing it back into her embrace, she smiled weakly. "Sometimes you have a bad day, then you come back and stroke this old block of wood, and all your worries slip away for a time."

"Bad day?" he enquired. "Your exam? How did it go?"

"Terribly. And the phone has been ringing all afternoon. It'll be Mum wanting a debrief."

"It'll be OK. I'm sure it's not as bad as you imagine."

She tensed a little, and Nick sat down on the bed to place an arm over her shoulder. Issuing another weak smile, she rose, returned the violin to its case and then propped it upright in the room's bare corner.

After that, she began to play often, a few stanzas when Nick thought she was studying, or occasionally a rhapsody that would stretch for hours. He never saw her with a music book, so whether she was playing from memory or winging it, he never knew. Sometimes he loved the sound and would crouch by the door to listen, but sometimes too, it would give him an odd chill, and he would turn up the stereo, or leave for extended, labyrinthine walks around town.

Nick could not play an instrument for solace; he'd lacked the perseverance to learn piano, he hadn't the dexterity to master guitar, and even for the recorder he could never deliver sufficient puff, but he loved to walk, and that always helped him put things in perspective. In fact, he so enjoyed his urban hikes, he would often beseech Tessa to accompany him, but his technique was to get immeasurably lost and then find his way home, and this was something she could never abide.

"It's the uncertainty that makes it fun," he had appealed to her.

"But how can I decide if I want to go if I don't know the destination?"

"This way is better. It's like life; what's the point if you know exactly what's going to happen."

"Yes, it's like life," she heartily agreed, then returned to her room to study.

XI

23.309: Effective Interpretation of Doublespeak

Nick and Tessa had been cohabiting for several months when his mother called to entice him to Tikorua. She explained how especially keen they were to meet his girlfriend - which seemed a remarkable level of hyperbole, given their past indifference - and suggested they might come for dinner. He had readily agreed, which caught them both by surprise, leaving his mother to wonder what dish she might possibly serve, and Nick to break the news to Tessa.

He asked her that very evening, and to compound his confoundment, she replied that it was a marvellous idea. A date was thus confirmed for the following Friday, though when advising his mother, he learned that James would be away at a conference, so it would just be his parents and them. Nick accepted this news with unexpressed ill-ease. As little as he cared to see James, his vocal self-absorption would save Nick from fielding the kind of sticky questions that did not have well defined responses. Not to mention, that the conspicuous bosom of his comely wife always served to occupy the attentions of his father.

With the date nearing, it also seemed that Tessa's keenness had been seriously overestimated, as there quickly arose an ineffable number of engagements, roadblocks, and unforeseen dangers that impeded her ability to attend. Each was quite patently absurd, but as fast as he could dismiss one, another would immediately pop up from whatever location she'd removed herself, shouted from a bathroom, whispered as they drifted off to sleep, or penned with multi-coloured bordering and elaborate flourish upon a blank page of his study pad. It felt very much like the times he'd barbecued seafood on the beach with his mates, and for every fly he'd swat, another would appear, seconded by a scout, and thirded by a medic.

In fact, she was not even going right up until the moment that he bundled her into his car and they took to the road, and even then, she revisited her attendance on several occasions along the journey, most notably as they rolled into his parents' driveway.

After the chastisement on his prior visit, Nick had been particularly mindful of his punctuality, and thus was quite pleased to note that he was precisely thirty minutes late, only to discover that his father was not home to appreciate the sentiment. His mother duly presented herself and pecked him on the cheek. She was poised to enquire on the absence of his girlfriend when Tessa appeared from her concealment in his shadow.

They greeted warmly, and once they'd been ushered into the living room, the conversation began to flow, though not so much in the manner of a river, but more akin to a canal with innumerable locks and ill-considered by-ways. On the surface, naturally, it was quite pleasant, but there was a definite undertone of awkwardness, an unmistakable bombination of disquiet, and the curious hum of scarcely suppressed panic. Tessa in particular, seemed to be channelling a four-year old version of herself that had just been reprimanded by a kindergarten teacher. Most peculiar was her enunciation of "Mrs Fairfield" with a solemnity that was only usurped by its frequency; she prefixed it to every question, she suffixed it to every response, and, when there was any hint of rhetoric, she would do both.

Nick leaned back to watch the two of them twitch and squirm, as if it were a dance-off between tone-deaf snakes, and was irretrievably transfixed, but a shrill ring soon terminated the round without result.

As his mother dashed off to answer the phone, he placed a hand on his girlfriend's knee. "Relax, Tessa, you don't need to prove anything to her," he said unconvincingly.

His mother returned looking a touch paler. "That was your father - that is to say, Mr Fairfield. I'm afraid he's having difficulty extricating himself from a meeting and may be running a trifle late. At any rate, perhaps we should start dinner without him."

"Mrs Fairfield? Perhaps we should wait, Mrs Fairfield?" replied Tessa.

Having grown up without native English speaking parents, she lacked an appreciation of the more subtle nuances of the language, so Nick explained helpfully, "Tessa, running a trifle late means that he's at the club and we shouldn't expect to see him until he is rip-roaringly drunk."

"Nicholas!" his mother admonished fiercely. "That's not in the least bit funny. He really wanted to be here; we discussed it this morning, but he is quite genuinely stuck in a meeting, and he's dreadfully upset that he's running late."

"Dreadfully upset," Nick clarified with a dubious air.

"That's correct, Nicholas," she replied, a little unsteady on her footing. "That's what he said. He was... upset. The level of which, apparently, was quite dreadful."

Nick scoffed loudly, which his mother looked set to respond to, and then seemingly thought better of it.

"Why don't you show Tessa around, while I check on dinner," she said at length. Then she disappeared into the kitchen and engaged in a series of activities that successfully mimicked the bustling cacophony of a housewife.

"Maybe I should help her," Tessa suggested over the clamour, but Nick shook his head gravely.

Placing his hand in the small of her back, he commenced a tour that encircled the four downstairs rooms, the living room, the lounge, the dining, and the room-that-shalt-not-be-named. The reason it had no name, was that anytime it was given one, it immediately ceased to be used for that activity. It came to be called the games room at the very point that Nick and James could no longer be safely ensconced in close proximity. It was later referred to as the piano room, and the following week Nick's teacher advised he lacked the aptitude for the instrument. Then, when their mother took up aerobics, it was given the moniker, the exercise room, and remained so named right up to the time that she twisted her ankle two days later and simultaneously decided that leotards were unbecoming. Since then it had never been given another name, and any time they needed to refer to it, they did not refer to it all. If you were ever to inadvertently leave something in that room, you may as well have tossed it in a pit, because no one would ever explain how to find it. Now the room eschewed all attempts at utility, it contained a couch that looked decidedly angular and uncomfortable, a tall decorative vase devoid of flora, and a small table that threatened to topple if anything were ever placed upon it.

Tessa nodded as she took it in, but in a hushed tone, she described the house as "Big, but empty." He was about to clarify this point when she paused to admire a photo of James on the day of his wedding. "Is this your brother?" she asked with an inflection that did not imply any ambiguity about his identity, but rather how inadequately Nick had described his chiselled aesthetics.

"That's our Jimbo," he said, successfully masking a pang of jealousy. He was about to recount James' myriad deficiencies in a bid to recalibrate his standing when they were summoned by his mother.

They proceeded to the table, but as his mother appeared, Nick was struck with foreboding. He couldn't decide which was more frightening; the maniac expression on her face, or the dish she placed before them, though on further consideration, he adjudged it was most certainly the dish. It was so very extraordinary that it would seem she couldn't possibly comprehend what a young Asian girl might eat and so had settled on the most wild, exotic thing she could conceive and assumed it was a near bet. He cast a glance over to Tessa, who was staring with her mouth agape, before clamping it shut in reflexive self-protection.

As best as Nick could determine, it was a medley of vegetables, but neither of them ever felt sufficiently confident to commit to any one genus and thus found themselves nodding appreciatively with full mouths to prevent the need to vocalise their inexact compliments. It was quite possibly her worst meal ever, and given the context, that was quite an achievement. Apparently there were both carrots and parsnips but they'd been boiled to the point that in taste and texture they were indistinguishable, and the colour of both was a disconcerting shade of pink. Also, in a particularly skilled attempt at irony, she had baked an eggplant to such degree that it neither resembled an egg, nor betrayed any origin as a plant. While attempting to subdue a particularly rebellious mouthful, Nick wondered how the meal would be received by starving children of the third world, before concluding they would invariably have feigned a stomach upset and slunk off in search of edible beetles.

The conversation continued on its wayward, faltering journey, though by a wide mark it steered clear of every one of the topics that Nick most dreaded, and if for no other reason, that alone made it agreeable. Tessa remained highly focused on being helpful and well mannered, and his mother, for her part, miraculously avoided coming off as snooty and condescending.

At the tick of nine, his father phoned again, and by way of his mother, who was visibly discomforted, passed on his apologies for his unexpected lateness and informed them he should not be much longer. At that point, Nick thanked his mother graciously for the meal, and promptly departed with Tessa under his arm.

She spoke little on the journey home. Nick assumed the awkwardness of the evening was weighing heavily upon her, though the grievous culinary crimes she'd witnessed could also not be discounted.

12

Monday at 11:03

From Dayna's house on the northern hills, Nick headed in the direction of his father's flat on the fringes of East Tikorua where Vince now resided. His journey took him through a park, which was once the site of Taranaki's largest cattle auction, the locals would proudly boast, seemingly oblivious that not a sole on earth would be impressed by the fact. Eventually the local intelligentsia decided the centre of town was probably not an optimal location for 40,000 beasts that each produced in excess of fifty kilos of manure a day, and in its place, they erected a casein factory and an abattoir, and stuck for a marketable purpose for the oddly shaped piece of land that remained, they formed Stocklands Park which, while not overly attractive, was always inexplicably lush with grass.

It was later renamed Memorial Park and adorned with a handsome cenotaph of steel and cement, which counselled mankind to Take lesson from the tragedy of war and ever more seek the way of peace, and then listed the five local casualties of the Second Boer War. Below this were four later addendums with a swelling index of names etched in ever smaller text.

Nick paused to rest on one of the park benches. This was the playground where he would always play as a child. He had no recollection of this obviously, but his mother had told him so, and he saw no reason to doubt the notion, only the frequency. Sadly, the facilities were in such a state of disrepair that there were no respectable adjectives to describe them and Nick found himself groping for synonyms of fewer syllables but more impact. There was the remnants of a flying fox, a poorly painted seesaw and a fort largely plundered of its wood panelling. And every flat surface had been spray-painted with mindless scrawl, seemingly of the same script clawed in crayon by struggling pre-schoolers. Even the bench upon which he sat was of such questionable stability that he'd first kicked it before feeling sufficiently confident to commit his whole weight.

Unsurprisingly, the playground was empty, but in the long grass beyond, a young girl was dashing about under the watchful eye of her father. She grabbed the seed-stalk of a dandelion and drawing it to her face, she blew away the fairies. Then she would catch as many as she could in her cupped hands, and release them again with another blow from her pursed lips, before repeating the game, endlessly.

He smiled at her joyful innocence, but this soon faded. Once, he had been innocent too, he supposed, but he'd squandered his blessed ignorance with eyes much too wide.

Even in this, his father played a part. Nick can only have been about ten, when he was woken one night by the raised voices of his parents. He'd crept to his door to learn what was happening, but it was all so very cryptic.

"A stenographer?" his mother had screamed. "You must be joking? What could possibly be attractive about a stenographer?"

"Oh, do keep your voice down. You're making this seem much worse than it is," his father countered.

"Don't patronise me! You should pack your bags and leave this very instant."

"Now you're just being dramatic."

After that, he heard a slam and then his mother crying. Nick darted into her room where she was cowering so pitifully that he wrapped his arms around her and said, "It'll be OK, Mum."

She smiled weakly and dabbed at her damp face with a handkerchief, and then ushered him back to bed. He returned, glowing from his deed, but as he drifted off to sleep, he could hear her sobbing anew and realised how feeble his efforts had been.

Nick woke the next day expecting everything to be different, but it wasn't. In fact, it seemed as if nothing had ever happened at all; his mother cooked breakfast amidst a cloud of smoke, his father read his paper while ignoring everyone, and only his brother seemed a little out of sorts.

When Nick was most angered by his father, he thought of the incident to give vehemence to his hatred. His problem was that the memory existed in the murky depths of his mind, and so he was never quite sure how much credence to give it. He once read that there are no true memories, only the recollection of the last time we thought of an event, which itself was merely a recollection of us thinking of it, and this goes back ad infinitum until we arrive at the actual occurrence, which - like a Chinese whisper - may have altered considerably. So Nick always found himself assigning tiresome qualifications to the event; perhaps he had amplified his mother's pain or mollified his father's contrition? Perhaps it was not a stenographer at all, but one of those lustful legal assistants? Perhaps it never even happened? Perhaps it started as a dream and all his subsequent embellishments were simply born of ether?

But he hadn't thought of it for a long time. There was no need to, because he had long stopped caring enough to hate his father. Hate, even more so than love, ebbed to ash with time. It needed constant stoking to burn bright.

* * *

His father's flat lay slightly north of Waikowhai stream, which runs diagonally through the town and serves as the so-called boundary of Tikorua East. For a minor tributary of infrequent flow, it carried a lot of significance. Everyone knew precisely where it scythed the town in two, and every child defined themself by what side they lived on. If you lived northwest of the stream, you knew you were smarter. If you lived southeast, you knew you were tougher. That was just the way it was.

Of course, much to everyone's annoyance, people would often eschew such convenient categorisation, and rather than appending exceptions to their rule, they would drag the outliers back toward the mean. For this reason, the west kids that were tough were always labelled troublemakers, and the east kids who were smart were endlessly belittled as nerds. Through this kind of social pressure and a significant dose of gaze aversion, the status quo was maintained.

Vince Lingary was one of the troublesome exceptions to the rule. He was an east kid who never cared to be tough, preferring to strike down a foe with a clever retort than a jab to the solar plexus. This wanton rejection of social expectation meant that he never fitted into the mainstream cliques at Tikorua East Primary, but this never bothered him, as he had close friends in Maxwell and Sneakers, and then from Intermediate School, Nicholas too.

Favouring collared shirts with vests, when all his peers gravitated toward Tees, Vince even shunned the standard short crop of the local barber in preference to an unruly wave that hung over his face. Were it anyone else, he would have been dismissed as a nut and given a wide berth by classmates and school officials alike, but by virtue of his wit, he was always popular with his teachers and, of course, with the opposite sex. He was certainly the first to kiss a girl, the first to go steady, and the first - no doubt - to go all the way.

But none of those girls ever truly mattered until Dayna. From the moment they got together, they never ever seemed apart, and when they weren't kissing or cuddling, they were grinning stupidly in a post-coital glow.

But sex, it has been documented, is not purely a recreational activity, so Nick should not nearly have been so surprised when Vince dropped by his house one afternoon in their final year of college to tell him Dayna was pregnant.

"Will you still go to Massey?"

"Nope, it'll just be you and Maxwell now. My Dad's getting me a job at the freezing works and Dayna will be a stay-at-home mum."

"But what about all your plans?"

Vince heaved. "I've always lived by the Bard's maxim, Only to thine own self, be true. But I'm going to be a father," he explained. "That's the most important thing now. I need to give up the piss and the weed, and focus on what truly matters."

Nick nodded slowly. "You're right. Dayna and the baby are your priority now. I understand that." And he shook his hand and congratulated him. "You're going to make a great dad."

"I hope so," he beamed.

* * *

Nick let himself in through the gate, and cut across the unmown lawn to rap on Vince's door. After a time, he knocked again, and was about to leave when it swung open.

"What?" Vince drawled in irritation, his broadened frame filling the doorway.

He had changed considerably; his hair was no longer short with a rakish parting, it was now straggly and unkempt, and his jowls were darkened by what was either an early beard or an exceptionally late shave. But other than this, Nick conceded, he was much the same. He was as tall as he had always been and his facial features had all maintained their original placement.

Suddenly Vince blurted, "Oh my god, Nicholas Fucking Fairfield. I was betting on the return of Jesus Christ before we'd ever see you." And he took a step back to examine Nick several times from toe to tip. "I heard a rumour you were living in sushi-land, but - fuck me - didn't they feed you anything?"

Nick gave a guilty smirk, and then Vince was grinning too. "Well you better come in and I'll see what I've got to eat. Just don't slip through the gaps in the floorboards or you'll give the rats a heart attack."

Vince led him through to what was evidently the lounge. It was sparsely furnished: a TV, a table and a couple of chairs. The floor on the other hand, was littered with wrappers and newspapers, which were further on their journey to decomposition than the rubbish bin. In fact, the only surface that conspicuously lacked such detritus was the mantelpiece, which held a framed wedding photo and a few snapshots of his daughter in her younger years.

Vince yanked one of the chairs from its view of the TV and positioned it at the table, then he disappeared into the kitchen to prepare some tea.

"Hey, sorry to hear about your dad," his voice called out.

"That's OK."

"Do you think this means I can forget the month's rent I owe?"

Nick supposed it was intended as a joke, but the delivery was a little flat, so unsure how to commit himself, he elected not to reply.

When Vince returned he was clutching two mismatched cups with a packet of chocolate biscuits under an armpit. These he placed on the end of the table and then swept the remaining items on its surface to the side.

The cup before Nick was emblazoned, "World's #1 Dad," which was precisely the kind of baseless supposition that Briece would have haughtily decried as unlikely to bear up to empirical scrutiny. Nick, who was reasonably confident that flattery need not adhere to such rigorous scientific method, merely suggested they swap cups, but Vince demurred without trace of pride or humour.

"So you still out at the works?" Nick asked as way of icebreaking.

"Nah, I put my back out a few years ago. I'm on ACC now."

"Didn't I just see you heft a chair up for me?" Nick queried.

"Heh heh, yeah, it's a sweet deal," he said with an unabashed laugh, narrowing his eyes to dodge Nick's glowering. He dipped two dirty fingers into his tea and when they emerged, they gripped a teabag, which he squeezed and then deposited into an overflowing ashtray. "How long've you been back?"

"Just since yesterday."

"And I'm the first one you caught up with?" Vince clarified.

"I also saw Dayna..."

He nodded soberly, then attempted the removal of a particularly stubborn floor stain with his foot.

Nick wasn't entirely sure how he might tactfully broach the subject, so he finally went with his instincts, "What the hell happened to you guys?"

Vince heaved, as if it were a conversation that never got easier, nor ever helped him come to terms with it, despite what he'd been promised. "You remember how we were the couple who never argued? Well it seems the only reason we didn't argue was that we never had anything we felt passionately enough to argue about. Then we had Georgia and soon small, isolated skirmishes about feeding, bed times and smacking, would become all-encompassing battles that spanned days and swallowed neutral parties. Suddenly, we'd be fighting about housework, or my mother, or that God-awful hooker on my stag-night. And there was never any surrender or admitting defeat, so the hostility would drag on long after we were done fighting. One day when we hadn't spoken for a month, she moved into the spare room. I thought it was just a power play, so I said nothing. Then after three more months of silence, I came home to find her packing. Finally then, I opened my mouth, but all she said was that we needed some time apart."

Nick couldn't think of a word to say, and so he examined his cup's gloomy depths for the drowned corpse of a teabag.

"That was nearly three years ago. We get on now, for Georgia, but she doesn't have an ounce of love for me. I can't understand how she can just turn it off like that. I will always love her, and I still think we'll get back together one day, but she tells me different. She even has the law on her side now," he said with a wry smile.

Nick raised a curious eyebrow.

He shrugged. "I turned up at her place a few times when I was drunk, begging her to let me back into the house. Back into her life..." His eyes wandered to the wedding photo on the mantle. "She told me to move on. And the judge said the same thing. Well, you know, I've tried moving on. I've tried seeing other people. Goddamn it, I'd sleep with every bush pig in Hawera if I thought it would make me feel better."

He threw back the last of his tea and then slammed the cup onto the table.

"I guess these things take time," Nick said, immediately disgusted by his ineffectual advice.

"It's just as well I know how to wait then isn't it," he said, attempting again at humour. "You know, sometimes you get all hot under the collar about how crappy your life is, and you start thinking of all the things you're gonna do to set it right. It overwhelms me. But I've found that if you just sit on your hands for a week or two, the feeling soon passes."

Vince split open the packet of biscuits and offered them to Nick, who politely accepted one and bit off a corner. His regret was instantaneous. It was some horrid sugary mass of coconut smothered in a horrid sugary layer of chocolate, and Nick pushed it defensively to a distant corner of his mouth, before finally forcing it down his throat. He missed Japanese cookies, of which his favourite was Aamondo-pai, which as best as he could determine, was a congealed lump of sawdust with a hint of almond, but he also had a penchant for Haani-pai, which was a congealed lump of sawdust with a hint of honey.

"Do you still see Maxwell?" Nick asked, trying to lift the pallor.

"Hell yeah, I see him every night."

"Oh really?" Nick replied with unrestrained excitement. "How is he?"

"How the fuck should I know? We haven't spoken in years."

Nick recognised there was a joke and groped futilely for the punch line. "What do you mean?"

Vince glared, clearly disappointed that such a witty retort had gone begging. "Have you been living under a fucking rock? He's on the news every day. Now he's Maxwell This-Land-is-Maori-Land Nelson."

Nick continued to stare blankly, which only irritated him further, and apparently invited a tirade about how a group of self-interested Maori had erected a tent city in a Wanganui park in order to stir up shit, and of whom, it seemed, Maxwell had appointed himself head shit-stirrer. Apparently, it was little more than a thinly veiled attempt to strong-arm the government into a hefty settlement. Which would only be used, Vince did not doubt, to purchase sharp suits and shiny German cars. "If ever New Zealand is going to splinter in two," he warned, "it is now."

Quite unsure how to react to such a crushing indictment of a former friend, Nick could only nod soberly. Then in the awkward silence that ensued, he asked, "How about Sneakers?"

Vince immediately brightened. "Well you can't call him Sneakers anymore, it's Stephen. Which is ironic..."

"How so?" Nick clarified, his expression revealing a longstanding antipathy to the recurrence of irony in his life.

"Because he's running his dad's shoe store." Vince brimmed with glee, and then with a wink, added, "You really picked that one."

Nick slunk into his chair. Of all the things he most hated - and after lengthy exposure to Japanese cuisine, where the line between alive and bon appétit was so alarmingly blurred, he had developed a sizable list of candidates - utmost was being proven right. Lacking any appreciable gift of foresight, he was rarely one for portentous proclamations, which was undoubtedly why he so detested whenever he was found to be on the money. Like knowing he should not have kept from Tessa his meeting with her parents, and that, because of her, his relationship with Yukiko would never survive. Now, to hear the news of Sneakers made his stomach lurch forth and teeter on a precipice.

"You should go and see him," Vince suggested dubiously.

"I might do just that," Nick lied.

Vince flicked at the hair invading his face, but thick in accreted grease and discounted hair products, it stubbornly refused to move. Nick thought of when Vince was younger and always made them laugh with his colourful turn of phrase, and how he would quote Shakespeare in a grandiose manner as if half expecting a talent scout to pop out from behind a lamppost and offer him a Broadway role. But Vince wasn't funny anymore, and his vocabulary was frugal and utilitarian, as if each word had a price and hilarity was the mark-up. Examining him intently, Nick tried to convince himself that this was the same Vince Lingary from his youth and not some poorly scripted double. Where was the collared shirt? Where was the vest? Who was overseeing the continuity, for Christ-sakes?

Seemingly in better spirits, Vince gestured to a varnished box etched with a crude carving of a five-tipped leaf. "Fancy a blow?"

Nick mulled over the words, trying to match them to a pattern he recognised, and finally, by way of an exceedingly circuitous route, he deduced he was being offered marijuana. He had almost completely forgotten the drug was so readily smoked in New Zealand. In Japan, marijuana was purely ethereal, featuring regularly in conversations, T-shirts and movies, but with no existence in the real world. After a bit, he decided his life had quite enough unrestrained laughter already, and declined.

This was regarded with suspicion by Vince, who then asked, "Would you mind if I have a cigarette then?"

While it sounded more like an accusation than a question, Nick replied none-the-less that he could go right ahead.

As it happened, factory-made cigarettes were still only a luxury that Vince aspired to, and he produced a packet of tobacco, pinched a dollop and deposited it onto a thin square of paper. Meticulously, he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, dragged it across his tongue and then deftly flicked it into the corner of his mouth. These actions had not changed in a decade, and Nick was slammed with the unmistakable conclusion that he was in the presence of the true Vince, despite all other evidence to the contrary.

Engaging his lighter with the rotation of three fingers, he ignited his cigarette and drew his first exquisite lungful. Still observing him intently, Nick struggled to comprehend how so much could change, while this remained ever the same.

It reminded him of how Vince wanted to be the perfect father, and now he mooched off ACC and only saw his daughter on alternate weekends. And how he and Dayna had loved each other so much that you knew they would always be together, but now he couldn't even visit without legal representation, and she only ever called him Vincent; enunciating the name as one would a medication to ease bowel distress. And of Maxwell too, the half-Maori who hated being Maori, but was now brandishing it for his own ends. And Sneakers, who said he'd sooner die than work in his old man's store, and yet, here he was, flogging footwear.

His head swirled and his stomach twisted, and when he anchored himself against the table it served only to throw his whole body into an uncontrolled spin. Fearing he would vomit at any moment, he bound from his seat and blundered toward the door. "I have to go."

"What's the matter?"

Nick was afraid to respond, fearing the only thing that would emerge was his lunch, but worse, he sputtered, "It's too much."

"Too much?" This served to momentarily stun Vince, but then he snarled, "What the fuck, Nick? Is this too real for you? You thought after six years you'd come back and we'd all just pick up again where we left off? Well I'm sorry to be the one to inform you this, but shit happens! In my case, the only time I wasn't being shat on, I was awash in a deluge of piss."

I'm sorry, Nick desperately wanted to say, but not nearly as desperately as his stomach longed to turn itself inside out, and so he flapped his arm weakly, yanked open the door, and then bolted down the driveway.

Behind him he could hear Vince's derision, "You're no better than us Persnickety Nicky. What have you ever done with your life, eh?"

Persnickety Nicky. He had forgotten about that. It was a jibe that Vince would use whenever Nick upbraided them for some trivial misdeed. It had always been said with a grin, but now Vince spat it with a bitter vehemence.

As soon as he was out of view, Nick steadied himself against a pole and emptied his stomach into the gutter in one violent convulsing lurch. He immediately felt much better and commenced walking, hoping the exertion would further ease his discomfort. As he did, he began formulating an apology, with a plan to return to Vince's to clear up the misunderstanding. The defence he was building relied heavily on expert witness testimony with respect to the dangers of under-heated meat pastries, but by the time he had perfected it, he realised how far he'd travelled and lacked the will to return.

13

Monday at a Quarter to Three

Nick paused, visibly agitated that Tikorua would confound him so, as it had dawned on him that he was not, in fact, heading in the direction of home. His first clue should have been his crossing the stream on Philippe St, but he chose to dismiss that as a simple routing error. Now that he was jaunting down Halsberg Ave, the discrepancy could no longer be ignored. His destination was quite apparent, he realised, it was only his motives that were not.

He was bearing toward the family home of Maxwell Nelson. Obviously, he knew he must confront him, but also quite obviously, he knew he wasn't here, but in a park in Wanganui, and flashing across TV screens, and splashed over newspapers, and cursed on people's lips. And none of those places were on his path. And yet, onward he strode.

Soon he reached Simone Avenue and advanced up the gentle slope. While a narrow street of compact housing, each lawn was nicely trimmed and bordered with pretty gardens. Spying the Nelson home, a warmth instantly rose within him, and he knew what had brought him here. Overwhelmingly, he desired to see Maxwell's mother, and have her wrap her great arms around him, and squeeze him tightly between her mountainous mammary glands until he was blue in the face and could remember how it was to be young again.

But as he reached their gate, he could not make himself open it. There will be no one home, he lied, and then turned, and trudged back toward town.

* * *

Aroha Nelson was a softly spoken, full-blooded Maori. She was tall and considerably rotund, but no doubt, she needed to be to accommodate her capacious heart. She had two sons, but she was loved almost as much by everyone who knew her. She was the type of person that always seemed to be there; when a scuffed knee needed bandaging, a tear needed wiping, or a problem needed an ear.

She had lived in Taranaki all her life, as had her ancestors, who had farmed kumara at the base of the mountain for half a millennium.

Her tribe was the Ati-awa, she would answer when asked, but avoid where avoidance was possible. She saw no pride in her heritage, only privation. To her, growing up Maori had meant being late to school because the old truck wouldn't start, or worse, arriving caked in mud because you'd been helping on the farm since first light. It meant packed lunches of curious content that caused her schoolmates to laugh, or patched clothes that made them tease.

She had descended from the legendary, Te Whiti o Rongomai, a spiritual leader who had advocated passive resistance to reclaim land that had been confiscated by the Government and never used. But to Aroha, there was little reason to be proud; he was just another carving on the wharenui, another ancestor who had talked much, but achieved little.

Her father too, had not contributed much to her life, save for 3cc of ejaculate; dying as he did in heroic but quite forgotten circumstances in El Alamain when she was just two. Her mother had remarried soon after and so Aroha would shuttle between her home and her grandparents depending on the vicissitudes of employment, finance and bedding. This came to an end when her mother and new husband relocated to Australia in search of employment and she remained behind.

When she was young, her grandmother would always say, "Moe atu nga ringa raupo," which meant that it was best to marry a hardworking man with calloused hands. But this was not what Aroha imagined for herself at all; she dreamt of the kind of man she saw on the cinema screen, whose hands were smooth and soft because he led such a comfortable life.

She found her dream man when she was just seventeen. She was a pretty, young, Maori girl. He was eight years her senior, a tall, confident, well-to-do Pakeha, who would appear each month in his shiny, blue Ford while traversing his sales route.

They had married almost immediately and she moved into his house in Tikorua. It was not nearly as grand as she had imagined and - as she soon discovered - was only on week-to-week rental. The car too, which had most symbolised his wealth, was also a lease. But she did not worry, because he assured her the cheques would soon be rolling in.

And they did. She could vividly remember her excitement at seeing that first cheque; it seemed such an impossibly large amount of money that she could not help treating herself with nice clothes and shoes. Of course, she felt horribly guilty at having spent so recklessly, but she convinced herself of the importance of looking good to honour her new husband, and at any rate, another big cheque would not be far away.

But as the weeks drew into months and she watched their finances slip precipitously lower, she chastised herself frequently for her childish extravagances and vowed to be much more cautious.

When she had sashayed into those stores with a thick wad of cash in her purse, she had felt like those rich white women she had seen in the movies, and in the exhilaration of the moment she had forgotten herself. Now that she needed return the items, she felt small and ashamed, and she could not bring herself to look the shopkeeper in the eye. It was just like she was twelve again, an impoverished Maori girl being shooed away for lurking too long in front of the dress shop window.

So she became a stickler for managing their finances and limiting her expenditure, but then Henry would sweep into town and insist on taking her out for dinner. She would try to seem grateful but she could only think of how it would hobble her budget and the sacrifices it would entail in the weeks ahead.

Life was far from comfortable, but she had moved up in the world, she considered. She had gone from being Maori Poor to Pakeha Poor.

Her husband was on the road two months out of three, and so Aroha was mostly alone. Having grown up with a large extended family, it hit her especially hard not to speak to another sole for days. She knew nobody in Tikorua and without a second car, her family seemed so very distant that she infrequently returned.

So when she became pregnant after only fourteen months of marriage she was ecstatic, not just to be a mother, but knowing also that it would occupy her on those long, lonely days.

She had Roland first, who was every bit as European as his father, followed shortly, by Maxwell, who looked very much a Maori, only of a fairer complexion. Finally with her two babies, she found her happiness, but she also lost her figure, and with it, much of the attention of her husband.

During her isolation, Aroha had developed a weakness for tobacco. Having quit seventeen times, but alas, taking it up eighteen. As her kids grew, she worried about setting a poor example and became much more surreptitious in her habit. "I'll be out back tending to the garden," she would say. Naturally, her two boys were not fooled by this at all. A garden so well-tended could not possibly have such meagre output, but they never let on; they loved her deeply and were moved that she cared enough to hide it from them, and most of all, they couldn't bear to deprive her of her only vice.

While Aroha was embarrassed by her past, her sons were enthralled by it and would endlessly beg for stories of her childhood. Sometimes, when her mood was right, she could forget the crushing poverty, the cousins she lost to polio and the hand-me-down shoes stuffed with newspaper, and she would remember the good times. When her mother would return from Australia laden with gifts and they would lay down a huge hangi; how she would sneak out early in the morning to catch freshwater crayfish with her cousin; and of watching her grandfather carve great slabs of totara into the most beautiful works of art, and probing him on the meaning of its every aspect.

'Why is the head shaped that way?' she would ask. 'Why are his eyes made of paua shell?' 'Why does he stick his tongue out?' 'Why is he holding his ure?' And whatever the question, he would smile, and then explain it in the most intricate detail. Everything had a reason, it seemed, and it had to be so. She would listen so attentively that often he needed remind her to close her mouth lest a miromiro should nest on her tongue.

She never knew a man who knew so much, she would tell her boys. This was her favourite story, and often when she told it she would weep, as she mourned her grandfather anew.

十四

Shouldn't there be a shorter word for hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia?

As was the policy of the Japanese Education Board - undoubtedly the inheritance of an old shogunate ploy to prevent the formation of rebellious factions - Fujimoto and several other colleagues were shuffled off to distant schools at the end of Nick's second year.

This was the first time he saw Yukiko. She was being escorted around the staff room by the deputy principal, and immediately, Nick began scratching a calculation in his textbook of the probability that of all the possible universes, this was the one in which someone like her would be interested in someone like him. He was so engaged in the division of one by a number approximating infinity, that he failed to notice the appearance of two figures before him.

"Kochira wa Nikoorasu-Sensei," the deputy principal informed her.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Yukiko Kamihara," she said in flawless English with the hint of an American accent, and she proffered her palm. He jumped up, gripped her hand, and instinctively bowed, then remembering himself, commenced shaking the limb as if he were beating a fish on a rock. Even the deputy principal was so shocked at the gross mockery of Western introductory protocol that he stepped back to give him extra room.

He watched her all morning, surreptitiously reading the Japanese Education Board's Official Guide to the Teaching of English by Persons of Foreign Origin, which as the name implied, was so immeasurably dull and prolix that he took to frequently yawning to appear convincing. Yukiko was busying herself in the preparation of her desk, a task that was constantly interrupted by teachers offering themselves in introduction, of which, make no mistake, there was a marked proportion of men.

Whenever she smiled, the cutest little dimples would form in her cheeks. The Japanese say that no woman with dimples is ever ugly, but even without them, Nick could have been no less enamoured, and possibly even if she lost both her eyebrows and half an ear in a freak hairdressing accident.

He was derailed from this distressing fantasy by Shinabe-sensei, the gruff head teacher of 2nd Year English, who then summoned Yukiko and checked they were acquainted. After the formalities, he turned to her and said, "Coffee," with the clear intonation of an order rather than an invitation.

"Yes, that would be lovely," she replied.

Her sempai grew vexed, as if struck by the notion that he'd woken in some horrid alternative reality where eons of Japanese social structure had been discarded in favour of universal respect.

Nick, despite being an outsider, was also taken aback by her brash impudence, but equally, arising from somewhere unknown, he felt the curious spark of an ember, and with his brain thus overflowing with such contradictory input, it crashed spectacularly, freezing his facial interface, save only for his trembling jaw.

"Coffee!" Shinabe said again, wondering if perhaps it had just been some dreadful miscommunication.

"Yes," she reiterated, "and perhaps our foreign colleague would care for one too."

Then both faces turned to Nick. But his system was still rebooting and in awkward silence, they observed his eyes flicker and his jowls twitch, until his speech centres finally came back online and he squeaked in a level of falsetto that would not embarrass a Viennese eunuch, "No, no, I'm good."

The head teacher, unaccustomed to such conflict, could only glare at her weakly, but with Yukiko so seemingly oblivious, he finally shuffled off to the coffee pot and returned with two cups.

They were met by Fujimoto's replacement, Maeno, a fresh recruit from university, and made their way to the corner of the staff room that was ostensibly set aside for such discussions. The area consisted of three cracked, leather couches arranged in a U around a squat Formica table, upon which sat two broad ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.

In Japan, almost the entire adult male population smoked, as apparently the discomfort of wearing a katana meant there was no greater sign of manhood. Of course, in the interests of health, smoking was confined in the staff room to the small discussion corner, and naturally, the smokers would always crack a window to disperse the malodour, though this was avoided in the coldest half of the year to prevent a chill, and also in the warmest half so as not to burden the air conditioner. Consequently, a hazy grey cloud perpetually hung over the corner, and its residue and stench pervaded every surface.

In his early days, Nick would joke that one could plot their life expectancy by the proximity of their desk to the discussion corner, but his colleagues would only scoff. Cancer, they informed him, was due more to your genes than smoking, and then they would enquire why he was a non-smoker, in a tone that implied he might harbour other effeminate practices.

It was this strong belief in the link between genetics and cancer that dissuaded the head teacher from smoking, having lost his father that way, and as Shinabe sat, his three kohai followed suit. Instinctively, Maeno reached toward his pocket, when Yukiko interceded, "Maeno-sensei, I have already heard many things about your polite manner, and so I'm sure you are much too gentlemanly to light a cigarette in the company of three non-smokers."

Maeno paused for a moment and then, seeing no salvation from his sempai, withdrew his hand and smiled weakly.

The head teacher eyed Yukiko suspiciously, before withdrawing a class plan from his folder and commencing an outline of the details. He had scarcely managed a few sentences when Yukiko interjected again, "Shinabe-sensei, excuse me, if I may, but are we not all English teachers? Surely it would make more sense for us to have this meeting in the language of our chosen career?"

Nick gagged. Shinabe's knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary was second to none, but Nick had never heard him speak a word of it in conversation. She had gone too far. The embarrassment to Shinabe if he faltered before his juniors would be profound. His eyes narrowed and his face reddened, and Nick racked for something he might say to defuse it, but just as the words were forming on his lips, he cringed as Yukiko spoke yet again. 'Oh god, please don't make this any worse', he silently pleaded.

Continuing in Japanese, she said, "Personally, my conversational English is getting exceptionally rusty and I fear I may lose it altogether if I don't exercise it..."

The silence ensued, and then finally, Shinabe cleared his throat. "That is a good idea," he said in cautious English. "I was thinking the same myself. But let's not speak too quickly as Maeno-sensei does not have as many years behind him."

Nick could not believe she'd got away with it, and he struggled to suppress a grin. He was struggling too, to reconcile the fact that someone so jarringly brash could be so immeasurably appealing. But as impressive as she was, he conceded, how long could she last if she was despised by sempai and kohai alike? Surely, the murmurs of discontent would make their way to the principal, and she would soon find herself shuffled off to a school even more remote than Inoshiri.

As the meeting progressed, however, something surprising happened; when Shinabe listed his class plans with the same trite material he had rehashed for the last 30 years, she did not call him out on it and she did not expose him as the wooden talking head he had become. Rather, she masterly complimented his good points and offered only a few suggestions around the fringes that might add a little spark and interest to the class. Initially, Shinabe was affronted yet again, but slowly he began to build on her ideas with some of his own, and perceptibly, a genuine excitement entered his voice, as if the thoughts had been bouncing around in his head for many years, but he'd felt constrained to the methods he'd learnt from his sempai. If anyone, it was Maeno who was the hardest nut to crack, as he had been freshly taught with the way, but once his sempai started suggesting he loosen up a little he had no choice but to get on-board.

* * *

The Japanese like to say, "Deru kugi wa utareru," which means that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Yukiko Kamihara was such a nail, but thus far, she had evaded the hammer.

She was zealous, brash and outspoken. She struggled with deference, and she lacked any appreciable command of subtlety. In a society that championed conformance over individuality, she was an enduring source of discomfort.

Everybody blamed it on America, her friends, her colleagues, even her family who deftly redirected attribution for what would undoubtedly be perceived as bad parenting.

Whenever Yukiko's sharp tongue would lash someone, the explanation was repeated, "She spent a year in America, you know." To which the inevitable reply was, "Yappari ne, I should have guessed." It was surprisingly easy for everyone to believe she'd been changed so markedly by the great land of self-gratification and lax morality.

But actually, she had never changed. For as long as she could remember, she had always felt such confidence and independence, but having observed her peers and role models, she had assumed it was natural to suppress such feelings, and act submissive and compliant. Her year in America - in fact, the realisation took only weeks - had simply opened her eyes.

It didn't need to be that way, it had dawned on her. Juniors needn't blindly agree with their seniors, females needn't silently acquiesce to men, and young women need not bounce around inanely like a part of their brain had been surgically removed with a spade. To everyone else, she had changed, but to her the shackles had simply been broke. In her mind, she was more herself than she had ever been.

* * *

When Nick returned to his desk, he resumed his secret observation of Yukiko, this time hiding behind the Addendum to the Japanese Education Board's Official Guide to the Teaching of English by Persons of Foreign Origin, which sought to eradicate such irksome flexibilities as sideburn length and ratios of vocal-to-gesticular instruction, and thus necessitated him occasionally beating the side of his head with a bookend for authenticity.

It seemed quite clear to him that he must ask her out immediately, because if he thought about it for even a second longer, he would be forever rendered immobile by his fear. But what could he possibly say? How would one even initiate such a thing?

As it happened, at that very moment, she approached and plopped herself in a chair beside him. "Did you just wink at me?" she asked.

"No," he replied, suddenly flushed, "It was a blink."

"Really? For a blink it seemed awfully slow and monocular."

Nick gave an awkward laugh. Whenever she spoke, the corners of her mouth drew in the most intriguing way, as if she were enunciating a particularly troublesome French verb, which in his mind's eye was, forniquer. Nick found it inexplicably intoxicating, and he quickly stammered, "You know, I'd love to show you around Inoshiri..."

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you asking me on a date? Because if you are, that's quite possibly the worst offer I've ever had."

"That was just my opening bid. I do have more..."

She smiled, but there was no trace of delight. "Nicholas, you should know that I rarely go out with fellow staff. Also, I'm very particular when dating Japanese men."

He regarded her curiously for a time. "Well you're in luck, I'm not an English teacher by profession, and, quite clearly, neither am I Japanese."

"I am afraid your reputation precedes you on both counts. I hear you're an excellent teacher. I've also heard you're even more Japanese than a Japanese."

* * *

Mrs Hirata was the only neighbour Nick had ever met more than once.

It had always struck him as deeply curious that in a block of twenty-four apartments, he rarely encountered another soul. As best as Nick could determine, his neighbours only ever made their egress in the dead of night, and apparently not the same dead of night at which he would drag himself home after an extended session at the Aka-Oni.

Occasionally someone new would move into the building and would dutifully knock on his door to introduce themselves and leave a gift. Nick would invariably find them agreeable and look forward to seeing them around. It was always at this point they would promptly wink out of existence.

His relationship with the old lady in the neighbouring apartment thus proved quite a unique gift, not a treasured gift, mind you, more closely akin to a knitted jumper you might receive from a great aunt and then feel duty-bound to wear every time she visited. Mrs Hirata had moved in several months earlier and might well have remained consistently invisible were it not for two factors. Firstly, on the day of her arrival, her daughter had introduced herself to the block in the hope that a kindly neighbour might pop in on her occasionally to confirm her wellbeing. The daughter was conspicuously shocked to encounter a gaijin and seemingly assumed him incapable of such compassion, but begrudgingly asked none-the-less. As a consequence, Nick found himself paying Mrs Hirata a visit whenever he hadn't seen her for a few days.

Secondly, as way of exercise she would exit her apartment and pace up and down the steps. While there didn't appear a schedule to this, by some outstanding quirk of good fortune it would always overlap with the times Nick was ascending, encumbered by bags of groceries, boxes of homework, or inevitably, both.

Mrs Hirata was 89, but you'd swear she didn't look a day over 200. Like most Japanese of the pre-war generation, she was short enough to lope under a limbo pole straddling a baby giraffe, but she also imparted a nuggetty fortitude, and in that, she reminded him of his own grandmother. Her bubbliness would often lift Nick's spirits too, even the enhumoured description of her wartime training to repel the coming wave of foreign invaders, where she had quite keenly demonstrated how she could run him through with a sharpened length of bamboo.

But she had dark stories too. Having grown up in an age where she truly believed the emperor to be a god and would wear a different silk kimono each day of the week, her formative, post-war years were of extreme privation, and she had traded every one of her beloved outfits for food.

Nick would listen attentively and nod without comment. There were so many related matters of which they could have spoken, how one hundred rioting Japanese prisoners-of-war were shot in the Wairarapa town of his father's birth, of the unspeakable cruelty meted out to Nanking civilians by the Japanese invaders, some of whom may once have been her classmates... But he didn't, it was history, and nothing could be gained from discussing it with an old woman who thought it so comical that armed only with a stick, she would fight to the death against the onslaught of crack American marines.

Alas, while her body was strong, her mind was giving up the good fight; she was forgetful and repetitive, and increasingly prone to lapses.

For this reason, her daughter had shifted her from a large house into a small apartment. In Asian culture, parents will invariably move in with the first-born son, but she had borne only one female child, and, at any rate, her daughter was already putting up her husband's parents, so housing her too would have been quite the social faux pas.

Her husband's inability to seed her with male offspring was just one of his many shortcomings that had weighed on her heavily, but she'd been forced to bear unreservedly as a respectful wife. One that didn't make the list was his premature death. He had passed away at 66, though after 38 years of stable marriage where he'd worked long hours and she never saw him, followed by 18 months of retirement where he was constantly under her feet, frankly, this could not have come soon enough.

While her daughter's family could not afford her any home-help, as way of concession they supplied a cat, which Mrs Hirata loved deeply, despite it being only slightly more self-reliant than her late husband. Unfortunately, the cat was one of the main casualties of her lapses. For days, he would dine on canned fish and fresh milk, but then Nick would discover the bowl contained a sandwich, rice and chopsticks, or on one notable occasion, an entire unopened carton of milk. This the cat had found especially perplexing, and no doubt caused him to seriously reconsider his lack of opposable thumbs.

So each night Nick would check the bowl, and when necessary, replace it with something from his own stockpile. And sometimes, when the cat found itself locked out on a cold night, Nick would invite it inside and it would curl up in his lap while he read.

His name was Shabu-shabu, which he would only ever regard with a derisory sniff, so Nick called him Shackleton. The jet black moggy always made him think of his mother, who was such a pillar of dignified restraint, but if you ever spied her in the backyard petting one of the neighbourhood cats, she was never more wistful and childlike. She once told him that when she was young she begged her parents for a cat, but they forbade her because it would incite the farm dogs. Then she married a man who professed an allergy to pet hair.

Her only recourse it seemed, was to leave saucers of milk at the back door. His father would complain of it often, scratching at himself and demanding to know why his money was being wasted feeding strays. To which, she would inevitably apologise, saying it was just one cat that was looking thin and sickly, and then the saucer would be deposited into the sink. But a few days later Nick would see it again, in a new spot, fresh with milk.

Nick actually doubted that his father was allergic to cats at all, for when he'd once felt particularly aggrieved, he had snuck away his father's pillow and frantically coaxed a skittish kitten to rub against it. He had quite delighted himself in the thought of the allergens that had imbued the fabric and the itchiness it would thus afflict, but the next morning, his father had risen no more or less bellicose than any other. Of course, Nick desperately wanted to protest the deceit to his mother, but it was quite impossible without a revelation of what he had done.

As fond as Nick was of Mrs Hirata, naturally there were days when he didn't care to see her at all, and of the days that he didn't care to see her, the very day he didn't care to see her most was the one on which he was rebuffed by Yukiko for being too Japanese. And not only did he not care to see her, he most certainly did not wish to be chastised for being too gaijin.

He had only popped into his apartment to grab a saucer of milk, but Mrs Hirata had spied his shoe-clad feet and remarked, "You shouldn't wear your shoes inside. We don't do that in Japan." Her words while framed as light-hearted jest, struck Nick as replete with cultural arrogance, and if there was ever a day that he would crack, that would be it.

"Well I'm not Japanese, I'm a gaijin! We eat grapes without peeling them, we leave the room without an apology, and sometimes, we just feel like walking about our own fucking house with our shoes on," he screamed loudly, but not a breath of it had passed his lips, and so it bounced endlessly inside his skull until it neatly cleaved all connections to his limbic system. Thus relieved of the vehemence of his indignation, he was able to mumble emotionlessly, "Hai, wakarimashita."

* * *

Nick's poor humour dragged into the weekend, and was not aided by Briece's exceptionally late arrival at the Aka-Oni with an unknown beauty under one arm and some kind of portable telephony device under the other. The odd contraption resembled a black rectangular purse, and was clearly so very cumbersome that Briece was using the girl as a counterweight.

"What is that you're dragging around?" Nick asked suspiciously. He didn't particularly care to hear the answer at all, but he knew that even if he didn't ask, he would eventually be told, and he couldn't bear to have that conversation hanging over him a moment longer.

"It's a girl, Nick. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you can't remember that."

"I meant the other over-priced item," he replied with sparse humour.

"Oh, this? It's a cellular telephone," Briece beamed.

"And why do you have it?"

"Convenience."

"Inform me how lugging around that sack of potatoes could be more convenient than a fifty yen coin, which can be used in any green phone?"

"Ah yes, but with this people can call me wherever I am. I could run my business from this pub if I wanted. It's the ultimate in freedom. Trust me, one day everyone will have one!"

Nick chuckled. "Being reachable wherever you go, by customers, creditors or - God-forbid - family, is precisely the opposite of freedom. Can you imagine going out for a romantic dinner and having someone call you every half hour? It'll never take off; people aren't that stupid."

Briece shrugged, happily unloading it onto the floor beside him, and then offered the scant remaining space to his date. "Where are the drinks?"

"We've had ours, now it's your round," Isaac informed.

To this, Briece gave a small grin, and he reached into his pocket and produced a mikan.

Rolling his eyes, Isaac remarked, "It really takes a special kind of person to bring fruit to the pub just to avoid buying a round."

Nick was equally incredulous. "How is it possible that someone with so much money can be so tight?"

But Briece, who did not seem in the least perturbed by their derision, announced, "This is an orange..."

"Well, botanically speaking it's actually closer to a tangelo," Nick corrected tersely.

Patiently, Briece cleared his throat in the manner of a stage performer who wasn't about to be waylaid by the sort of riffraff who hadn't even paid full ticket price. "This is an orange, and it is orange. I will ask you one question about this object and whosoever gets it wrong will buy this round. If you both get it right, I'll buy the drinks for the rest of the night. But if you both get it wrong, then I don't spend another penny tonight."

With utmost exasperation, Nick and Isaac nodded in accordance, which brought a wide smile to Briece's face.

"This is an orange, and it is orange. Was the fruit named after the colour, or the colour named after the fruit?"

The pair chatted privately for a time and then announced they were both of the belief that the fruit must obviously be so named because of its colour.

Briece clapped his hands with glee. "Then you would both be wrong. Before the arrival of the fruit in England, there was little need to name a colour that was so seldom seen in nature. It took three centuries for anybody to think of applying it to other objects of a similar hue."

After several hours, with Briece brimming with all the free beer he'd imbibed, Nick begged for another riddle that might save him from complete financial ruin.

Briece became silent. It appeared as though he were deep in thought, and on the cusp of spontaneous brilliance. Of course, those who knew him were well aware how exceedingly deliberating he was, and thus suspected that even his offhand quips were pre-prepared.

At length, he rubbed his hands together and announced in a thick drawl, "I can do better than that. I have another challenge, and whosoever gets it correct can take possession of my fully restored 1962 C1 Corvette."

With mouths wide, Nick and Isaac glanced at each other, and then back at Briece, who again had produced his mikan, though it was now significantly misshapen due to an unseen incident beneath the table involving his date.

"This is an orange," he intoned. "It is a curious word that has confounded poets for generations, yet there are words that rhyme quite perfectly with it. Can you name me one?"

Nick was still painted with disbelief; it seemed too big a prize for what must have quite a simple solution, though admittedly, not one that came readily to mind. "Are you serious?" Isaac clarified.

"I am completely serious. The car would be yours. The only rule is that you can't consult another person, a library, or the internet."

Nick had only one more question, "What's the internet?"

十五

'Tis simpler to whittle a toothpick from a redwood than change the mind of a fool

Alexander arrived with the fresh recruits of ninety-four, though it could possibly have been ninety-three, as the specifics have unquestionably been muddied by time and alcohol.

Nick had observed Isaac chatting with him at the bar. He remembered thinking how very young the boy looked, before it occurred to him that the longer he stayed in Japan, the younger the new intakes always seemed.

When Isaac returned, he had grown exceptionally pale.

"Who's the new fish?" Briece asked.

"His name is Alexander," he said with measured words. "It seems he's come here to pick up girls."

"Oh? Considers himself quite the Romeo, does he?"

"Yeah, I don't know my Shakespeare, but I'm pretty sure Romeo wasn't an unabashed racist."

Nick and Briece both leaned forward. "Really? Why would a racist come to Japan?"

"Oh, well then you are in for quite a treat, because he has a manifesto..." Isaac then recounted his conversation with Alexander, and suggested that Nick talk with him just in case he'd misinterpreted a subtle attempt at humour, which Briece frequently claimed was his habit.

"Why me?"

"Well I'm not doing it," Briece replied quickly. "I have an early detection system for idiots, and he's setting off all my alarms."

"But what would I even say to him?"

Briece shrugged. "Everyone's a bit racist; it's an evolutionary relic like hiccupping, but you never hear people say I have reflexive diaphragmatic fluttering and I'm proud of it. Yet oddly, some people see no shame in proclaiming their bigotry."

"Perhaps we can deprogram him," Isaac suggested, "like they do for cult followers."

"And religious nutters," Briece added helpfully.

Isaac glared, before turning to Nick and imploring him to go.

"It's a waste of time," Briece said. "The problem with idiots is that they are much too dim to comprehend the extent of their stupidity, and too pig-headed to believe you when you tell them."

Nick surveyed each of his friends in turn, and then with a sigh, lifted himself from his seat.

"You must be Alexander," he said offering his hand, which was accepted with suspicion and shaken with irritation.

"And you must be Isaac's wingman."

"Something like that, I guess," Nick stammered. "So I understand you're here on a mission?"

"I most certainly am. I've got one year in Nippon," he advised, strongly emphasising the first syllable, "And I'm gonna knock up as many of these Japanese hoes as I can."

"Uh huh. And that would be because..."

Alexander puffed out his chest. "I'm from Michigan, the home of the once great American auto industry before it was kneecapped by the penny-pinching Japs. I am the vanguard of vengeance. They took our jobs; I take their women. It seems a fair swap."

Nick did not respond. It seemed so very farcical that he was torn between laughing and stabbing him in the eye with a straw. He briefly considered whether it were an elaborate hoax on the part of Briece to get under his skin. But the boy's every word was too well rehearsed to be fake. He hadn't practised his lines once or twice before the mirror; clearly they'd been polished a million times inside his skull. Finally Nick said, "So if I understand you correctly, you're angry because Japanese build cars more efficiently than Americans?"

He groaned loudly. "I can see I'm wasting my time with you Jap lovers. But you weren't there. You didn't have to see my father after he got the can; an all-American Dad become a piss-drunk, couch-dwelling slob."

"Surely, there is nothing more all-American than being a drunken couch-slob?" Nick said, in an attempt at brevity that fell significantly short of the mark.

Alexander sneered and his fingers closed into a fist. He had been cursed with a tremendous nose of an exceptionally parabolic nature, and combined with his milky white pallor, it gave the impression of a very tiny ski jump. It should not have been quite as noticeable, situated as it was in the midst of an exceptionally bulbous head, and yet from almost any angle you could not shake the nagging anxiety that at any moment a miniature skier would launch itself upon you.

"Look I doubt you've got much chance with the girls here, to be frank," Nick advised.

He shrugged. "Don't you worry about Alexander; he does all right with the ladies."

As well Nick knew, he would do all right with the ladies. Here in the back-blocks of Japan, gaijin were such a rare and prized commodity that you could be assured a girlfriend even if your jaw was surgically removed after a shaving accident and your arse grafted as replacement.

* * *

Alexander Pike was from Vainlace, Michigan. It was a very white town. There were no Japs or Chinks or Spics or Kikes. There were Spooks, of course, but they mostly kept to theirselves.

He lived an enviable childhood in a rich town where more than half the population worked in the GM factory. Everybody drove a shiny new car, and for anything a kid might wish, Santa would deliver. Alex's proudest moment was being taken to work with his dad, who carried him high on his shoulders and introduced him to everyone they passed. They all greeted his father by name and fawned with respect. Walking the length of the production line, his father taught him every detail in the transformation of a naked shell of iron to the most beautiful automobile Alex had ever seen. He'd climbed inside and luxuriated in the feel of sparkling vinyl and the aroma of fresh carpet. It was the best day of his life.

Then came Black Wednesday.

Everyone had heard the rumours. They knew the factories were struggling to make their quotas and they'd heard all the bitching that American unionised workers couldn't compete with the Japs, but no one actually believed the factory would close. Certainly not on a seemingly inauspicious Wednesday morning.

Alex learned of it as he was leaving school. They'd been let out early without being told why, and he overheard a teacher remarking that the closure would kill the town. He arrived home to find his father drunk, and had rarely seen him sober ever since. Though his father eventually found another job as the day manager at a local bowling alley, Alex could never bring himself to visit it.

In fact, the closure didn't kill the town. That at least would have been merciful, it left a great, gaping wound that everybody could see, but nobody would discuss. The factory was soon torn down and one quarter of the population just up and left. And now when Alex visited the old site, nothing remained to betray its proud history or immortalise his father, just an endless expanse of cracked concrete slowly being devoured by weeds and wind-blown debris.

* * *

As Nick guided Alexander back to their table, he was confronted by the baleful glare of Briece who was mouthing something akin to "For Goff," which he felt was sufficiently nonsensical to be ignored. Even Isaac was urgently wishing him away with his eyes. As someone who could rarely see the bad side of anybody, clearly he felt he'd met his match.

"Alexander, this is Briece, and of course, you've already met Isaac."

Handshakes and awkward pleasantries were exchanged, and then Alexander sat down beside them and pointedly slammed his beer mug on the table.

Nick invited him to tell Briece his story, and recognised it as a verbatim reproduction of the conversation they'd just had. As did Isaac. It then devolved into an itemised listing of the most oft-repeated slurs of Asians in general, and Japanese in particular.

He was well into the chapter on automotive handling, and was detailing a sub-section with regard to turn signal usage, when Briece interrupted. "Alexander, you need to understand that what you are exhibiting is a flaw in the human mind," he said, affecting the manner of a learned professor. He was surprisingly calm, as if it were purely a theoretical argument, a mental exercise perhaps, a high-school debate. "You see, our brain is made up of different parts, and the oldest of these we call the reptilian brain. It operates purely on instinct and cares only about our survival and reproduction. Unfortunately, it lacks any reasoning, so everything is categorised as edible or toxic, prey or predator, friend or foe. This is the source of our fear and distrust of different races, a part of our brain that has scarcely evolved since we walked on all fours."

Nick glanced worryingly at Isaac. Briece was approaching the issue from so great an altitude, he fretted, that by the time he veered to attack, his descent would be so steep as to elicit a nosebleed. With frantic eyebrow gesticulation, Nick appealed for him to moderate his flaps, but quite oblivious, Briece continued on his heavenward trajectory.

"The reptilian brain is ideal for alerting us to a tiger lurking behind a bush or a woman who would bear us healthy offspring, but it was never designed to cope with the complexity of the modern world where we commonly live amongst Asians and Africans and it does not inherently present us any danger. Worse still, it cannot communicate well with our human brain - the neo-cortex - to justify its concern, it can only pass on a feeling, like fear or affection, so it's critical to use our cognitive skills to filter the messages it passes."

As way of skyhook, Nick desperately piped in, "I think what Briece is saying, is that our nature to categorise is so strong that we tend to force it upon whole groups of people, even though it doesn't often apply to the individuals."

Nick's elucidation was still sufficiently opaque that Alexander was squinting to read the subtitles, so Isaac leapt in, "In other words, just because there are a lot of black Olympic runners, it doesn't mean all Africans are fast. Just because you see a lot of Asians at the maths champs, doesn't mean all Asians are good at their sums. And just because a few Japanese were responsible for your father losing his job, doesn't mean you should blame every one of them."

Finally, Alexander's eyes came into focus. "The heck I shouldn't! There may be one hundred million of them, but they are all part of the same machine. You saw what they did in World War 2? Well, what they couldn't do with guns, they are trying to do with commerce, and so I'm here to get inside the machine and twist the knobs and file the cogs until the whole evil thing comes crashing down."

The three friends exchanged glances, and wordlessly, arrived at the consensus that their guest may not be playing with a full deck.

Briece, who was looking increasingly shaky in his attempts to remain aloof, finally uttered, "What would that achieve?"

"It would restore the balance of power," Alexander reported proudly.

"What balance?"

"The superiority of the West."

"Sorry, I missed that," Briece said, cocking his head to one side. "What you are saying is the natural balance is for the West to lord over the other races?"

"Obviously," he sneered. "We have all the most advanced nations, and this clearly proves our superiority."

Briece, revealed a small grin, as if he'd suddenly gripped the sharpest, straightest arrow in his quiver. "I'm afraid, Alexander, you have rather a short view of history. If Western people were inherently superior, then surely we should have been the most advanced throughout time? So why is it that China led the world for thousands of years, and before that, the Middle East? In fact, Western nations have only been on top for the last few hundred years, which is really quite short in the scheme of things. What's more, our rise to power would never have happened were it not for three Chinese inventions: Gunpowder, the compass and the printing press. Not to mention all the other creations from abroad that our wealth relies upon: iron smelting from Africa, irrigation from Egypt, and mathematics devised by Indians over two thousand years ago."

An expression had come over Alexander revealing how little he liked the way the argument was progressing, so he took a long swig from his beer and slammed it again on the table with such force that it slopped over the side and a month of accreted debris was swept away in a mini tsunami. Invigorated by this, he shouted, "That's ancient frigging history. Now the US has the lead and it will stay that way if the Japs stop stealing our inventions. It's not like they ever have their own ideas, they just copy ours, tinker with them a bit, and then sell them back to dumb-ass Californians who only care that they cost $2 less than the ones we make."

Briece, who had clearly found his groove, immediately retorted, "Actually I think you'll find that the world's prolific inventor is Shunpei Yamazaki, who if I'm not mistaken, is Japanese."

Visibly repulsed by this contrary input and aided by the curious disappearance of his remaining beer, Alexander announced his intention to procure another, and then failed to return.

* * *

With supreme confidence, Briece had announced that his masterly performance would see off the impertinent young Alexander Pike for good, but when he and Nick arrived the next week, they spied him sitting alone in one of the stalls, gorging on a long plate of sashimi. While attempting to slip past unnoticed, his shrill twang arrested their path. "I'll say one thing for the Japs, they sure know how to butcher a fish."

Briece spun on his heel, and was silently absorbed with his adversary for a moment, before he grimaced, "Ooh, you're not eating the daily special, are you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Because the head chef is off today," Briece intoned with concern.

Alexander shrugged and after dangling a slice over his waiting gape, he lurched at it in the manner of a performing seal.

"You do know that's Fugu."

"OK, Foo-goo, delicious Foo-goo."

"Fugu!" Briece repeated more emphatically.

"Foo-goo?" Alexander parroted, failing to see the excitement, and he popped another morsel between his lips.

Briece recoiled with horror. "Do you know that more Japanese die each year due to Fugu poisoning than are beheaded by low-clearance doorways?" he gravely reported. "If it isn't cut correctly, it'll will kill you in minutes! That's why a chef needs twenty years' experience before he's even allowed to handle it."

"Uh-huh. So what's your point?" Alexander replied, and in brash defiance, gobbled another slice.

"My point, Alexander, is that guy..." and Briece pointed to the stand-in chef, a chubby young male who was playing a back-beat on his exposed midriff, "hasn't even had twenty years out of diapers."

The flesh descending his throat visibly paused, before with great exertion, it was finally forced on its way.

"So are you feeling OK?" Briece asked.

"I feel fine," he said quite adamantly, but his face had contorted in distress and its colour receded.

"Good, you should be fine. Only..."

"Only what?"

"Well, you do seem to be blinking rather excessively."

"So?" screamed Alexander.

"That's one of the first symptoms."

"Hey, this isn't funny," he protested.

"Oh, let me assure you that death by puffer fish is no laughing matter. Are you feeling any itchiness, particularly around the head and chest?"

Alexander looked down to find he was, in fact, already scratching at himself. "Oh my God, what are the other symptoms?"

"Clammy palms, a queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach..."

"Well yeah, now, because you're scaring the crap out of me."

"Well it could be, or it could be the Fugu."

"So what should I do?"

"My best advice is to restrict the flow of poisonous toxins to your brain."

"How?"

"Stand up! And try holding this cold pitcher of beer on your head."

Alexander vaulted onto his stool, and quivering excessively, gripped the beer to his scalp with one hand, while chasing an errant itch with the other.

"Will this save me?"

Briece cocked his head awkwardly. "At best it will delay it."

"So you're telling me I'm about to die a slow, agonising death?"

"Oh no, certainly not," he said helpfully. "Your death will be exceptionally quick."

"Will I ever see Michigan again?" he wailed.

"Don't worry; we'll see that you make it home."

"Dead or alive?"

"That's right, whatever it takes."

At this point, Nick, who'd somehow held his tongue through the entire ludicrous performance, grabbed the last piece of fish from the plate and inhaled deeply. "Briece, my good friend, I do believe you're mistaken. This appears to be Hamachi."

"Really? Are you sure, Hawkeye?"

Nick deposited it on his tongue and chewed thoughtfully. "Yep, that's Hamachi, all right."

"Huh. Well don't I feel a rat..."

"Har-mar-chee?" Alexander screeched, the blood flushing his face with abundant oversupply. Then he slunk back into his seat and swigged his beer in brooding silence.

"So have you had your fun?" Nick asked, as he accompanied Briece to their usual table.

"Oh this is not about fun, Nick; this is all part of my plan." And he gave a knowing wink.

十六

Twice as loud is the word that's overheard

The third anniversary of Nick's arrival in Japan was celebrated heartily with beer, just like all their important occasions, of which they had accumulated a sizeable list of qualifying events, including, at Briece's behest, Alpha releases, Beta releases, candidate releases and odd-numbered point releases, and on Nick's part, any successful appointment with a dentist, hairdresser or other health professional. Only Isaac sought to limit such splurges to truly meritorious events, and upon the marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito, proved his mettle by quaffing an entire jug of orange juice.

Aside from the three of them, the Aka-Oni was mostly empty. It was the summer holidays and the gaijin who'd completed their contracts had already departed, and their replacements were yet to arrive. In previous years, Nick had grown quite despondent with the exodus, but this time such feelings evaded him. The year had slipped by so quickly that he'd scarcely acquainted with anybody outside the two drinking with him that night.

As was tradition, Briece pressed Nick to reveal the reason for his abrupt appearance in Japan, and by the third beer Nick was sufficiently drunk to reveal the truth, which was, of course, criminally scant on fact and heavily padded with fiction. Thereupon, they all dutifully nodded and promptly returned to their drinks.

Except for Nick, who was regarding his more pious pal with a curious eye. "You know, Isaac," he said, "I don't believe you've ever told me why you came here."

Instantly, he replied, "I wanted to experience another culture."

Nick observed how effortlessly the answer had rolled off his tongue and recognised it immediately for what it was; too perfect, too practised, just like his own. "Yes, I know, you've told me that before, but what's the real reason?"

Isaac quivered uneasily. His explanation had never been called into question. "It's true," he insisted. "I grew up in a very American suburb of a deeply American city, and I wanted to see if there was more to the world than that."

"Isaac," Nick said with a smile that was not altogether comforting, nor altogether wicked, "you're amongst friends here; you can tell us."

He became silent and immobile, unlike Briece who had lurched forward and was heaving in excited anticipation that something he'd always accepted as gospel was about to be overturned.

Placing his palms over his face, Isaac's eyes peered through the gaps between his fingers, and then his hands slowly retreated until they revealed his gaping maw. "I really want to tell you guys," he said breathlessly, "but I'm worried you'll think I'm crazy."

"No, we won't. We're your friends," Briece replied warmly. "We'll act supportive and then ridicule you behind your back."

Isaac regarded him with an unsettled, sideways glance, his lips tightening.

"Seriously though, you look like you need to tell us," Nick added.

"OK," he announced with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. "Do you remember when I told you how I was dumped by my girlfriend? What I didn't mention was that it hit me so hard I had a real crisis of faith. I had been leading a chaste, upstanding life, honouring God and doing everything that I believed was right, and yet my life was spiralling out of control. One night when it got too much for me, I was out driving aimlessly in the rain cursing God for His malfeasance and warning that if He didn't give me something I was done with Him forever. No sooner had I said it, than a cat darted out onto the road, and as I swerved, a huge sign reared up in my headlights. It read: Isaac Peterson Bakery Goods, 'Sure to Rise'..."

"OK..." Nick said, his inclined head betraying his confusion.

"Well my father's name is Peter, so, naturally, I read it as, Isaac, Son of Peter, sure to rise... To Heaven!" he said, flicking his hands up with a wild flourish. "I drove straight home, but I was buzzing with too much excitement to sleep. So I grabbed my bible and let it fall in my lap. It had opened at Genesis 17:19, the birth of my namesake. I couldn't believe it; what are the chances? And the passage was 17:19; I was born in 1971. I must have read that passage a thousand times before, and I'd never noticed. That's when it dawned on me that God was leaving these little clues all around, and if only I opened my eyes, I could see them."

Briece and Nick gazed in wonderment at the saintly figure towering over them. They had never seen him so glib and effusive, nor so ruddy with emotion.

"That evening changed my life. Since then I have never let a day go by without seeking an assurance from God that I'm still on track. Sure, sometimes you're up until the early hours, before you're finally struck, but it always happens."

Isaac paused to look over at his friends, seemingly to gauge their reaction, but he was so engrossed in his monologue that he failed to register the incredulous expressions that had descended upon them. "But in America it got too easy, I couldn't open a magazine or turn on a TV without being overwhelmed by the uncanniness. That's when I heard of this role in Japan, a country where they spoke a language I couldn't comprehend and used characters I could not recognise. I thought for sure, if my belief was flawed, then here it would be revealed. But it never happened. Obviously, it has been harder; you really need to open your eyes to dates, numerics and symbology, but not once have I returned to my futon with my faith unrewarded. Like today, I received a telephone bill for 12,715 yen; my father was born on the 12th, my mother on the 7th and I was born on the 15th, perfect!"

He'd never spoken of this to anyone, but he had imagined it often. It was to be his ta-da moment. He'd reached into his hat and pulled out a six-foot bunny riding a unicycle while juggling chainsaws, but there were no gasps of amazement or catcalls of glee, only blank faces and hanging jaws, and the crushing realisation that what sounded a little wild and crazy in his head was adult diaper-wearing bonkers when said aloud.

It grew very silent for a time. A silence that became long and uncomfortable. Then it was silent some more. Finally, in desperation, Nick widened his mouth to speak, but it took several moments before any words filled the void. "You know, Isaac, when we ask God for a sign, I don't think he erects an actual sign."

Isaac's head dropped, and he issued a lengthy groan. All the times he'd pictured this scene, it had never ended like this, and instantly his fleeting eloquence escaped him. "I know! Don't you think I know that?" he heaved, now utterly deflated. "In my head, of course I realise that God didn't put that sign there just for me, but the fact that it was there, and that I should come across it when I needed it most, was just too much of a coincidence. It made me wonder why there should be so many statistically improbable occurrences about us all the time." He paused in trepidation, casting a long eye over Briece, who was yet to move a muscle. "I strongly believe that what we call coincidences are actually the breadcrumbs left by our creator so we might find our path."

The silence returned, and Nick bit at his thumbnail as he struggled for something constructive to say. Finally, it came to him. "Briece?"

They both turned toward Briece who remained uncharacteristically muted. "I think..." he said at length. "I think... it must be my round." And he slipped immediately from their gaze and departed for the bar.

* * *

Just as Nick had suspected, the longer he worked with Yukiko the more enamoured he became. It was not just her beauty, for which his attention would have been more fleeting, it was her manner. She was tough - though in a way that seemed only to ruffle the feathers of a coq that needed plucking - diligent, and well respected by her students, but she could also be light-hearted and humorous when the moment was right. And it was of this, in particular, he desired to see so much more.

It was just as well then, he'd asked her out so soon, he reasoned. That way his reckless flirtation and brash innuendo would not be unnecessarily misconstrued as something quite innocent. Unfortunately, despite their growing acquaintance, there was little indication her stance on their dating had softened.

Thus, it came as quite a shock to hear her name mentioned by Morita, the tangerine coloured gym teacher who'd insulted Nick on his very first day and ever since, had proven an acerbic blowhole (though this description was invariably contracted when Nick was recounting his misdeeds to friends). While he couldn't quite make out the conversation, it was clear that Yukiko was the subject of his ribald commentary.

"What was that, Morita-sensei?" Nick enquired, after positioning himself between the pair as if he'd been part of the conversation all along.

"Ah, Nick-san," he replied, pointedly neglecting to address him appropriately, and then said in English, "What big ears you have."

"Why am I not surprised the only English you know is from a children's book," Nick hissed beneath his breath, and then more audibly, "I'm afraid I didn't quite hear what you said with regard to Kamihara-sensei."

He glared at Nick derisively. "This is a conversation between men about women; little boys like you would do well not to listen in. Let's just say that Kamihara-sensei was more than satisfied with our evening together."

There was something so horridly displeasing about the way he'd enunciated satisfied that Nick was overcome with an urge to jam his orange head into a fruit crusher, but the best he could do was roll his eyes and retreat to his desk.

Coincidentally, later that day, Yukiko cornered Nick in the staff room.

"Nick-sensei, may I have a word?" she curtly requested.

"Sure," he replied. After all, she was blocking the only reasonable path to the coffee pot. "How can I assist?"

"I have some questions about the spelling vocabulary you assigned my class." She looked down at a sheet of paper, and commenced reading.

Duplicitous

Dissolute

Delilah

Deserving

Dreadful

Discomfort

"Should I go on?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

"Oh no, I think I've got the gist."

"Really? Because it continues in this vein for three more pages. I particularly admired the allusion to Disoriented Doves and the seamless inclusion of Disenfranchisement."

"So what seems to be the problem?" he enquired with haughty innocence.

"Well, either the level of my class is much higher than I realised, or you are trying to tell me something."

Nick shuffled awkwardly. This denouncement had seemed much easier when it was obfuscated by obscure alliterative reference. "Perhaps I should cut to the chase."

"Definitely. I demand a detailed debriefing."

"Is there any truth to the rumour you're dating Morita-sensei?"

She drew back half a step and smiled uncomfortably. "I would hardly call it dating. We've been out a couple of times; he's actually kind of fun."

"Fun? That tangerine buffoon?"

"Yes, Nick, fun. Do you know the word? It means tanoshii."

"But I don't think you realise just what kind of guy he is."

"Huh. That's precisely what he said about you."

"So just to clarify, your policy about not dating your colleagues, actually only applies to dating this colleague, doesn't it?"

"Nick, I like you," she replied with a sigh, "but I'd rather date a Japanese who thinks he's Western than a Westerner who's trying to be Japanese."

Nick shot a glance over to Morita, who'd been observing them both with a conceited grin, though it quickly melted into an innocent smile as Yukiko followed his gaze.

* * *

When Nick arrived at the Aka-Oni that Saturday, Isaac was inexplicably absent, and thus Briece was desperately trying to engage his date with his ineffectual Japanese bolstered by an extensive repertoire of lewd gesticulation. Despite his efforts, they both looked immeasurably bored, and so it was with some relief that he greeted his friend's arrival. "Why the long face, Nick? Someone find your stash of Bovine Monthly?"

"It's a girl..." he said, deftly sidestepping Briece's humour.

"Well your mother and I did warn you about them," he replied, placing an arm affectionately around the girl, much to her indifference. "Hey, I have just what you need," he added brightly, and then rifled around in his pockets until he produced a tiny white capsule.

"What is it?"

"It's some high tech Japanese drug. It will perk you right up."

Nick shook his head with disinterest. There was something strangely cathartic about his pain. Also, he was quite convinced that Briece's miracle pill was, in fact, a Tic-Tac and he suspected his knowledge of this would lessen its placebo effect.

"Suit yourself," he said, depositing the pill in his beer, where it descended with a flurry of bubbles like a comet burning up in an amber atmosphere. When it had dissolved, he took a quick gulp, then paused to consider the taste with an expression that began as pensive and ended as perturbed.

"I'm sure she's interested in me, but she's just not willing to act on it."

"Men always think that the woman wants them," Briece replied as he edged his glass to the opposite end of the table. "It's a trick our mind plays on us to encourage procreation."

Nick's face contorted. "So you are saying this is all in my head?"

Briece shrugged. He had little interest in conversations about human interaction, most especially when those interactions were not physical in nature.

"She says I'm too Japanese. I'm not too Japanese, am I?"

"No," he replied emphatically. "Natto is too Japanese, you're more like Yakiniku; widely thought of as Japanese, but ultimately foreign in origin."

"You're not helping!"

"Oh, I wasn't trying to help."

"Isn't there some social convention that requires you to regale me with unwanted advice?" Nick fumed.

Briece stroked his chin in thoughtful recumbence. He did this often. While the gesture never actually seemed to aid cogitation in any way, he'd observed that people always afforded greater importance to anything he uttered after doing so. "Can I confess something to you?" he finally said.

"Sure."

"I'm supremely intelligent, quite possibly the brightest person I know..."

"Well I appreciate you getting that off your chest," Nick piped. "It must have been hard."

"Can I continue?" he said, smacking his hand upon the table and thus causing great alarm to his date who'd been engaged in silent conversation with a young male in a nearby booth. "For all my intelligence, in matters of human nature, I am only marginally less thick than month-old milk. I completely lack the intuition borne of reading facial expressions, and I have almost no comprehension of how people will react to anything I say or do. By God, I was married three years before I even learned that when my wife asks my opinion, she sure as hell does not want to know what I think. By traditional standards I am quite possibly the worst husband on earth; I invariably forget her birthday, I never surprise her with flowers, she's never worn anything I've bought her more than once, and most certainly never in public, and I never manage to say the right thing."

"You've been married for twelve years, Briece; you must be doing something right."

"Well, let me correct you there. Ten years ago, we were living in an apartment so small that while Gabrielle showered she would simultaneously wash the dishes and water the window planter. Back then, I was working every woken moment just to get my business off the ground, and I only ever saw her when she slept. So one night I came home; I can remember the date precisely - June 23 - it's our wedding anniversary, after all. I could see she'd prepared my favourite dish, Chipotle-glazed chicken, only by then, it rather resembled a sunburnt pigeon. I tried to apologise, but at the end of a 30-hour day, it just didn't come out right. After all, I considered, wasn't she going to benefit from our coming wealth every bit as much as me? But she said, 'You're as worthless as a cat I used to own; I only ever saw him when he was hungry or wanted some loving.'"

"To which I quipped," and Briece paused to flail desperately for his beer, "'That's funny; I was also just thinking that you were like every other pussy I've had.' Whereupon she slapped me and started to pack. And that was it. Tora tora tora. Another relationship I'd sent crashing to earth in flames. She should have been an uncomfortable conversation I would always have with my parents. And right now, I would be living with some dim trophy wife secretly wondering what she was up to. But as I watched her pack her jewellery, which all pre-dated our wedding, and the clothes that she'd not been able to replace, I broke down. Then she did too, and it all came out, every mistake, every fear, every lie... And that's all we had. Before that night, neither of us even knew that the other didn't believe in a higher power. Two years after we'd asked God to witness our wedding in a Baptist church! From the ashes of that evening we built a relationship that will last us all our days. All she asked was that I take the time on occasion to communicate my affection. So since then, every Wednesday, no matter what I am doing, I spruce myself up and take the love of my life out on the town."

Nick nodded several times, and then quizzically, he asked, "So your point is that rather than change myself, I need Yukiko to redefine her preconceptions of love?"

"What?" Briece balked, loud enough to re-gather the attention of his date from a burly fellow at the bar. "Have you not heard a word I have said? What I am telling you, Nick, is that you should never, ever ask me for advice on women, ever. By all means question me on the nature of the Higgs-Boson, or engage me on the efficacy of data sorting algorithms, but if it's anything about human emotion, you would learn more by reading the thought bubbles of an Archie comic."

Thankfully, at that juncture Isaac arrived. Of course, Briece immediately chastised him for his tardiness, "You're so late that I had to start without you. We're debating the preposterousness of Noah's Great Flood, and the arguments you made in absentia, frankly, did not hold much water."

But Isaac too, was indifferent to his humour and appeared uncharacteristically encumbered by burden.

"Whoa, relax, Isaac," Briece said, "I'm willing to concede a localised flooding event in the biblical regions if that helps."

Still oblivious to the jibes, Isaac withdrew an item from his pocket and flopped it before them. "This arrived today from my ex-girlfriend."

His two friends appraised it with concern; it was an envelope, torn at one end and addressed to Isaac. They examined it wordlessly, curious to its content, but not daring to ask.

Examining their sympathetic faces, he continued, "She wants to get back together."

"So what are you going to do?" Nick asked.

"I don't know. It's such a huge decision."

"Well, do you still love her?"

Orienting the letter until the address faced him, he caressed the exquisite strokes with which she'd penned his name. "Of course, she was perfect for me; you never really get over something like that."

Briece pouted. "If she was so perfect for you, wouldn't you still be together?"

"But, that was only because of her family." He gestured limply toward the envelope. "She's already moved out of their house, and she says she's going her own way now."

"So what's holding you back?"

"It's complicated," he said, returning the envelope to a pocket inside his jacket.

"You're choosing between the girl you love and an empty six-jou apartment that overlooks a noodle factory. What's complicated?"

"I can't explain it to you guys, and I can't even explain why I can't explain it. It's a decision I must make for myself."

* * *

For some reason, Nick soon found himself exceedingly drunk. It wasn't because of his unrequited affections for Yukiko, or Isaac's re-acquaintance with an old love - which for Nick, seemed so improbable - it wasn't even the capacious volume of alcohol he had imbibed, though in all likelihood, it played a part.

He could not, in fact, put his finger on any one thing, and yet he was soon so very overwhelmed that he shunned his normal quota of three dai-biiru per evening, or six on special occasions, and instead quaffed his entire allotment for July.

At some point in the hours that followed, though the details are inexplicably hazy, Nick caught the attention of a Japanese girl keen to improve her English oral skills. Of course, in a pub at this hour on a Saturday night, he felt it safe to assume this was a euphemism. Her name was Akemi, but every time he attempted to enunciate it, the alcohol tackled the signal exiting his brain. "Agemi?"

"No! Akemi, A-ke-mi."

"Yes, A-ge-mi, bright and beautiful."

"Yes, Akemi is bright and beautiful, but you say only Agemi; fried and beautiful,"

"I'm sorry."

"That's OK," she said with an expression of forgiveness that implied there were a myriad of miscommunications she would be willing to excuse. "Hey, you wanna go for a walk?"

He smiled apologetically. She had a pale, pretty face with cute little red lips that resembled, in Nick's drunken state, a cherry resting upon a bed of ice cream. She seemed a little familiar; perhaps she had once been a student of his? She was certainly young enough. But he'd had so many students, that every young face he met always vaguely reminded him of someone. "I'm sorry but I have a girlfriend," Nick replied after a time.

"So why are you here talking to me?" she pouted, feigning consternation.

"Well, to tell the truth, she isn't actually my girlfriend, but I would very much like her to be."

"If she's not yet your girlfriend, then it shouldn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Is it wrong," she probed contritely, "that it makes me want you even more?"

He stroked her hair, which was long and adorned with burgundy streaks, but there was nothing sexual in it; this could just have easily been a prosaic discourse on the conjunction of English verbs. She will copulate. She is copulating. She has copulated.

"I'm sorry," he said again and returned to his table.

Briece greeted him with his face drawn and palms outstretched. "Wow, she was gorgeous. What happened?"

"Apparently I'm too old and too dull," Nick confessed.

"She said that? Christ, that's harsh."

"I've heard worse," he replied dispassionately.

"Well, they do say that the thrill is in the chase," Briece advised, "which always struck me as such an odd predilection. To me, the excitement is in the kill and the moments of frenzied attack leading up to it."

Nick shrugged. There might well be a thrill in the chase, he considered, if only it seemed possible that the fox could ever be snared.

Briece, who assumed Nick's deficit to be of a purely physical nature, immediately adopted a salacious tone. "You know, I am well acquainted with some bad girls who would be happy to treat you nice. And also some nice girls who would treat you very badly, if that's your kick..."

"Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm just having a bit of a cold streak."

"Cold streak?" Briece replied incredulously. "A cold streak is January in Okinawa; what you're experiencing Captain Scott would have called a frightfully unfortunate turn of weather."

Nick sighed; a cue that was apparently misinterpreted by his stomach, which released a resounding belch. "I think it's your round," he said as way of apology.

But Briece recognised from personal experience that his friend was rapidly approaching the point where social constraints precluding the wearing of underpants on one's head no longer seemed so rigid, and thus he eased him onto the street and into the backseat of a taxi.

* * *

Several weeks later Alexander reappeared at the Aka-Oni. Somehow, he looked different, presumably by dint of the large black eye he was sporting. Briece, always keen to revel in a comeuppance, entreated him to their table. "What happened to you?" he asked, almost feigning concern.

"Those frigging Arabs!" Alexander advised.

"Arabs?"

"Yeah, you know, those damn Turks who sell the phone cards."

"The Iranians?"

"Yeah, those S-O-B's. I bought a whole bunch of recycled cards to call home, but they wouldn't work in the green phones. Now those monkey-fondlers won't give me a refund."

Briece nodded sympathetically. "Yes, the after-sales service on illegal merchandise is woefully inadequate. But that still doesn't explain why they hit you."

Alexander grinned bashfully. "I may have advised them that my God could kick Allah's ass."

Rolling his eyes, Briece exclaimed, "Once again, Alexander, you have proven yourself an ignoranus."

"I think you mean ignoramus," Nick corrected.

"No, because he's stupid and an asshole. You see Alexander, the Muslims, the Jews, and you all believe in the same God, so what's He supposed to do? Punch Himself in the face?"

Alexander appealed to Isaac for salvation, and finding none, he departed with a sneer.

Issuing a wicked grin, Briece enmeshed his fingers. Nick was expecting him to boast of his latest victory, but he announced instead that in their on-going battle to unedge Alexander, it was time to take things up a notch. Recognising the unseemly glint in his eye, Isaac opted immediately to remove himself to the bathroom.

"It's probably better that Isaac isn't here," he observed, "I fear he lacks the ethical divestiture to involve himself in this plan."

"Whereas my moral bankruptcy is assumed?" Nick clarified.

"Oh no, but you understand that an important aspect of diplomacy is wet work."

Nick could only shrug. It wasn't necessarily that he was drunk or apathetic - though he was quite drunk, and apathy was looming large on the horizon - it was just that he had begun to doubt Alexander's ability to make good his threats to knock up Japan's female populace. Nick's reasons were two-fold; most obvious was the considerable disability imparted by the incompetent sizing and alignment of his facial features, and secondly, his apparent inability to converse with the opposite sex, the revelation of which caught Nick completely by surprise. Despite all his bravado, it appeared that in the presence of women Alexander clammed up like a cat concealing a goldfish. Even the fudged profanities for which he had such an inordinate predilection would stick in his throat like Shakespearean poetry.

"So are you with me?" Briece finally asked.

"Why are you making this such a big thing?"

"Christ, Nick, that Kool-Aid quaffing troglodyte is precisely the kind of unenlightened Yank I left America to avoid. It's time he was returned to sender."

"Yes, but why is that our job?"

"Because if we don't do it, who will?"

Nick shrugged again, the apathy was now bearing down on him like a tropical wave.

"Look, it's only a matter of time before he finds someone blind enough to sleep with him and impregnates her with his bobble-headed spawn. Jesus, can you imagine that nose on some poor Japanese kid? Is that what you want on your conscience?"

Nick heaved in begrudging acceptance of his argument. "So what's your plan? It's not something you've plagiarised from M*A*S*H again is it?"

"Oh, no, this is a goody."

"Really? Because I strongly suspect it's going to be cockamamie."

"Well, I guess you'd be half right then."

Nick leaned forward, propping himself upon the table with his elbows. He was already struggling to stay upright and he wanted to be fully prepared for what he was about to hear. "OK, hit me with it," he groaned.

Beaming widely, Briece said, "It's simple. We'll get him arrested for public nudity. Then his school will be notified, a knee will jerk, and he'll get the sack. Unable to get a recommendation, he'll have no option but to return to the US."

"I don't know," Nick chided. "I fear that would be crossing the line."

"I cannot understand why people are always fret they might cross the line, because in my experience, it never happens. Whenever it comes to the crunch, the position of the line itself always proves remarkably fluid."

"Yes, but my objections are not just moral. I also have a rather compelling disinclination to ever move again from this seat."

"Oh, come on. I just need you to do the Japanese bit."

"But he's going to see it coming from a mile away. He's not as dumb as he looks."

"You don't know that. Have you even considered the possibility that he's every bit as dumb as he looks?"

"OK, then," Nick sighed. "Is there anything else?"

"Yeah, come up to the bar with me and play along..."

They positioned themselves within earshot of Alexander who was tucking into a Katsu-curry with all the exuberance of a death-row inmate who'd heard his mother-in-law was stopping by. While seemingly awaiting the attention of the bartender, Briece half-shouted, "So how much did you say it'd cost to get you to dash through Chuo Park in your birthday suit?"

"Five-man," Nick replied.

"Five-man? And by that you mean 50,000 yen, correct?"

"Yes, Briece, that is precisely what I mean," he confirmed with wooden inflection.

Alexander, who'd stopped eating long enough to swallow their hook, immediately piped, "50,000 yen? Seriously? I'd do it for half that."

"Ooh, I do believe we have a bidding war," Briece said, rubbing his hands gleefully. "Nick, would you do it for 20,000?"

"No, I think that will do me."

Briece smarted momentarily, realising just how much he'd underestimated the cost of his plan. "Oh come on, Nick, shall we say 22,000?"

"Nope, you can't put a price on your dignity."

"Oh, yes you can," Alexander interjected. "For that much I'd tongue-kiss your mother. Heck, I might even throw that one in for free."

"Well then, I guess we have a winner," Briece announced.

Which serves to explain how Nick found himself at a quarter after twelve standing in a phone box in the cool evening air, watching the distant forms of one foreign male entreating another to disrobe. After an exchange of money and much haranguing, the clothes were dispensed and a white figure dashed off into the darkness. Steeling himself, Nick reached for the phone, and advised the operator in impeccable Japanese that a horridly pale gaijin was running about naked in the park upsetting the old ladies and frightening the fish. Alas, it took several rounds of confirmation before the operator would believe him. Loud gaijin were an on-going problem, naked gaijin much less so.

十七

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel

When Nick arrived that night, Isaac was seated by himself at their usual table, coddling an empty glass, and wearing a grin so broad it was nibbling at his sporadic sideburns. Strongly suspecting the nature of his cheer, Nick sat opposite and said, "So, I take it you've decided then?"

"Yes, yes, I have," he replied, brandishing the full set of his inadequately spaced teeth.

"And..." Nick could already read in his face that he'd chosen the girl, but he didn't wish to deny him his moment.

"I'm going to follow my true love..."

"Congratulations!" Nick enthused.

"...so I've enrolled in a seminary."

"Wait, what?"

"I've decided to become a priest, Nick."

"A priest? Have you forgotten you're Catholic, Isaac? If you go down this road, it precludes you ever being with Beth again."

"Yes, I know," he said, his enthusiasm ebbing a little. "I love Beth, and I always will. But I can't pledge myself fully to her, then keep God as my weekend fling. I wish I was more like Briece, but I'm not. With me, it's all or nothing."

Nick began to speak, but then swallowed his words. He gazed at Isaac, his wispy moustache curling at the ends of his smile, and his deep, trustful eyes. "I didn't even know you wanted to be a priest."

"Nor did I. When I came to Japan, my faith was already wavering. Then I met Briece with his keen wit and silver tongue, and I genuinely feared he would destroy it completely. Every time we got together, I'd be bombarded with such a barrage that I would question all of my beliefs. But you know what I found? For every question, I was rewarded an answer, and that drew me closer to God. Briece gave me the gift of resolute faith, and that is what I want to give others. I want them to challenge their belief with doubts and fears, so they too can find truth."

"Wow, so you're saying Briece actually made you more religious? He's not going to be happy hearing that."

Isaac allowed himself a sardonic smirk. "I know it's analogous for a priest to be a shepherd tending his flock, but I envision myself as more of a gardener. The plants will grow with or without me. My role is simply to ensure they incline toward the light so they bloom at their fullest."

"I like the sound of that, Isaac."

"And you remember how I told you that I would look for God in every coincidence?"

"Mmm."

"Well, it made me realise that I was only trying to make Him prove himself to me, when it was me that needed prove myself worthy to Him."

Nick nodded sagely. "Actually, Briece made me promise not to tell you this, but... you know the sign above the booths?" And he gestured to the only English within the entire pub, which read, 'Renichi Sano's Aka-Oni Bar.'

"Of course, I've seen it a million times."

"Well Briece punched it into his computer. Apparently, if you jostle the letters it reads, 'Isaac O'Brien in Noah's Ark.'"

"Really? Wow, that is cool," Isaac replied with a laugh. "But it's just a coincidence," he added hastily with marked disappointment. Then, twisting his head, he spied his old friend. "Now for the tough one..."

"What's up?" Briece said with a furrowed, portentous brow, and then listened in stunned silence as Isaac informed him of his plan. But Briece revealed no anger or disappointment, and much to their surprise, he didn't even try to dissuade him. He could never comprehend Isaac's faith, but implicitly he understood his need to create something bigger than himself. For a long time, he remained quiet, then he finally extended a hand in congratulations.

"Thanks."

"Well, I guess a celebration is in order," Briece announced. "I'm going to fetch you the best pulped fruit this joint has to offer."

"Oh no," Isaac replied with a sly smile. "This is my stag night; I do believe I'll have a beer."

In fact, he drank three. It was the only alcohol Nick had ever seen him imbibe, though technically, there was the time at a Christmas party when he ate a third of Gabrielle's rum fruit cake, and then promptly climbed under the table and fell asleep. It was certainly the only time they'd seen him drunk. Nick had always imagined an inebriated Isaac would burst forth with odious melodies in praise of our Lord, or announce in blubbering lamentation that his two best friends were most certainly bound for the fiery pits of hell, but he didn't, he just grew exceedingly quiet and adopted a contented grin of rapturous inane.

On the cusp of midnight, without prior warning, he suddenly launched himself skyward in the manner of someone who'd inadvertently fastened his shoelace to a trebuchet. At the apex of an exceedingly long and graceful arc, his flailing legs immediately righted, and he landed with magnificent aplomb upon both feet. "I better go," he announced with nonchalance to his stunned friends. "I need to finish packing."

They rose and accompanied Isaac to the door, then stood in the dilapidated alcove struggling for words. Finally, Briece said, "Did you know, Isaac, that the word Goodbye is just a contraction of God be with you?"

"Oh really?" he replied, his eyes, wistful and rheumy.

Briece nodded. "So goodbye, my old friend, and all the best in your ethereal endeavours."

They hugged Isaac, and he left. Then they returned to their table and sat awkwardly for a time, but not wanting to vocalise their despondency, they soon made their excuses and departed too.

18

Monday, just after Three

It was late in the afternoon when Nick entered the retail mall. The dreary sky had not improved, he noted with distaste, though for that matter, nor had it worsened.

If there was one thing about Tikorua of which Nick spoke highly - and there really was only one thing - it was that in the 70's they had the foresight to close the main street to traffic with the quaint notion that shoppers might actually be enticed out of their cars and onto their feet. The result was a dashing pedestrian mall that gave the town a surprisingly cosmopolitan feel. A secondary, less-discussed outcome was that a significant proportion of shoppers simply drove on to the next town, rather than employ their flabby thighs.

Nick was planning to stop at Kenny's Cafe for afternoon tea. In his time in Japan, a custard square and a peppery sausage roll were the New Zealand delicacies he most desired, and in particular, the handcrafted masterpieces of Ken Gordiny. However, arriving at the premises, he realised it had changed its ownership, and its layout, and its offerings for that matter. It was now an American-style sandwich shop, which Nick regarded with an unrestrained loathing.

He neared its windows, intending to reproach the staff with fierce glowering, but needed stop short when the aroma of baking bread initiated a peculiar affliction upon his salivary glands. So he maintained his stance on the fringes, vowing never to eat there as way of protest.

In fact, he concluded, most of the shops had changed. The mall used to be filled with the kind of stores there were run by a disagreeable old man who would monitor your every movement over the rim of his spectacles, and though they always appeared on the cusp of bankruptcy, they were without exception, interesting and unique to Tikorua. But these had mostly been replaced by the ilk that featured glitzy plastic signage and seemingly quirky interiors - though undoubtedly, they were designed by committee in corporate HQ - and, in layout and content, were a facsimile of every other town in Australasia. Indeed, there was little that distinguished it as a New Zealand town anymore, it could just have easily been Kalgoorlie or Wolloomooloo, save for the despicable weather.

At the southern end, even the gorgeous old Williams and Kettles building had been knocked down in favour of a massive tin shed of the same repellent hue that would have made your mother wince and say, "Just how long were you playing in the sun, Nicholas?" Before smearing you in a half-inch layer of Avon lotion.

He entered the store, curious to see what kind of shopping wonderland had necessitated the destruction of a Tikorua landmark. But with visible revilement, he found it simply a warren of low quality tat: TVs emblazoned with names that were a portmanteau of well-known brands, notably Samsonic and Piony, objects of exceptionally esoteric interest like salad spinners and sporks, and enough plastic to build a land-bridge to China. And there was no shelving; you simply fished your purchase from wooden transport bins, as if that would save you three cents on the cost of a nose hair clipper.

"Who would buy this crap?" he wondered aloud, with what he assumed was an appreciable level of rhetorical inflection, only to have an answer suddenly appear from behind him.

"Kiwis will never pay a fair price for something that can be bought a quarter as good for half the cost," the man explained, having detected Nick's foreign origin.

Nick nodded slowly, which he hoped would be interpreted as interest with just a hint of I-have-no-desire-to-discuss-this-any-further. The man was fondling an odd utensil that featured a crank handle connected to both a blade and a whisk, with the apparent intent that it would peel a raw egg while simultaneously whisking it, or possibly scrambling a cooked egg while simultaneously dicing it, or even - in an extraordinary feat of utility - was capable of both.

Promptly Nick exited the store and then continued north in the direction of his bank, as he had need to convert some currency. On his path, he noted with some relief, the survival of the Post Office building, a handsome old structure of exquisite mouldings that had remained empty since Postbank was devoured in one almighty gulp by an Australian conglomerate. Now it had been repainted in colours that were attractive, if somewhat brash by Tikorua standards, and appeared to be a Spanish restaurant, which - despite its abbreviated stature - was named, El Ático.

* * *

At length, he found his bank, realising after some bewilderment that he'd walked past it twice without recognising its revamped corporate livery. He should not nearly have been so surprised; his bank was always launching a push to renew its focus on customer needs, which unfailingly involved the roll-out of new branding and a logo that was 10% more italicised than the last. Indeed, the only thing that ever remained truly consistent with his bank was its woeful customer service.

Unfortunately, this fact had also been forgotten by Nick, and quite unforgivably, he found himself stunned that ten people were queueing for one teller, while the remaining four booths remained unstationed. He longed for his wonderful little bank in Japan, Zen-Nihon-Dai-Ginko, where the customers were invariably outnumbered by pretty young tellers and the officious suits that milled about behind them.

Ahead of him was a young couple who looked to have popped out from a photo-shoot for the type of advertisements that scare young people into staying in school. The male wore a fishnet T-shirt and the hem of his boxers was six inches north of his sagging jeans. He had a tight grip on his girlfriend that implied more ownership than affection, though given her attire it was easy to imagine his concern. She was wrapped in an impossibly short skirt from which, emerged the sort of legs that bought to mind a lumberjack, or quite possibly the lumber. Above, she wore the teeniest singlet that the laws of decency and gravity would allow, and her breasts were so very close to bursting free that every baby within eyeshot was puckering its lips.

Eventually the couple reached the counter where an argument ensued about the lack of money in their account, only the argument was not between the man and the woman with regard to their frivolous purchases or lax budgeting, but between the both of them and the teller, who apparently they held personally responsible for allowing them to withdraw the entire contents of their bank account on one hazy Saturday evening. The teller, for her part, dealt with the issue in a mostly polite and effective manner without once resorting to firearms, which Nick felt showed extraordinary composure. Having further extended their advance on their upcoming payment, she sent them on their way with pamphlets outlining the dangers of debt and advice on budgeting, which they promptly discarded in the general direction of the first bin.

"Good afternoon. How can I help?" the teller asked with a pained smile. She was an elliptical woman in her late thirties who wasn't going to get laugh lines in her bulging cheeks in any hurry, though the wrinkles in her brow were deep and manifold. Nick produced from his wallet a thick wad of 10,000 yen notes and positioned them in a tidy pile equidistant between them.

"I'd like to deposit this," he said, and watched as she mentally calculated just how long this unexpected work would take her.

"Certainly," she finally said. "Do you have your card?"

He edged back a step, gripping his jaw with concern. He hadn't thought of his bank card. At Dai-Ginko he needed only present himself with his pay envelope, and the brightly smiling things would relieve him of it with nothing more than a stamp from his inko.

"No, I'm afraid I don't," he stammered. "I have been out of the country for a sizable period."

Her eyes narrowed as she silently recalculated her time estimate. "Do you know your bank account number?"

He shook his head, immediately overwhelmed with self-disgust.

"OK, we'll need to do this the long way," she heaved, thinking only of the pineapple and cheese sandwich in her lunchbox, which now appeared as a mirage on the distant horizon.

She asked him a series of questions, with his every response initiating an inexplicable expenditure of keyboard activity. His mother's maiden name, a scant five characters required some sixty keystrokes, and his old phone number, a mere nine numerals, apparently necessitated Beethoven's concerto #5, movements one through three. By the time she enquired of his postal address, he didn't dare answer for fear her dancing hands might disengage from her wrists altogether, and scramble for the exit.

Fortunately, without such incident, she finally made his deposit, and issued him a temporary bank card. He examined it for a moment, observing the bank's logo was now very nearly horizontal. "Can I also have $500 in cash," he requested.

"That's a lot of cash. What's it all for?"

"Sundries," he advised, surprised at her inquisition. In Japan, he would never carry less than this. In fact, there were bars where it wouldn't even meet the cover charge. None that Nick visited, of course, that would be obscene, but they existed none-the-less.

"Sun-dreez?" she clarified queerly. "You really needn't carry this much money. You can use your EFTPOS card anywhere for your purchases."

"I prefer cash," he replied adamantly.

"You're much too young to be such a dinosaur," she said at a brash attempt at humour, which Nick considered well over the line. The most brazen comment he'd ever had from his pretty Japanese tellers was a quip regarding the resplendence of his tie, which undoubtedly had seen her formally censured, and quite possibly sent to some kind of gulag.

"Here you go." And she enumerated five red notes on the counter. Then as way of gratitude, she called, "Next."

Nick found that particularly irksome. She had been adept and polite, certainly, but where was the impeccable plastic formality of her Japanese counterparts?

* * *

Nick had one more task that afternoon; he wanted to confirm that Sneakers was working in his father's store, only he didn't wish him to know of it. So he approached Randall's Shoe Mart as circuitously as he could, weaving amongst alfresco seating, and ducking at frequent intervals in the shadow of display stands, before he finally perched himself behind a fountain festooned with gaudy metal scoops. From there, he could observe the store without risk of detection.

Alas, his view of the interior was obscured by the abundant signage, which gravely informed that due to overstocking everything was "up to half price" - though, this was, in fact, normal trading; it wasn't really considered a sale at Randall's unless the discounting exceeded 75%. While he could make out a few customers pawing recklessly at footwear, there was no trace of Sneakers, nor his father for that matter.

Adjacent was a jewellery store, and he briefly considered that he might dash inside to better attempt a lateral incursion, but he knew they'd peg him immediately as a tire-kicker and usher him out the door. After all, he'd backed out of buying the necklace for Tessa he thought might subsidise his contrition, and of course, there was never any ring for the aborted engagement to Yukiko, because he never believed she would want him to go through with it.

Nick eyed with interest, a sandwich board, and realising its potential for concealment, he quickly bolted into position at its rear. From there, he spotted an even superior vantage behind a rubbish bin only metres from the storefront. But as he darted toward it, an ill-considered and largely imperceptible change in the path alignment caused his foot to suddenly twist, which prompted his leg to buckle, necessitated a swivel of his torso, and then a flip of such grandeur that the surrounding crowd were seemingly awestruck, and by the time Nick had recollected his senses, they broke into a round of appreciative applause, though quite possibly this was merely a symptom of the reverberation within his cranium. It was only as he peeled himself from the footpath that he recognised one of the sets of eyes upon him as Sneakers'.

Clearly, there was no other option than to mumble some excuse, and then awkwardly reacquaint himself. It was quite inconceivable he were unrecognised, and thus, any thoughts of escaping into the distance would obviously have been spineless and imprudent. Naturally then, before he knew it, he was already halfway up the street willing his heaving lungs not to rupture.

* * *

Nick had disliked Sneakers; he always thought him a weasel, who was invariably drawn to the path of least resistance; no task was too easy to put off, no complaint was too minor to stifle, no opportunity was too good to squander.

Sneakers was weedy and absurdly short; presumably even growing itself had proven too much effort, though clearly this arrangement had come sometime after the rampant development of his outsized earlobes. His face was narrow, and it tapered back precipitously from his nose, with features that were all sharp and angular. It was as if it'd been hacked from an off-cut of alabaster with considerably more gusto than forethought.

For as long as Nick had known him, he'd been called Sneakers, so it came as quite a shock to learn this was not actually the name with which he'd been christened, rather it was Stephen Randall.

It seemed he gained the nickname in his early years of schooling, when New Zealand was still such a fiercely regulated economy that shoes were a luxury item and Stephen conspicuously owned so many courtesy of his father's store. He was the envy of all his friends, and so was proud to accept the moniker.

But then the tariffs were eased, and once the Chinese imports flooded the market, it seemed that every store in town was peddling cheap footwear. Suddenly, there was no money in high-quality, locally made shoes; suddenly, there was no money in footwear at all. This was when the name, Sneakers, became a taunt; now he was the son of a man who would do anything to flog a pair of overpriced Bata Bullets, but disconnect his phone before he ever refunded a faulty pair. His dad had become an embarrassment, and the store, a shameful burden.

Nick had thought Stephen's father was as detestable as the son, and his judgement had clearly been soured by hearing his mother decry his business practices. So it was a profound surprise when he encountered him at Sneakers' house one balmy summer evening. They were probably only eleven and were sitting on the back porch when Mr Randall appeared clasping four bottles, and handed one to each of them. It was a freshly pumped, Sodastream cola; sickly sweet and overly carbonated, but the bottles were pre-chilled and white with frost, and it was, without question, the single most quenching drink he could remember from his childhood.

Mr Randall was so very different from his store persona; he was casual and almost frivolous. Vince had been teasing Maxwell for wearing a red T-shirt of such vibrancy that he would gravely endanger himself if he neared a field of bulls, when Stephen's father interjected that bulls were not incensed by red at all, as they were profoundly colour-blind. "If anyone was to be charged by a bull," he said with a grin, "it would be you, Vince, because of the way your fancy vest keeps flapping in the wind."

Sneakers dismissed his father's comments as immeasurably dull, but Nick knew that before long, he would be telling anyone who'd listen how bulls were utterly blind to the colour red. As if it were a fact he'd always been aware.

This was the most incensed Nick had ever been at Sneakers; his own father had brought him a beverage not once in his life, and certainly never regaled him with trivial factoids about the visual acuity of bovine. The other boys made it no secret that they thought Nick led an enviable life. That he lived in a huge house and never wanted for anything, and had a father who was all-powerful in Tikorua and made more money, they supposed, than all their families combined. Nick had always rebuffed them, but silently he had never thought to doubt it. But that night, seeing the easy-going relationship between Sneakers and his father, Nick felt more envious than ever he could recall.

HIs antipathy for Sneakers may well have persisted were it not for a surfboard.

They were sixteen by then, and often took advantage of the freedom offered by Nick's car. That weekend they headed out to Mangahume Beach with a tent, a dinghy and a surfboard. Alas, the board was so old that it lumbered through the waves like a drunken whale, and so Nick spent many hours attempting to master it. At some undefined point there developed a sizable disparity between Nick's perception of his ability and his actual one, and after falling from the height of a wave, he had watched for vital moments, somewhat dazed, as his board jetted into the distance.

The rip at Mangahume is widely spoken of; most vocally by those who have misjudged it, and as Nick swam after the board it drifted further and further out. Finally, with his arms burning, he conceded it wiser to head back to the beach, but this was when he realised how impossibly distant it had become.

He did try to swim, but he was already well beyond his reserves of energy, and soon he was bobbing impotently on the surface and gazing with an overwhelming despondency at the wide, empty sea before him. Then even that became too much, and with each wave that washed over him, he would gulp an ever larger mouthful of water and then wearily flail back to the surface. He watched as the distant beach finally slipped below the horizon and this should have been the end of his story, were it not for the unexpected grip of an arm about his chest, and the dim recollection of being dragged into the dinghy. It was Sneakers.

His friends had been asleep when Nick had crept out to catch the first waves, so he wasn't even aware of anyone else in the water. How Sneakers had spotted him struggling and paddled out in time to save him was nothing short of miraculous, and Nick did not limit his gratitude to words.

Whenever possible, he sought to be there for Sneakers, assisting him with homework, partnering for assignments and pressuring him to study for tests. And Sneakers took to it well; he was getting his best grades ever and with his newfound confidence, he could finally expel his fears that he would end up at his father's shop. Instead, he revealed to the surprise of everyone, he planned to attend Victoria University and study law.

Everything fell into place for him, he qualified for an "A" Bursary by 3/8 of one percent, and was accepted into the course. He was even allocated a room in flash new student digs on Dixon St.

Nick hardly saw him after that. He had his own life at Massey, after all, and as he grew more involved with Tessa, his old friends seemed so very distant in locus and pertinence. But then he heard a whiff of a rumour from his mother. Naturally, it was rather opaque due to the number of intermediaries involved in its transmission, but he was sufficiently troubled to coax his car into attempting the two-hour drive.

He soon discovered that Sneakers had heartily embraced university life, but his extra-curricular activities were swallowing the fullness of his time. He had become devoutly religious, insomuch as he would partake of the blood of Christ each and every night, and then spend several hours kneeling in prayer over the downstairs lavatory.

Also, as way of charity, he would sleep with any ugly woman that would have him. In point of fact, he had been so selfless and dogged in pursuit of this lofty endeavour that his clinic had announced with unsuppressed glee that he'd acquired a myriad of sexually transmitted diseases yet to be classified by science, and offered to take him on a conference circuit.

Even by Nick's middling academic standards, Sneakers' underperformance was alarming. "What about your studies?"

He gave a smirk, and then quipped, "Lectures are just to fill the gap between recovering from a hangover and getting into a serious drinking session."

Nick tried to laugh, in fact, he tried to see the humour in all of his ribald and scatological anecdotes, but he couldn't. So much energy had been expended by them both, and all of it was going the same way as last night's ale.

"Jesus, Sneakers, is this all you aspire to?" Nick screamed when he could acquiesce his dissolution no longer. "To be the loser you most dread? Rotting out the last of your days peddling shoes from your father's store?"

Nick grabbed his keys and left. He hadn't meant to be so harsh, but he couldn't apologise. He knew he must deliver the fillip to snap Sneakers back to reality.

19

Tuesday

He woke again with a start. His face was damp, and his body shook. The dream, already burdened by fickle lighting and ineffectual dialogue, was becoming much worse.

He climbed from the bed and paced about the house in search of medicine to aid his sleep, but all he could find where horrid tipples like sherry, Drambuie and other liquors of such brazen colour that it was safest to assume they were poison. So he grabbed another bottle from his father's wine cellar - the slaying of his progeny almost complete - and retired to the lounge to commence his anaesthetisation.

At shortly after six, the light streaming through the lounge windows terminated his last attempt at slumber, and so, enfeebled by a hangover, he trudged to the kitchen for coffee and sufficient tranquilisers to immobilise a horse.

He lacked the vim to go out that morning. In fact, he lacked the energy to do much of anything at all, and so he sank deep into the couch and stared blankly at the lounge wall. It was adorned in a paper that was rubescent and abstract, but in the way that clouds always take the shape of cartoon characters, the pattern appeared to Nick as petals falling from a wilted red rose, and his brain having thus decoded the secret, could never then relinquish it. His mother had chosen the pattern when it was the height of popularity for a week in the mid-eighties. It was unquestionably the most brash decision of her life, and despite it becoming a hideous eyesore within the flip of a calendar, she had defended it ever since. "Well I like it," she would pout to any detractor.

The TV remote was almost within reach and he briefly considered the entertainment options it presented, but quickly concluded that his current view would undoubtedly prove the more absorbing. And indeed, it did. He sat virtually immobile until the approach of midday when he was teased by the imagined aroma of food, and so after much deliberation over the culinary delights awaiting consumption in the fridge, he opted to head out.

He detoured first to the Whakanoa Cemetery where his grandmother was interred. It was surprisingly attractive and serene, and in marked contrast to the town's parks, well-tended. He walked down the central path surveying the rows of gravestones like ashen soldiers in stoic march to the ever-after, and with unexpected ease, found his way to his grandmother's plot. There were no flowers there, and the grass had grown long where it was beyond reach of the mower. Tugging at the overgrowth, Nick wondered if he had been the last to visit.

Hers was a simple stone emblazoned with her name, Mary Manda Keir, and a few scant details of her life. There was a quote too, from her final letter to her sister: "I have known both love and hate, but I have always loved much more than I have hated, and for that I consider my life triumphant."

Nick had adored his grandmother. She was so different from her daughter - his mother - both in personality and appearance. She was as tough and stocky as an All Black prop. Together with his grandfather, they had worked a farm for forty years, before she retired to town upon his passing, well before Nick could ever know him.

Certainly, she spoilt him as grandmothers always do, though she would not tolerate any poor behaviour either, but unlike his mother's sparse repertoire, she was infinitely creative in her admonishments. If she caught you using your spoon to ladle hot milk from your cup, she might say, "Now we don't drink from a teaspoon do we? That's what sets us apart from the Zorgan peoples of Ursula Minor. Which explains why we have split the atom and explored the solar system, and they are still living in igloos constructed from blocks of frozen phlegm, endlessly preoccupied with cleaning up spilt milk."

She loved her rugby too. Nick had never the slightest interest in sport, not least because his every limb lacked the muscle memory of a goldfish, but she taught him to love the game of the gods.

Once, she took him to the season final for Taranaki, a crunch match that meant promotion to the first division or another year languishing in the second. By half-time, they were 38-nil down and Nick remarked they might as well not come out for the second, which immediately made her serious and resolute. "Rugby," she said, "is like life, you've got to give it everything, because eighty minutes is all you get. And this is never truer than when you're facing the arse-end of a hiding, because that's when they least expect you to make a comeback."

They were truly meritorious words and perhaps if they had been made within earshot of the team, they might have affected the outcome, but alas, it ended as nothing short of a massacre. In point of fact, Taranaki didn't make the first division for another three years. But when they did, Nick was there with his grandmother.

She died suddenly. An "acute cerebral haematoma" was the cause, they said. Not a phrase you would normally expect a twelve year old to recall, but naturally it was indelibly etched in his head. Of course, knowing it did not imply he had any comprehension of its meaning. In fact, to him, it was simply an "unexpected absence." One day he'd be dropping by her house after school, as he always did for milky tea and biscuits, and the next, she would not answer the door despite his pounding and implorement. He did not get to say goodbye, nor was he taken to see her body, which he was told, would be too upsetting. He only had the most vivid memory of being sat in a chair, and spoken at by his mother and other adults from on high, and this phrase being told to him again and again, "acute cerebral haematoma." They thought it odd that he did not show any emotion, but he was truly without emotion, not because he didn't love his grandmother deeply, because he did, nor because he could not express his emotion, he tended not to, but this was not the reason. Rather, it was that the whole thing was simply absurd. Did they really expect him to believe this warm, vivacious pillar had simply been plucked from all existence and he was to behave like she had never been? No, this was not real and he would not propagate their farcical charade by acting as if it were so.

Obviously, his parents would never tolerate such a contrary viewpoint, particularly with his grandmother's neighbours calling frantically about his peculiar visits, and soon - at his mother's insistence - he was meeting regularly with a counsellor.

His name was Timothy Minnich and he insisted Nick call him Tim, which he never did. He was a pensive, deliberate man who would ask odd questions and then pause in lengthy reflection as Nick responded with what he imagined he was expected to say. Dr Minnich would then sermonise how one should respond to such questions, and if one did, what it would mean. To Nick, it seemed a very odd way to resolve the situation. He appreciated, of course, that the counsellors job was to "counsel," as pouring out one's emotions was reputedly quite cathartic, but to discuss his grandmothers departure in such final terms made him feel quite ill and he could never bring himself to do so. As it happened, several months had since passed and it had dawned on him quite independently that his grandmother's unexpected absence was actually quite permanent, and thus, his counsellor could announce his success, and the whole sorry episode came to a close.

* * *

His mother, as best as Nick could determine, hated growing up on the farm. Presumably it was mucky and grafting, and altogether below her. So it was probably not surprising that at such a young age, she moved into town to marry a man of impeccable standing. It seemed she had the same such notion for her children too, judging by her reaction when she once learnt Nick was to date the daughter of the local bank manager.

It was, he would guess, in his seventeenth year, and via the intractable grapevine that entangles every small town, the news had filtered back to his mother. Nick couldn't imagine why she was so very excited, given that she generally greeted reports of his going out with hostility and suspicion.

"Why are you acting so odd?" he enquired. "It's just a date."

"Don't be so humble, Nicholas. She comes from a very good family."

"That's what this is about? What makes you think I would care about such a thing?"

By this, she was utterly flummoxed, not by the brashness of the remark, but rather that she patently could not comprehend how another person could put so little value on something she had spent her life coveting, emulating and ultimately acquiring by way of marriage. Her husband was nearly two decades her senior and their marriage proved far from perfect, but she was well respected and widely spoken of, and was that not the most important thing?

Of course, the date proved a fizzer. So incensed at his mother's suggestion his intentions might be more strategic than hormonal, Nick sabotaged the evening, quite oblivious to the outrageous flirtation of his date, who had her own nefarious motives. He thus missed the best opportunity of his young life when she lamented the constriction of her brassiere and he suggested she opt for a more ample size in future.

XX

21.203: The Role of Mao Zedong in the Chinese Diaspora

Despite the years, Nick still missed Tessa. Enough that he fought to flush from his mind, her every unscripted appearance. He missed touching her in the darkness as she slept, and waking with her at his side. He missed the way she blinked whenever she tried to wink, and how she would suck the lug of her spectacles while lost in thought. He missed the cleft of her buttocks and the arching of her breasts. He missed the timbre of her voice and the scent of her hair.

There was an ineffable longing too, that would often gnaw at him as he lay in the darkness, for all the moments they had shared, and which he would gladly gift his every possession to relive, to feel again as he had felt then; their first kiss beneath a blanket in the rain, the night they held each other in their new flat, the blissful day at the Taihape fair, and their treasured intimacies that had shed all trace of sexuality and now seemed to glow only as an ethereal manifestation of their bonding.

But perhaps the days he missed the most, where their relationship felt the most natural and real, were their lazy Sundays.

It was the one day a week that Tessa rarely helped at the restaurant, and so they would linger in bed long into the morning, sometimes cuddling, sometimes frolicking. In this languid state, she could so easily be dissuaded from her study and lured to a local Chinese restaurant to engage in Yum-cha.

If you are not an aficionado, Yum-cha literally means to drink tea, but imbibing the beverage is only an aside to the more important task of eating such vast quantities of food that the departure of a large table of diners will frequently upset the orientation of the earth.

The problem is that you don't order from a menu, which would permit the pre-determination of a rational amount of sustenance for one's party. Rather, you select dishes from those presented by an endless stream of tray-bearing waitresses. As a consequence, you are forever ordering just one more plate of hagao, never entirely sure if it'll be the dish that leads to a doctor gravely informing your family that in all his career, he has never witnessed such a massive intestinal explosion.

Naturally, some dishes were ordered because they were so loved, beef cheungfan, egg-tarts, coconut buns and siumai, whereas others seemingly just appeared, and no one could ever quite pinpoint the culprit. Utmost in this category were phoenix claws, which was never a sufficiently euphemistic term for chicken feet that Nick could suppress his gag reflex.

But it wasn't just the food, it was also the company, as invariably, they were joined by an elderly gentleman known to his peers as Shan-Feng, though Tessa always addressed him as Yi-Baak, meaning Second Uncle.

Uncle Shan was not actually related at all, but an old friend of the family. He was particularly close to Tessa, and the only Chinese outside her generation that she trusted enough to introduce to Nick.

He was born in Shanghai in 1921, and old enough to remember being treated as a second-class citizen by the English who controlled the city's trade; it was humiliating but he could bear it. Then in 1937, he saw his beautiful city bombed and overrun by the Japanese who showed only contempt for the locals. It was difficult, but he kept his head down long enough to see them ejected. Finally, from the ruins, he started a manufacturing company and soon grew quite fabulously wealthy.

But in 1966 came the Cultural Revolution and he was stripped of everything he had worked for, his character was impugned, and he was ostracised as an enemy of the people. All at the hands of his own countrymen. This was much more than he could bear, and he fled to Hong Kong.

When the revolution burnt itself out, there came the reconciliation and he was invited back without fear of reprisal. He returned only to testify against those who wronged him, and then immigrated to New Zealand, tired of the vacillations of one-party politics.

Smugly, Nick remarked how comfortable he must feel in the stable country he'd adopted. To which, Shan commenced a narrative of the crippled Chinese man who was shot in cold blood on a Wellington street earlier in the century. The murderer was railing against the yellow peril, and his actions found widespread sympathy amongst the populace, and even now, there were those who still revered him and published his hateful propaganda.

Nick, who had never heard of the incident, could only nod sagely.

"I am happy here," Shan said, "but if I've learnt one thing it's to never get too comfortable. As open-minded and accepting as Kiwis generally are, when I hear the platforms of some politicians I am reminded of the prejudice that lurks in all men."

He spoke three languages, but his English owed more to reading than usage, and as such was cautious and halting, so when he was excited, he would often fall back to Chinese, and Tessa would join him. Nick would then find himself isolated from the conversation, his own Chinese skills much too poor to keep up. Shan was humorous in English, but judging by his girlfriend's laughter, in Chinese, he was a riot. Tessa too, would become different; she had gestures and facial expressions that she never used in English, and somehow she seemed lighter and happier, and was seldom afflicted by the furrowed brow that was such a marked feature of her interactions with Nick.

Nick's admiration for Shan often ventured dangerously close to veneration. He had seen the worst in both his enemies and his friends, but he never held a grudge; he had experienced some of the darkest days in the history of modern China, but still maintained an indefatigable happiness, and though he had never married, he understood so much of love.

XXI

24.261 Application of Nonlinear Dynamics to Human Dance

It was quite absurd, really quite absurd, but apparently only Nick could see it.

Tessa had just returned from the restaurant, and she sat herself at the end of the bed where he was reading and placed a hand on his knee. He drew a weary breath, expecting her to immediately announce she must work all weekend due to a large booking, ill staff, or some such mercantile maelstrom, but despite the voluminous inhalation, he still found her news left him gasping.

It seemed that her parents had accepted an invitation on her behalf to attend the science faculty ball. She would be in the company of a third year student, whose family - still residing in China - were old friends.

"Of course, you refused?" Nick howled, once his lungs had sufficiently reflated.

"Naturally. I said it was completely out of the question because I was already shacking up with some white guy, just as they'd always told me not to."

"I think you're being sarcastic."

"I think you may be right."

"Well, when is this date?"

"As I said, it's not a date, it's an arranged meeting."

"Uh huh, and what date is this non-date?"

"On the 14th. But week Friday he's coming to my parents' restaurant so we can meet."

"So it's actually two dates?" Nick confirmed while massaging an aggrieving knot beneath his brow.

"Looks like I can't slip anything past you, Sherlock."

"Do you enjoy torturing me like this?"

She sighed, and then presented a miniature shrug. "What part of this is fun for me? Do you think I want to go out with some fresh-off-the-boat Chinese boy?"

"I guess not," he conceded.

"Though..."

"What?"

"Well, it's just that Mum gave me $800 for a new dress." And she pulled the money from her purse and brandished it before him with a laugh.

It irritated Nick how nonplussed she was about it all. Only he recognised the risks it presented their relationship, and on this point - let the record show - he was proven correct. Just not for any of the reasons he'd imagined.

* * *

Surprisingly, they did not argue about her upcoming ball date at all. Though, Nick made the odd sarcastic remark, a few accusatory assertions, several disparaging comments, the occasional acrimonious retort, and sporadic vitriolic asides, but other than this, his anger remained unexpressed.

That was until the day of the ball. She had asked for privacy while she readied, and he found himself pacing about their flat growing increasingly distraught. When he could finally take no more, he burst into their bedroom to find her arranging the items of her maternally sponsored shopping spree: her new dress, jewellery and a set of lingerie.

He snatched the lacy garments. What more proof did he need of her debauched intentions? "Just what the fuck do you have planned for tonight?" he screamed, stabbing at her limply with the evidence.

"Nick," she implored, "nothing is going to happen. I only bought those because I want to feel beautiful."

It initiated the bitterest argument of their relationship, and at its climax, as her boyfriend, he demanded, he insisted, and he pleaded she not go. But obviously, she would never agree. "How much embarrassment would it cause for my parents," she exclaimed repeatedly.

But Nick could no longer stomach that defence, so he removed himself to the lounge and ruminated about a crack he'd never previously noticed at the base of the fireplace, concocting elaborate fantasies of the fate that would befall him when it collapsed.

As she left, she asked, "How do I look?"

To which - if you ever find yourself in a situation where your girlfriend is the most delectable you've ever seen her and she's heading out on a date with another man - you will discover there is no suitable response.

* * *

Nick hadn't intended to go out that night at all. He'd planned to take the moral high ground, to eat leftovers and then study late into the night, dutifully awaiting her return. But whenever he thought of her with him, it felt very much like someone was inserting a heavy set of forceps into his abdomen and slowly twisting to and fro. Then his mind would descend on the lingerie, and he would picture the scoundrel easing her onto a bed, sliding up her dress, and gazing upon those sexy under-things, and the forceps would grip ever tighter and twist ever more.

He desperately wanted to jump in his car and drag her home, but he had scant hope they'd allow him into the hall on any of the diaphanous pretences he could conjure, and thus he arrived at the only option available to him, alcohol.

Nick loved pubs, as much as he loved drinking, and he quite detested drinking. He much preferred weed, where he could lose himself in introspective release, unlike alcohol which delivered the same disconnect as a cricket bat to the temple. Alcohol's only redeeming quality, in Nick's estimation, was that at least it made visiting a pub somewhat more bearable. It was his single most despised academic obligation; guzzling warm beer from cracked plastic tumblers, only to then, promptly dispense it into the urinal, whereupon, he strongly suspected, it was whisked away in shiny copper piping, injected with carbon dioxide from captured flatulence, and pumped back to the bar for serving to unwary patrons, thus completing the cycle.

And it wasn't just the awful beer, he loathed it being so loud there was never any conversation, just the bellowed detailing of the presumed depravities of each passing girl. And he abhorred the ineffectual lighting that impeded reading, and the carpet that always stank of spilt beer and leaked bodily fluids, and the dancing, he most especially hated the dancing. And not just because he was unspeakably crap at it.

Nick headed to the Albert, the student's local, where age was irrelevant as long as you wore a scarf. It was a pub as long as it was featureless. At one end, a DJ squinting from beneath his beanie, pumped out The Cure while a hundred bodies throbbed in mindless unison. Toward the middle, indestructible furniture of ferrum and formica suspended the cheerless mass of hard-core drinkers, but beyond this, it was dim and mercifully empty. Nick couldn't see anyone he knew, or at least cared to talk with, so he grabbed a jug of suspiciously coloured ale and retired to a distant table.

Years earlier he'd read a detestable book that promised the truest ever insight into the human psyche. Nick had ploughed through to the final page with the same fascination that one is drawn to a festering wound, whereupon he dismissed it as the work of an infinitely spiteful man that had undoubtedly been spurned by all womankind. He then deposited it into the library returns bin with the sort of ceremony one normally reserved for soiled nappies, and had not wasted another thought on it since.

Until that night. Now it seemed he could not shake its perverse message from his mind. In short, and frankly, that was the only level at which he could recall it, the author had postulated that in matters of the heart, humans are quite faithless and will only act in their immediate self-benefit. Thus the trust we reserve for our lover is purely illusionary, a mental construct that allows us to function without the burden of crippling jealousy.

Nick hated himself for having read the book with such relish; he hated himself for letting the words so poison his mind, and he hated himself for it making him so mistrustful.

Well into his third jug and a deeply engrossing monologue of his despicable existence, Nick lifted his gaze and caught the eye of a girl, whose hair was clipped into the cutest little bob. She immediately sat down beside him, and then asked if she could take a seat.

"Sure," he replied, strongly suspecting that a negative response would not have changed the outcome.

"You look troubled," she advised, as if it were a deficit in his presentation that she could effortlessly resolve, like an upturned collar or a disastrous choice of nasal jewellery.

"It's been a long day," he replied with disinterest, but apparently she misinterpreted his intentions and thus invited him to divulge.

He reacted with a groan - though this was partly an attempt to forestall the arrival of a belch - and slowly inspected her features; like her haircut, her nose was trim and bobbed, and her lips were slender and discrete. It was only her wide, engaging eyes that betrayed the symmetry, as she peered up at him with such empathy.

Suddenly remembering himself, he blurted, "Look, I wouldn't want there to be any confusion; I kind of... have a girlfriend."

"That's OK," she replied with an elaborate wink. "I'm a nun on the run, myself. But I won't tell if you won't."

"Nun on the run? I like that."

"Yes, it seems I'm quite the poet."

It is difficult to articulate precisely what was discussed after that - it was incredibly fucking loud after all - suffice to say, as the night wore on their body language grew ever more incriminating.

XXII

86.283: Effective Treatment of Subcutaneous Haematomas

His first awareness was the intense phosphorescence of the morning sun, which was woefully unshielded by his eyelids. This was followed quickly by the realisation that at some indistinct point the previous evening, an unknown party had elected to hammer a six-inch nail into the base of his forehead. The agony of this occupied him for several minutes, until other bodily maintenance functions slowly came online, and with it, the deduction that his drink of choice had clearly been liquid cement, which had now solidified heavily in his bladder. This would also serve to explain why his tongue was altogether too large for his mouth and his throat felt to have been excoriated by shingle.

The next series of awarenesses were sudden: unfamiliar odours, his cold naked skin, and from very near, an unrecognised snore.

'What the fuck?' he silently queried, staring up at the ceiling, where a drooping Morrissey poster hung precariously from peeling tape. 'Where the hell am I?' Of course, he immediately requested of his brain a detailed summation of the previous evening, to which it responded by issuing a vengeful surge that reverberated through his skull with enough violence to dislodge several teeth.

Casting his eyes about, he took note of a pine desk bolted to the opposite wall, upon which sat a stack of shiny textbooks, and concluded this was a student hostel room. Then, once consciousness had fully taken hold, he peered back over his shoulder to find he was squeezed into a single bed with another. He slipped from under the sheet, breathlessly uttering, "Shit, I hope I didn't..." And as his foot touched the floor, it fell upon something distinctly squishy, which upon investigation, proved to be a soiled prophylactic. He cursed vehemently, before muffling himself with his palm.

The girl was visible only by the top of her scalp, having buried herself beneath a sheet, which ballooned with her every exhalation. Nick dithered for several minutes before his curiosity overwhelmed him, and he gingerly drew back her shroud. Surprisingly, even mid-snore, she was exceedingly attractive. Way out of his league. He had been drunk, he reasoned, but clearly, she had been drunker.

He pulled a duvet over her shoulders and then crept about the floor gathering his jacket and shirt, and at length, found his underwear hanging from the windowsill. But at this point, it became obvious that his pants were MIA. He snuck a look under the covers, beneath the bed and even - most optimistically - in the desk drawers. Then, after an analysis of his underwear trajectory, he leaned desperately out the window. There he spied them, four floors below, clinging to a bush.

He dressed himself, sans pants, and crept toward the door, but was seized by guilt for his impromptu departure. Grabbing a notepad from her desk, he began to write, but each time he considered a follow up to "Dear..." he was struck again by the pain behind his eyeballs, which was a sharp stab with background notes of bludgeoning, implying the use of an axe or possibly some kind of mace. Finally, giving up hope of recollection, he rifled through her documents until he found one addressed to "Petulia Monroe." Petulia?!

Dear Petulia,

Thanks for a wonderful night.

N

He edged open the door and peered through the crack. Confirming the hallway was empty, he bolted for the open lift and bashed at the ground floor button. It ignored his remonstrations for several interminable seconds and then finally started to close, but between the gap breezed a girl who looked so very chipper and healthful that it instilled in Nick an immediate desire to vomit.

"Morning," he finally said, in a valiant attempt at cheerful.

She smiled briefly in recognition, but then her lips suddenly pursed. "Ooh," she winced, her eyes reflecting her concern. "That's a scorching case of passion purpura you have."

The nausea was coming on in waves, and he was presently surfing the leading edge of a sizable crest, and thus, he could only stare at her weakly, imploring a translation. In due course, she gestured to a point on his neck, and when he touched it, he could feel the tenderness of the mark left by his paramour. Silently he cursed himself again, before zipping his jacket to the collar.

At level two, the lift rang out with such a din that Nick could not suppress a groan. Issuing a sympathetic smile, the girl exited, and as the door closed, she said, "You know you're not wearing any pants, right?"

Mercifully, the ground floor was empty. He rescued the last of his clothing, and commenced the longest walk home.

* * *

By the time he arrived at their flat, his apology to Tessa was well formulated and extensively polished. It was contrite and reasoned, though he had pencilled in a lot of begging as well. It was at this point, however, he discovered she was not home, which threw him into such a frenzy that any thoughts of his guilt were immediately quashed. Had she been out all night?

Nick tried to calm himself, but the voices of sanity soon became but muffled screams, and he cast himself headfirst into a pit of demonic splendour.

He plodded through the house, searching each room and investigating every clue. The washing machine was empty, her toothbrush was dry, her pyjamas did not reveal an odour of recent usage, the bed... Oh God, the bed! He ripped away the covers but it, too, was devoid of unexpected indentations or scandalous staining. Where could she be? Was she still with him? His jealousy gripped at his insides so tightly that he thought he might vomit. In fact, he decided, he would vomit, and he progressed in a surprisingly orderly manner to the bathroom, whereupon he expunged the remnants of the previous evening's revelry, plus a decent serving of Tuesday morning's Weetbix.

Once he'd returned to vertical, he redoubled his pacing, but he could bear the uncertainty no longer. He grabbed the telephone and dialled the home of Tessa's parents. Her mother answered, and in his most polite and sober voice, he asked, "Is Tessa Chou there? This is Nicholas Fairfield, her lab partner."

Tessa soon arrived, and in a hushed voice, she uttered, "Nick, is that you?"

"Of course, it's me. Where did you sleep?"

"Here. Why are you calling me at home?"

"Because I was surprised you didn't come back. Did anything happen?"

"Look, we'll talk when I get home. I have to go. OK?" And she hung up.

Nick sunk into the couch and replayed the conversation in his head, trying to precisely match her words and intonation, analysing the truth and meaning in each of her lines. Where did she sleep? She had slept at her parents, which meant there was no way she could have slept with him. But perhaps she had gone somewhere first and then went home? No, because if she got in late her parents would have been furious. So is it possible that nothing happened at all? That was the only reasonable conclusion, he assured himself, and experienced a brief moment of serenity, before he began to obsess over how she'd fobbed him off. She never answered his question whether anything had happened; in fact, she had specifically advised there was something they needed to talk about. Now he felt even worse than before he'd called.

He gazed at the clock, calculated how soon she would return, and then ruminated how to occupy himself in the meantime. After considering all his options, he concluded that without doubt, further vomiting was his best recourse.

One of his favourite book series as a teen was Baz Kiefer, which chronicled the exploits of an American detective known as the human lie detector. It had appealed immeasurably to Nick who considered himself an excellent reader of human expression, right up to the point that he had his first girlfriend and realised he actually had no idea what was going on in her mind at all.

Most importantly, Kiefer had outlined the sixteen clues that reveal a lie, and while Nick bided the return of Tessa, he attempted to recount them all:

\- Pupil dilation

\- Increased blinking

\- Excessive perspiration

\- Clearing or lubricating the throat

\- Touching one's face

\- Parroting or paraphrasing a question

And that, alas, was as much as he could recall. It annoyed him greatly that word-for-word, he could recite the abhorrent treatise on the faithlessness of humanity, but his mind had discarded something as useful as this.

* * *

It was well into the afternoon when she returned. He met her at the door, and then shadowed her into the bedroom.

"So what do you need to tell me?" he asked with an even timbre and deliberate coolness.

"What do I need to tell you? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. What happened last night?"

"What happened? He took me to the ball; it was a pleasant evening."

"And what else?" His Baz Kiefer impersonation required he contain his anger, but already his grip on it was slipping. "What aren't you telling me?"

She edged back half a step. "Why are you right up in my face?"

"Because I can read the deception in your eyes," he announced loftily.

"Aaargh," she groaned, and then perched herself at the foot of the bed and entwined her arms. "It was nothing."

"If it was nothing, then there's no reason not to tell me."

She gazed toward her violin and gave half a shrug.

"Just tell me," he implored. "So I can deal with it."

"Fine. Do you really want to know?"

"Of course, I do!"

"We kissed. It was nothing," she said, her eyes looking up into his.

"Nothing?" His face suddenly flushed and he could taste the bile inching up his throat. "Where exactly did he kiss you?"

"In the Volvo."

"In your what?" he screeched.

"The Volvo, his car. It was when he dropped me off; we just sort of... kissed."

"Well, was it a peck on the cheek, or the sort thing a Frenchman might do?"

She paused, carefully considering her words. "I guess it was more of the latter."

Nick staggered for a moment. There was an odour to the room, which he soon realised was his own perspiration. It wasn't his usual scent, but a foul muskiness. "And did he touch you anywhere? Did he grab your breasts?"

"No. He's not like that."

"Well how long did you kiss for?"

"A few minutes, I suppose."

"A few minutes? How many minutes? Five? Ten?"

"I don't know, I wasn't timing it."

"So then what happened?"

"That was when my parents' porch light came on, so I said I had to go."

Swallowing a bitter mouthful, he lurched from the room and out the front door. Then he gulped at the air and collapsed into a small ball on the patio. He kept presaging her appearance to beg his forgiveness, but she never did, and so he occupied himself with fantasies of packing his bags, spewing the most vile torrent of invective he could conjure and leaving her a broken, weeping mass in his wake.

When she did finally appear, she said simply, "You want some dinner?"

Then they sat on opposite sides of their small table, wordlessly gnawing on leftovers, and avoiding each other's gaze.

From that day, he was endlessly preoccupied by her faithlessness. He had broken her down so masterfully and extracted the truth so adroitly that he could actually visualise the incident in fully sadistic Technicolor, which he found his brain was wont to do when left unoccupied. But what had happened had quickly ceased to bother him. It was just a kiss, after all, he'd told himself innumerable times. No, what concerned him most, was what might have been. If her parents had been out, might she have invited him inside? Would she have slipped from her clothes and lured him into bed? Would she have drawn him upon her to make love? Would she have enjoyed it more than she did with him?

Perhaps their aborted dalliance had left her wanting. What if she encountered him on campus? Might she entreat him into the dark depths of the university library to rekindle the moment? In the privacy of the seldom-visited agricultural reference section, might she let him have her?

Every time these fears came to him, his stomach would churn and desperately, he would wish to interrogate her for motive. He would often lay awake scripting labyrinthine conversational threads that would bring them around to a topic whereby his accusations of infidelity would seem natural and unabrupt, but then he would remind himself how much worse his own betrayal had been and force his anxieties to the back of his mind.

But sometimes it would completely engulf him, and then there was only one thing that would assuage his torment. To coax her into bed and fuck her until she could take it no more. Until she was writhing in agony and whimpering in pleasure. Until she was begging him to stop but urging him deeper. Until her eyes narrowed and her breath shortened and her skin oozed and her loins quivered. Until she knew that only he could make her feel like this.

XXIII

22.305: The Dubious Seductive Benefits of Japanese Literature

When Nick wasn't dwelling on Tessa's propensity to philander, he was racking himself with guilt over his own drunken liaison, or fretting that she might stumble onto the details. Anytime his mind was idle, it would obsessively recount the evening and calculate the likelihood of every event that might effect his downfall. Obviously, with so much of it obscured by an impenetrable wall of murk, there was significant latitude for rumination and repine.

But at that moment, he wasn't thinking about it at all. He was rushing across the concourse to make his first class and the urgency served to fully occupy his cranium. In fact, he had been scarcely troubled by it all morning, though if one was to be persnickety, it was still only 8:56 and he'd ignored his bleating alarm until a quarter after eight. It had briefly popped into his consciousness as he drove out, but he had quickly pushed it from his purview. Only to discover in the void, a lurid depiction of Tessa's betraying kiss.

He checked his watch again and cursed himself for his lateness.

15.107 was his only business course, an Introduction to Computing Technology, which he hoped would curtail his instinctual revulsion to an object that doesn't whimper when it is booted, and fails yet to die when it is re-booted, opting instead to perversely burst back into life. Surprisingly the course was proceeding very well. At that point in time - the foothills of Moore's law - technology was still prohibitively expensive, and thus the tech masters were quite reluctant to allow the riffraff to grope their beautiful machines. Instead, the class would examine crudely drawn pictures of computer screens and try to infer what might happen when something within was toggled or pressed, which proved not entirely dissimilar to Nick's early forays into pornography.

The business faculty was housed in all the newer blocks - clearly that was where the money was - with lecture halls so capacious that the seating stretched up into the heavens, and the professor was just a tiny speck in the distance with all the engagement of an ant performing card tricks. When Nick arrived at a hair before nine, he was forced to clamber to the back, wheezing as he ascended into the rarefied air. At length, he found a seat and was probing his bag for his computer cartoons when a hand gripped his knee. Jerking his head, his eyes fell upon an unmistakable face. Freshly showered and made up, she was even more beautiful than his sleepy brain had allowed her.

"Petulia?" He sure wasn't going to forget that name in a hurry.

Her pretty mouth pouted indignantly. "Nicholas. Why did you leave so early?"

Nicholas? Apparently, her recollection of the evening was much clearer than his. And why hadn't he recognised her from his class? Granted it was criminally overpopulated, but he imagined someone like her would have stood out.

"Uh, study group," he stammered, oddly impressed with his burgeoning skills in truth displacement.

"Hmmm," she said, not fully convinced, and yet her hand moved from his knee to the inside of his leg. "So did you give that cheating girlfriend of yours the boot, like you said you would?"

Christ, what had he told her? "Uh, it's not that simple..."

"Hey, I'm happy to blow off my classes this afternoon if you want to talk about it." And her hand inched northward just in case there was any question of the true agenda.

He stole another glance. Boy, was she ever gorgeous. It was a constant surprise to Nick whenever he caught the attention of an attractive girl. He had always thought himself rather bookish and dorky, a fact that had been readily confirmed by his friends, who were always keen to weigh in on such matters. He could never quite decide then, whether adulthood had mellowed his features, or if there had simply been some universal downgrading by womankind of their expectations of men. But it was one thing to be flattered, it was yet another to turn down the sort of woman he could never imagine he could have.

"I have to go," he suddenly announced, leaping up. Then he awkwardly made his way down the stairs, clutching his bag before himself to hide the evidence of his aborted intimacy.

* * *

It was later that day, while ambling to his Japanese lecture, that Nick spied the distant figure of David in wait. He couldn't imagine what Dave might have to say, but at the very least, there was the fact that Nick had rebuffed every one of the last hundred requests they meet for lunch or beer. Quickly, Nick dashed behind a pillar and then fell into step amongst a group of foreign students babbling wildly in a guttural Eastern European tongue. As they departed, he swung behind the chancellor's office and bolted around the back to appear, undetected, at the side entrance of the Humanities building. He was congratulating himself on his brilliance, when the route before him was blocked.

"Dave!"

"Nicholas..."

"I've been meaning to call you..." Nick blurted.

"Uh huh. Let's cut the shit, shall we?"

"What do you..."

"I can't believe you could do that to Tessa."

"How did you know?"

"Fuck!" Dave growled through his teeth. "I didn't until now."

"So how did you even hear about it?"

"I have an old schoolmate in Wally Dee..."

"And he knows her?"

"What? No. His girlfriend has a tutor."

"Who's her friend?" Nick queried, his brow furrowing.

"No! She has a flatmate and her sister's best friend is a study partner of that girl."

"Oh, I might have guessed. But what made you think it was me?"

"Because apparently the guy was charming her with Japanese poetry, and you're the only one I know who's stupid enough to think that might be sexy."

"Komachi is surprisingly underrated..." Nick pouted.

David rolled his eyes. "So what happened?"

"It's a long story..."

"Oh please, people always say these things have a long story, but in my experience the relevant bit is always rather short."

"It all started when she went to a ball with another guy..."

"So you decided to cheat on her?"

"No, of course not, though there were a series of minor peripheral decisions that culminated in me cheating on her."

"But Tessa loves you like crazy. She must've had her reasons."

"She did, just not ones I could accept." Nick heaved and then told David of the suitor that Tessa's parents had chosen her, and of the night of the ball, including, with significant and eye-watering detail, the sexy knickers. Then he spoke of the bar, and the horrid, mind-bending beer, and the awful sexual ecstasy that followed.

David listened without comment, other than to grimace or nod when it seemed most apt. In the silence that followed, he put his weight on his front foot and stared at the ground as if he were about to lean into a drop kick. "The sexy knickers were well out-of-line," he finally conceded. "Though, it doesn't even begin to forgive your behaviour, obviously."

"I know, and I hate myself for it. What kind of a person am I?"

"Just human," Dave replied, his scowl now fully receded. "A human with poor impulse control."

"So what should I do?"

"Beats me. I'm not Oprah."

"But I have to tell her, right?"

"Oh no, you don't. I may not know much about women, but I do know one thing; this is not something she needs to know."

"But I feel terrible; I have to say something. What is she asks where I went that night?"

"I don't know, just don't tell her that."

"So I should tell her a lie?"

"No, definitely not. But you can mislead by omission, or misguide by implication, my God, you can even deceive her with gesticulation if you must. Just don't tell her any lies."

Nick considered his words with a drawn out sigh. "I think she would want to know the truth."

"No, she wouldn't. People always say they want the truth, but what they really want is to sleep at night. The truth won't bring her that."

二十四

Veni, Vidi, Very Vici

The first Nick heard of it was when Ueno leaned across his desk commented, "I see you've selected Tanaka-sensei as your partner. Interesting..."

Nick immediately cocked his head. There was nothing more concerning than hearing that unbeknownst to him, he'd been involved in something interesting. "Partner for what?"

"The badminton competition of the next sports day."

"Yes, that is interesting," Nick confirmed with a rising sense of dread.

The sports day was a huge annual event that sought to enliven the school spirit. It commenced with each class parading before the teachers' grandstand and offering a salute that has not been seen in Europe since the demise of a certain queerly moustached misanthrope. Then, as way of warm up, the afternoon was spent enjoying the spectacle of eight hundred students battling both their classmates and the sweltering summer heat, before the day finally culminated in the main event, the teachers-only competition.

Each year an elected committed would spend several weeks selecting a sport for the competition, though they need hardly have bothered as it never proved more than an ineffectually regulated brawl. Needless to say, it was always won by Nick's nemesis, Morita, who carefully chose his teammates based on aptitude, experience and undoubtedly, several gruelling months of trials and knockout stages.

More than anything, Nick approached the day with an overwhelming desire to defeat him, as it was one of only two socially acceptable methods of upstaging a sempai (the other being a karaoke sing-off, which was clearly not an option for Nick - as anybody who was party to his wavering 1992 performance of Country Roads will readily attest). Alas, throughout his tenure, he had not even come close. Firstly, in an extraordinary run of bad luck, each of the earlier years had involved the few sports with which Nick struggled, that is to say, any that involved balls or agility, or most distressingly, both. Secondly, the announcement of the competition sign-up sheet invariably occurred on a day when Nick was away on a school visit, or quite possibly, preoccupied in a productive bout of daydreaming. Unfortunately, if you were too slow or reluctant to add your name in any particular spot on the sheet, it would miraculously appear alongside that of someone who was always splendidly inappropriate. For the last three years Nick had found himself paired with Hideso Numata, a man of such significant girth and meagre physical prowess that he had famously asked for a timeout during a tug-of-war to devour a tray of pastries.

"No doubt, you heard that Tanaka-sensei won the last two times badminton was chosen for the teachers' event. I expect that's why you selected him," Ueno said.

"I suspect it was," Nick replied, suddenly perking up. As it happened, he had precisely no idea whatsoever who Tanaka was, but he worried that revealing this detail to Ueno might open a dialogue to his frequent inattentiveness. On the other hand, Tanaka was the Japanese equivalent of Smith, so what harm could there be in clarifying? "Which Tanaka-sensei would that be?"

Ueno regarded him quizzically. "There's only one Tanaka-sensei at Inoshiri." And he rose to gesture toward an old man hunched over a desk in a corner of the staff room that Nick rarely sought to venture. In fact, Nick did know Tanaka-sensei; he was forever hunching over the photocopier, hunching over the coffee pot, or hunching over the ashtray, and he appeared so very far past retirement that Nick suspected he was aiming to get double benefits by going a second time around. And while they regularly exchanged pleasantries, embarrassingly, Nick had never engaged him in conversation for fear that it would rapidly devolve into him screaming himself hoarse to the inevitable response, "Speak a bit louder, laddie," or the closest Japanese approximation. Tanaka was something like a garden gnome that you saw every day and instinctively navigated, but otherwise completely forgot about its existence.

Appropriately, Nick sought to introduce himself, and also to clarify that there had not been some mistake, and that possibly his son or even grandson might be intending to compete instead. Tanaka greeted the news that Nick would be his partner as "Interesting," and he was not actually, hard-of-hearing at all, though he was a trifle hard to see, cloaked, as he was, in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

"I understand you won the last two Badminton competitions," Nick asked hopefully.

"Oh yes," he said, unsuccessfully muffling his pride. "In both '66 and '79, if I remember correctly."

"Excellent," Nick announced, hoping his beaming smile would deflect attention from the colour departing his face.

While returning to his desk, he happened upon his old teammate, Numata.

"Sorry we couldn't team up this year," Numata burbled through his bulbous lips. There was nothing about Numata that was not fat, his elliptical cherry red cheeks ballooned from his face, his swollen forehead lurched forth, and even his ears were so oddly round and inflated that Nick's gaze was always drawn to them, resembling as they did, two life preservers, and thus stoking his fantasies of a cruise ship journey through the tropics. She would always appear in this fantasy, sunning herself on the deck in the most microscopic of bikinis.

As it happens, Numata had been an exceptionally thin and sickly youth, but he dreamed of being a sumo wrestler. Obviously, with such a slight frame, he could never conceivably pursue that path, and once he relinquished the ambition, he grew immeasurably despondent and unspeakably obese. Now he didn't wish for anything so lofty, only the willpower to resist his wife's profligate baking, so he could lose sufficient weight that their coupling did not prove such a challenge.

But she didn't mind. In her youth, she had been quiet and abstemious, and dreamed nightly of being debauched by a sumo wrestler.

"I really feel terrible about it," Numata continued. "It's just that, this time I decided to go with someone..." And his face contorted briefly as he struggled for an agreeable adjective. "...someone else."

* * *

On the day of the badminton tournament, Nick was wishing only for a respectable and - more importantly - rapid loss, which would allow him to exit the court before Morita and Yukiko could note his ineffectual participation.

He was thus quite unprepared and equally speechless when his playing partner entered; as he was clad from bony shoulder to knobbly knee in the kind of skimpy, fluorescent training attire favoured by the perpetually fit, and he dramatically eschewed the school issued racket in favour of his own, which looked to have been carved in situ from solid oak. It should have been quite laughable, but from the moment play began, Nick understood immediately how Tanaka had won his last two badminton tournaments and undoubtedly, why the school had waited a decade before permitting another.

Tanaka flew about the court like a man half his age, and quite possibly like he were one tenth of it, though unquestionably, that would still make him Nick's senior. When he wasn't launching six foot into the air to slam a return, he was zigzagging from one corner to another and deftly flicking a low-slung riposte. Nick did his best to stay out of his path, but frankly, he was too stunned even to move.

Consequently, they breezed through the pool stages without Nick breaking a sweat, or indeed, having rarely advanced from the back line. He simply could not understand why his fellow teachers had overlooked someone so talented. As they commenced the semi-final, he could already picture the aggrievement on Morita's face, and this was promptly followed by an exceedingly graphic image of the adulation that Yukiko would heap upon him. In fact, he was so preoccupied with touching up the insufficiently detailed aspects of the fantasy that he scarcely noticed that Tanaka had failed to return any of the first three shots at all. This may well have continued until their final losing point, were it not by dint of good fortune that the fourth shot struck Nick squarely on the forehead. Two things occurred to him then. Firstly, Tanaka was rapidly running out of steam, and secondly, an object manufactured almost entirely from feathers can still pack such a scalp-swelling wallop that for several weeks mothers would be admonishing their children not to stare.

That should have been the end of their run - which had blazed as brightly as a meteor, before crashing to earth in an undiscovered crater deep in the Australian outback - but it was not. Fortunately, in observing the first 900 points that Tanaka had scored, Nick had learnt the secret to badminton, which is that there exists a brief window of opportunity between the shuttlecock travelling at something approaching the speed of light, and the point it realises it is only a glorified doily and seeks to flop lifelessly to the ground. If, at that precise moment, you find yourself within arm's reach of the shuttlecock, whether by rapid movement, or - more frequently - having failed to retreat fast enough from the previous shot, then it is quite possible, and indeed even within Nick's skill-set, that you can intercept said trajectory with sufficient recurrence to turn certain defeat into dubious victory.

So it was via this unexpected dogleg that Nick found himself in the final, opposing, of course, Morita and one of his towering henchmen, whom nobody could recognise, but was on the books as a substitute teacher, he assured them. Normally, it behoved any rational human facing such opposition, to sink their head into a latrine and reach for the chain, but word had got around that Morita was not up to his usual standard, having encountered a sport that did not favour his traditional advantages of brute force and ruthless scowling. Thus, the final started at a frenetic pace, but was soon proving exceedingly close-fought, much to the surprise of everyone in attendance, not least, Nick and Morita, who were exchanging the sort of words with their eyes that would guarantee instant dismissal, or at the very least having their mouths washed out by old Mrs Hirata.

At the halfway stage, it was tied at 10-all. Morita and his partner were drawing from immense resources of dubiously acquired muscle to administer hypersonic smashes that were quite impossible to hit, but would frequently sail out of bounds, and often completely out a window. On the opposing side, despite the performance of Tanaka, who had been reduced to the role of an exceptionally avant-garde coat-rack, Nick was channelling a younger version of himself, a ten year old Nicholas who would run roughshod over his grandmother's vegetable patch, swinging wildly with a tennis racket to kill the cabbage-munching white butterfly for eight cents a corpse. In previous years, their rivalry had been purely personal, but now it felt something more akin to mating rights with the pride.

This equilibrium continued until the three quarter mark and then slowly, perceptibly, Nick gained the upper hand. Soon they were three points ahead, then four, and they needed only two more to win. In fact, Nick was in such virtuous form that there was almost no respectable way they could lose. This was when it dawned on Morita with all the brilliance and hue of a desert sunset, that while he could not win on strength alone, if he could direct the shuttle toward Tanaka then Nick couldn't hope to return it without injuring his teammate. The change in strategy worked sublimely, as shot after shot blew past the last of Tanaka's hair or bounced from his wrinkled torso, until there was but one point between Morita and victory.

Nick called time, and approached Tanaka for a team talk, whereupon he pressed his partner on the need for all out vigilance, a last ditch effort to recover a few points for victory. Naturally, Tanaka responded with the steely resilience for which the Japanese are renowned, "I think I need an ambulance."

It was Morita's serve, fortunately to Nick, who slammed it straight back along the path it had arrived. Morita burst forward and swatted in the direction of Tanaka who could only feebly hold the racket before himself. Instantly, Nick jumped from where he stood, metres from the shuttle, with his long arm stretched out before him. He seemed to hang there for an eternity, indeed, he had time to strongly consider floating over the net to slap his opposition a few times for his petulance, before returning for the interception, but then it all sped up again, not just to normal time, but something so much more accelerated, and he found himself lying on his back, staring up at the gym ceiling, and hearing Morita congratulate his teammate.

He lay there for a time, wincing in the realisation that his landing had not been quite the graceful aplomb he had imagined, and then Morita appeared in his face and spoke English so perfectly it would seem he'd attended a course solely for this moment. "You fucking loser!" he offered as way of consolation. But from his vantage on the floor, Nick could see something that Morita could not, the arrival of Yukiko behind him.

"Congratulations," she said coldly to Morita as she brushed past him to crouch beside Nick. "Possibly that one tries a little too hard to be Western," she observed, with a contrite smile.

Nick tried to laugh, only for it to initiate an agony in several organs with which he had never previously had any disagreement.

"He may have won, Nick, but you might just qualify for the boobies prize."

"I think you mean booby prize?"

"Oh no, I said what I meant." And she gave a wink.

Nick grinned, suddenly giddy with excitement and quite possibly, a touch of concussion.

"Whoa," she said, moving quickly to temper his expectations. "Don't dash out to the pharmacy just yet; let's go out once and see where it leads."

With Yukiko's assistance, Nick climbed to his feet, then approached his teammate to thank him for his efforts and beam in his good fortune. Tanaka, who was likewise ecstatic with their performance, declared proudly, "I really wasn't joking about the ambulance."

二十五

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses

(Ezekiel 23:20)

When Yukiko suggested a picnic, Nick had very nearly choked. He hated picnics. Notwithstanding the myriad obstacles presented by insects and the weather, there was that disastrous first date with Tessa that stubbornly eschewed any rose-tinted enhancement in his memory. But desperate to avoid any conflict that might further delay their congress, he agreed none-the-less.

As it happened, it was a beautiful day, and even the insects declined the invitation. He brought her to a delightful spot he'd plotted the previous evening, where the languid Inoshiri River surrenders itself to the torrent of the Yoshino-gawa.

Beneath the shade of an overgrown fruit tree, they spread out their blanket, and then Nick began to unpack the food, much to the incredulity of Yukiko. "Bento boxes? Are you serious? When I asked you out for a picnic, I was expecting soggy sandwiches or an indigestible attempt at potato salad. Maki-sushi and tamago-yaki? I definitely did not anticipate that."

Nick just shrugged. For some inexplicable reason none of the Western options had occurred to him. He then produced from his bag, two packets of moist towelettes, and offered one to Yukiko.

She gave a despairing sigh. "Really Nick? I'm not sure you grasp the whole concept of roughing it."

"Picnics and I have a history," he pouted. "I don't want to take any chances."

Rolling her eyes, she said, "For ninety-nine point nine percent of human history, there was no access to decent sanitation. Do you really think our predecessors died just because they didn't wash their hands?"

"I guess not."

"Are you kidding? They died by the millions, quite horribly too, I imagine. But that just paved the way for our ancestors who knew how to handle a germ or two."

Nick nodded sagely, took one last yearnful look at his towelette, and returned it to his bag.

She popped the lids of two of the beers she had brought and passed one to him. He raised it and offered a meandering toast of an equivocal nature, then took a hearty sip to calm his nerves. After handing her an onigiri, he said, "So tell me something about yourself I don't know."

"That's pretty much all of it. You'll have to narrow it down."

"Well, what is the biggest thing that's ever happened to you?"

"Oh that's easy. My year in the USA."

"Really? I've never been, but my best friend's American, and he left as soon as he could afford the plane fare."

"Oh don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect," she said, nibbling tentatively at her food, "but in terms of sexual equality they are thirty years ahead of Japan."

"What state were you in?"

"A euphoric stupor, generally. Though as teachers it's incautious to talk of such matters."

He nodded slowly, and then clarified, "What part of America was it?"

"Colorado. It really is quite gorgeous there. I was billeted with this lovely new age family. They were nuttier than squirrel shit - if you'll forgive my French - but they got one thing right; being naked with nature is good for the soul. Humans may talk and tap-dance, but we're not that far removed from the chimps."

"Naked?" Nick confirmed, which was, in fact, the last word he'd heard.

"Perhaps not totally naked, but certainly enough to feel at one with it." And as way of demonstration, she removed her top to reveal a skimpy T-shirt, rolled over to loll in the grass, and then peered up at him from where she lay.

More than anything he desired to embrace her then. To hold her tightly in his arms with the smell of overripe persimmons filling his nostrils. And most especially, to rend her clothing and do the sort of things that would make the birds blush and the bees flee.

As if sensing his intentions, she promptly sat up and kicked off her shoes. "Walk with me."

He shuffled to his feet, but she immediately demanded he remove his footwear, to which he momentarily demurred. He hadn't walked barefoot since his first few weeks in Japan; an experience that had elicited immeasurable humour from the locals, not to mention the odd offer of charity, so he quickly abandoned the habit. But, recognising it as the first step to them being fully nude, he promptly acquiesced and bound after her, unshod. He had quite forgotten how tactile his soles were, or the exquisite feel of soft grass being crushed underfoot, and as a consequence, he was beaming widely when he caught up with her at the river's edge.

This late in the summer the Yoshino-gawa lay low, but its width still exceeded a six-lane highway. The only traffic though, were a few fishermen in long wooden canoes angling for ayu, their lines breaking the surface with a fleeting chain of ripples.

He sat beside her on the bank and followed her gaze toward the west.

"I grew up in Iyaguchi; way up there, where the Yoshino-gawa is little more than a trickle," she said wistfully.

"It sounds like a small town."

"It's hardly even that. It's funny though, when I was a kid I only ever dreamed of moving to the city, now I'm always trying to get back to nature."

"Do you still have family up there?"

"Just my parents now. There's only one way they'll ever leave their little house."

"And what would Mr and Mrs Kamihara think of you dating a European boy?"

"Oh, I'm quite sure they would be OK with it. Their expectations of me changed a lot after America."

"You don't have any brothers, do you?" Nick cautiously enquired, recalling the troubling episode with his ex-girlfriend when her brother had sought to break them up.

"No, only an older sister."

"Is she like you?"

"Why? Are you looking for a backup option?" she said with a wink.

"No, I just wondered if she was as outspoken."

"Definitely not. She's the perfect Japanese housewife. I'm the black cat."

"Black sheep," he corrected.

"Are you sure?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously. "I'm quite certain I would remember if I was a black sheep."

He chuckled. Were he not so nervous he might be enjoying this. "So have you always been tough?"

"Do you think I'm tough? I don't think I'm tough; I just try to do what's right. But I guess it's always been that way..." She paused. "Can I tell you a secret I've never shared with anyone?"

"Sure," he said, leaning closer.

"Well, just before I started school, my father sat me down and told me that school was just like prison; It's all about respect. So on my first day there, I needed to go up to the biggest, ugliest, meanest kusotare and smack him right on the chops. So that's what I did."

"Oh my God, really?" he exclaimed, retreating in shock.

But she could contain herself no longer and erupted in merriment at his gullibility.

He surveyed the anatomy of her laugh; the moisture on her pouted lips was glistening in the sunlight, and he desperately wanted to taste it, and feel the brush of her soft tongue against his.

She stopped laughing then, and gazed up at him with her dark, elliptical eyes. It was as if she were waiting. For him, he realised, willing himself the bravado. He leaned closer as her eyes narrowed...

"Hajimashite."

Her face snatched away, and fell upon a small boy of about four and incredible cuteness, if the extent of Yukiko's gushing was a reliable indicator of such matters. But Nick was oblivious to his charms. "Why is every male in Japan trying to come between us," he wailed, but his lamentations were caught by the breeze and conveniently whisked away.

After a few brief words, the small boy having served his purpose, thus disappeared back over the bank. Yukiko too, jumped up, and so Nick wearily followed her back to their picnic, where he discovered the boy was accompanied by parents, and was not, as he initially suspected, merely the minion of a vindictive god. The family too had brought food and misappropriated bed linen, and were luxuriating in the splendid view.

They sat again under the tree, and Nick entreated Yukiko to try more of his dishes. Seeing her hesitancy, he thought it opportune to advise that they had, in fact, been prepared by a local vendor, which she greeted with scarcely suppressed relief. She split a pair of chopsticks, whittled away any trace of splinters, and tucked into the tamago-yaki. "My compliments to your chef," she said, as she scooped her second mouthful.

After a time, she asked, "So what's New Zealand like?"

"It's green and very beautiful," he enthused. "A lot like this." He gestured to the magnificent scene before them, and neglected to dwell on the horrid concrete village beyond the horizon.

"And what about the people?"

Nick wrestled with the question for a time, then smiled. "I once dragged my American friend, Briece, to a pub to watch the All Blacks. He finds sport confusing at the best of times, but rugby utterly flummoxed him. He saw fit to moan about its utter lack of structure every time a forward ran amongst the backs, or someone other than the designated kicker punted the ball, and he couldn't comprehend why the coach never intervened to provide direction, and the captain failed to stamp his authority on his underlings. I explained to him that unlike American Football, it's not about the coach or any of the individual players, that there is not one person on the team that thinks himself better than any other, nor that his position is more critical. No one limits themself to playing a single role either, they pitch in wherever they are needed, and every player gives it their all, trusting implicitly that those around them will do the same. That is the nature of rugby, and the reason the All Blacks are so good, is that it is also the nature of New Zealanders."

She briefly considered his comments, but did not voice her conclusion. "So sport is big there then?"

"Well, we may never launch a satellite or corner the world market for calculators, but we will always have the All Blacks."

"And the people who know nothing about rugby?"

"They move to Australia. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of law."

"What about you? Don't you think about going back home?

"Home? This is my home," he pouted with mock offence.

"But don't you miss it?"

"I guess," he murmured.

"There must be something there for you."

"I can't imagine what that would be..."

Their gaze was averted by the activity of the young family. The mother ushered the child into the car, and then the father gathered the four corners of the blanket, carried it to the edge of the riverbank and ejected the contents into the water below.

Yukiko was apoplectic. "Did you see that?" she screeched.

"Yes," he confirmed, shaking his head disdainfully.

"They can't get away with this!"

"Eh, shikata ga nai," Nick said with a shrug. "What can you do?"

"Shikata ga nai?" she parroted, now even more angry than before. "Anta Japanese ja nai yo!" She leapt to her feet and hurried toward the man, calling out, "Suminsen-ga," to arrest his departure. Nick couldn't hear her words, only observe her gesticulate the discarding of rubbish, its flow down the Yoshino River and its ultimate destination in the Inland Sea. With frequent bows of apology, he retreated to his car and sped away.

When she returned, she looked satisfied with the man's contrition, but apparently still furious with Nick. She wouldn't even sit, just stared down at him with her hands firmly on her hips. "The reason nothing changes in Japan, Nicholas, is that everybody says shikata ga nai. While it's hard to accept when I hear it from the Japanese, at least I can understand because they've never known anything else. But you are a foreigner; you have no right to relinquish your indignation this way."

"Is it so wrong to place the needs of society above oneself?"

She threw her hands up in the air. "So for fear of shattering this so-called harmony, must everybody be discontent?"

"No, of course not, but what's the point in making a fuss," he scoffed. "Nothing ever changes, so why bother."

"Because never in the history of humanity has a problem been solved by ignoring it. But so much has been achieved when people speak out."

He lost himself in the Yoshino River. She was right, of course, he knew that, she was probably the most right person in all of Japan, but that was precisely why she was so wrong.

Yukiko knelt and started gathering their belongings into two distinct piles. When she was complete, she said, "You know, I may not always be the best judge of character, but I was sure that in you, I saw a trace of someone I could care deeply for. You were masking it, obviously, but I expected that would change once I got you away from work. But it seems that either I was completely wrong or you cannot be true to yourself. Whichever it is, I don't have the patience to find out. Men are like Chinese radios. If it don't work out of the box, you take it back and get a new one."

Without a further word between the two of them, he delivered her home, and then returned to his dark apartment and lay on his bed to inspect the familiar pattern in the flaking paint of the ceiling.

For a moment, he had felt something; an emotion so distant and remote that he struggled to recognise it. It was almost as if he were alive. As if the bandages he'd bound so tightly around himself had ruptured just enough to feel the warmth of the sun against his skin, and the wispy grass tickling his nostrils, and the awe of the mighty Yoshino River swelling his spirit. And suddenly he had wanted to tear away all his protections and burst free with abandon, because he knew bliss was within his reach.

But it had passed in an instant, and what was revealed of him in their intimacy had only repulsed her. He had nothing left to offer. She could never love him, he conceded heavily, and there could be no life beyond his bandages.

* * *

By the following Saturday, Nick had sufficiently disconnected himself from his emotions that his mood had improved to delightfully placid and pleasantly unexcitable. With the departure of Isaac, there was often little for Nick and Briece to talk about, though this fact would never actually stop Briece from talking. He was endlessly starting conversations on science, evolution and xenophobia, which only overlapped with Nick's interests in a vague, acrostic manner, and thus the discussion would inevitably sputter lifelessly for several minutes before disappearing into a hole, never to arise again.

This was especially true of technology. Nick detested computers; they were utterly emotionless and quite incapable of doing anything more than precisely what they'd been instructed to do, which coincidentally, were the same factors that made Briece so adore them.

That evening was the first time he'd ever heard Briece speak of Meglosoft - a computer company of such magnitude that even a Luddite like Nick knew its name. He was boasting quite unashamedly how there was a whiff in the wind of a buyout offer.

"Of course, I wouldn't accept it," Briece said loftily. "I've only ever worked for myself, and while my boss may be a slave driver and an asshole, at least he always tries to do what's best. I could never surrender my customers to someone like William Dert."

Nick, who normally struggled to feign interest in these computational confabulations, was suitably impressed by the blatant name-dropping of Meglosoft's head honcho. "Wow, you sure are effluential," he said brightly.

"Thanks," Briece replied with a smug grin. "Wait. Did you say ef-fluential?"

"Yeah, I think you're full of shit," Nick explained, before losing himself in laughter.

Briece was set to defend himself when Alexander appeared before them. "Where's your teetotalling pal?" he inquired. Somehow he seemed different, as if he'd come into money or inherited a swagger.

"Isaac has returned to the States," Briece informed.

"That's a shame. Without Friar Tuck, all you've got is Sir Booze-a-lot and the Sheriff of Whoring-ham," he quipped, smiling in appreciation of his good form.

"I resent that insinuation," Briece immediately spat. "My friend is well within his drinking capabilities."

"You guys should really make some new friends. Two men in a pub... people will talk."

"And what do they say of the sort of person who rants incoherently to himself at the bar?"

Alexander gave a smile that revealed just how cocksure he'd become. Apparently with good reason, as he was then joined by a Japanese woman gripping two large handles of beer. She was curiously small, but stocky, with two short legs that jutted out at an odd angle, presumably to stabilise the weight of the two humongous vessels she lugged, and also the beers. Clearly, Alexander had outdone himself. In a land where gaijin had their pick of Asian goddesses, he appeared to have slipped from his cloud, landed in a paddock, and in a daze, latched onto one of the livestock.

"This is my girlfriend, Kaiya Abe," Alexander announced proudly. "Kaiya, this is Boozy and Whorey."

She greeted them, cautiously enunciating their names, seemingly quite oblivious to their comedic nature. Limp handshakes were exchanged, and then Nick asked incredulously, "Where did you guys meet?"

"It's a funny story," Alexander said. "You remember that bet we made about the park dash in my birthday suit?"

They nodded reluctantly.

"Well, as I was nearing the home straight, I happened upon a huge police sting. Apparently word had got out about some illicit gaijin activity."

"Oh, what a gosh-darned spot of bad luck, that was," Briece offered sympathetically.

"Actually it wasn't, because Kaiya works in the office at the police station, and with her English skills, she was called upon to deliver the verbal slap on the wrist for my engaging in something so foolhardy as nude jogging on a chilly night. I was advised most sternly that it was exceedingly unflattering."

"Slap on the wrist?"

"Yes, naturally this kind of thing is hardly worth the paperwork."

"Well, that is lucky," Briece observed coolly.

"Why, thank you, I do believe it is."

Nick, who was glowing a rose hue, mumbled to Kaiya in Japanese, "I don't think you really know what this guy is like."

"Well, I'm quite sure I know him better than you do."

"How can that possibly be true? He doesn't speak a lick of Japanese, and it strikes me that your English doesn't extend much beyond a lick."

"Like I said," she pouted, "I'm quite sure I know him better than you do."

Alexander, who obviously couldn't comprehend their conversation, eyed Nick suspiciously, then turned to Kaiya and said, "Let's get a booth; we don't need to hang out with these dunderheads."

They departed, and Nick leaned in to Briece, "Do you think he's for real, or is this just part of his queer plan?"

But before Briece could respond, Alexander broke away from his girlfriend to address them. "And for the record," his face now dark and contorted, "I'm pretty sure this makes the score; you clowns: nil, Alexander: 1."

Nick watched them together, studying Alexander's body language for a revelation of his true intentions, but actually, he could reveal very little at all, because Kaiya monopolised their conversation, and he was restricted to endless nodding.

"He's right, you know," Briece finally said, breaking Nick's concentration.

"About what?"

"We need to meet someone new. Think of it as Isaac v2.0. Maybe it should be a Mormon this time?"

"Should I commence the auditions?" Nick queried.

"Hold off for now, I better write up a spec'."

* * *

As Caroline Atwood approached their table, Briece and Nick could not help being drawn to her. There was something undefined in her beauty that begged further, probing investigation.

She placed one hand on Briece's arm and leaned in close to his ear, at first appearing to kiss it, but instead, whispering something that Nick could only guess. Then, with slow, impeccable poise, she placed a folded note before him, turned, and departed. He smiled politely as he inspected the page, but once she'd left, he squeezed it into a tiny ball and deposited it into a dish of uneaten tsukemono.

"The force is strong with that one," he said with a grin, "but I am impervious to her Jedi mind tricks."

She had taken only a few steps, before she cast an innocent glance over her shoulder. Spying her unrequited offering, her delicate gait faltered.

Tonight was supposed to be perfect. She had waited three months for a Saturday that aligned with her peak attractiveness on the menstrual cycle, when, she had read, hormones would elevate her breasts, dilate her pupils, and release a rich cocktail of pheromones. She had spent weeks in the mirror practising engaging conversations, coquettish laughs, alluring pouts and seductive gazes. She had purchased eight outfits and returned the seven that did not match her vision of voluptuous, but not easy. She had plucked enough errant bodily hairs to knit a scarf and even masturbated shortly before her arrival; a task she considered degrading and devoid of pleasure, but which she understood would give her a certain glow. After all this, she was not about to give up without a fight.

Just as before, the two looked up as she neared, but this time Briece's expression was pained. He was in the midst of a deep philosophical discussion about the evolutionary advantage of man's preference for rotund arses, and he did detest being interrupted mid-rant.

"Yes, Caroline?"

She flashed her perfect smile. "So you'll call me tomorrow?"

"I guess you are unaware," he said with a lengthy sigh, "but I am happily married."

"I've heard that isn't a problem for you," she responded instantly.

He grimaced. "Well, I find the rumours about me to be quite nasty and hurtful, most especially the true ones. While I do have both a wife and girlfriend, I don't like to cheat on either of them."

This sufficiently derailed her that she fell silent, and Briece seized the opportunity to relaunch his conversation with Nick, before she quickly injected, "Gee, I'm surprised you've managed to keep this from your wife..."

His eyes tightened, contorting his view of her impeccable features. "Is that blackmail, Caroline?"

"Oh no," she replied, showing immediately how hurt she was by the suggestion. "I'm just saying it makes sense to have a girlfriend with discretion."

"Why, thank you, Caroline, I'll be sure to add you to my to-do list."

"Shall I give you my number again?"

"Oh no, that shan't be necessary. I'm quite certain I can find it on the lavatory wall."

She tittered briefly at Briece's urbane humour. "OK, just don't wait too long. You know how girls can blab."

Briece paused momentarily, then grabbed her wrist and scrawled seven digits upon her palm, to which, she immediately brimmed with glee. "That's my wife's number," he advised coolly. "You call her for a chat. She would snap a preppy little shit like you in two."

As she retreated, Nick was incredulous. "What's happened to you, Briece? I haven't seen you with a girl in months..."

"Nick, I may not understand women, but I've learnt to recognise the ones with an agenda. While you're still blinded by visions of their ass in undulation, they're already compiling their wedding gift register. Trust me, I've been down that road before, and these kinds of problems are expensive to fix."

二十六

The half-life of hearsay exceeds that of the universe

It was toward the end of ninety-five that Nick had first noticed a change in Briece. It wasn't that he was any less flirtatious, irreverent or abrasive, just that he seemed to get less pleasure from it. Perhaps he had always been changing, Nick wondered for a time, but was only now crossing a threshold where he could recognise it. At any rate, it was undoubtedly the sort of matter that friends should discuss, if only Briece weren't as reluctant to reveal his burdens as Nick was to ask.

In a bid to lighten his mood, Nick recounted the great Big Bang debate of '94, which had looked at the outset to be a fizzer when Isaac conceded immediately that the Big Bang may well have happened just as scientists had postulated. But then a smug grin had descended upon him, and he remarked, "Because, if ever science has proven the existence of God, it was that out of darkness and nothing, the entire universe was created in an instant; Let there be light!"

Thus began an epic battle that dragged late into the evening, often drawing in passing patrons, some who spoke not a word of English, and props too, constructed of empty beer glasses, and at one point, a plate of fried tofu that came under Briece's fist and drowned onlookers in soy and bean curd.

It was most memorable to Nick as the one argument where Briece's scientific justifications seemed no less absurd than Isaac's ceaseless attribution of the inexplicable to the omnipotence of God.

Without any clear winner, the debate was called at 2am, having long entered the realms of farcical with Briece's increasingly slurred, indecipherable drawl constantly mangling "Big Bang" as "Batman," much to the howling delight of the audience who quite fancied the prospect of a universe created by a superhero.

Briece greeted Nick's re-enactment with good humour, but at its conclusion the conversation soon grew shallow and stilted, before making an unexpected detour into the metaphysical. "You know, if there is a god, he's a cruel son-of-a-bitch."

Nick smarted.

"You want to know why, Nick?" Briece said, before continuing without affirmation. "Because the natural state of all living creatures is hardship. You see, in nature every species expands within its niche until it reaches a point of equilibrium. But equilibrium isn't the level where all members of the species live in comfort. Oh no, it's the point where the number of offspring reaching maturity matches that dying from starvation, predation and illness. That is nature's dirty little secret."

Nick nodded heavily, if for no other reason than to terminate the conversation, but Briece pushed on. "So it's hardly a surprise that God's finest creation, man, should be so cruel."

"But of all the species, it is only man that can choose to be cruel or kind, and I believe us more kind than cruel."

Briece scoffed in that irksome way that always riled Nick. "If we have learned anything from what happened in Germany during World War 2, it's that the basic nature of man is one of infinite evil."

"But perhaps Germany was just an aberration, a perfect storm of disenchantment. Perhaps it was the Polish who tell us more of the true nature of man, where families and whole villages sheltered their Jewish neighbours at great personal risk. As happened in Denmark and the Netherlands."

Briece regarded Nick's optimism with a certain revulsion, and he brooded darkly over his drink. Nick was about to reorient the conversation onto its familiar, meandering path, when it abruptly lurched in another direction. "I wasn't always an atheist, you know," Briece announced, as if justifying himself to the spirit of Isaac. "In fact for the longest time I didn't even know there was such a thing; so sheltered was my upbringing. My first encounter was during freshman year of university. Someone was probing our biology professor on the possible theological basis for an occurrence, and he replied, 'You'll find the science easier if you assume the absence of God's hand.' I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was so livid that I wanted to sink my fist into his smug little face. I wasn't even sure I still believed myself, but I would never have been so sinful as to verbalise such heresy." Briece took a measured sip of his beer, revealing a curious smile, apparently amused by his own naivety. "But he was right, and not just with science, the world was easier to understand once I stopped trying to comprehend why God would make it so."

Nick shrugged without commitment. His faith was on the wane. His scepticism too. "I hope there is an afterlife," he said eventually, but with no more emotion than if the request than been for yet another round.

"I consider that exceptionally improbable," Briece replied mechanically.

"But don't you ever worry what happens after you die?"

"You know, Nick, they've brought people back from the brink of death, and apparently as your brain shuts down everything fades to white and you're overwhelmed by an immense peace and euphoria. After that you will never again know pain or fear or hate. That doesn't seem like something I should fear."

Nick nodded slowly. As it happened, he did not fear death, but he assumed everybody else did, just as he once had. After an interminable period staring at the dwindling content of his glass, he blurted, "I came close to dying once."

"Really?" Briece said with a mixture of excitement and shock that such an exquisite topic had never been broached in all their years.

With elaborate detail, Nick then described the day he had gone surfing at Mangahume beach, been caught in its spiteful rip and come within an ant's eyelash of drowning. Briece gorged on every word, but quite dissatisfied with the detached, documental report, he probed Nick on the points he'd been most reluctant to reveal. "Were you frightened?"

"Perhaps, but not in the way you'd imagine."

"How so? Did your whole life flash before you?"

"No," Nick sighed. "Worse."

"Worse?"

"Much worse."

"What was it?"

Nick heaved violently. This was a part of the story he had never shared, but there were so many secrets of his former self that he just couldn't contain them all. Lethargy had achieved what alcohol and torture never could. "Nothingness. I was totally empty. I had swum so very hard, but all that struggle hadn't made a blind bit of difference, and though I knew I was about to wink from existence, I didn't even want to fight anymore. I was just too tired to care." Nick bowed to hide a face reddened in shame.

That was the awful lesson he learned that day; death was easy.

* * *

As Briece made his way to the bar for their third round, Caroline Atwood sidled up to him again. They had seen her on occasion since the brush off, but it was the first time she'd sought to reengage. She had changed, but in some way that Nick could not discern. She was still gorgeous, her lines were sharp, the fenders well buffed and even the hub caps glistened, and yet, somehow you knew that beneath the shining paint, great wads of chaff and putty filled lengthy rends of rust, and the low mileage on the clock would never stand up to scrutiny.

Seemingly, she had been drinking, but probably not as much as her theatrical amorousness would imply. "You know, the option is still open," she said with a forced smile.

"Caroline, there is nothing I would like more than to love you like I do my family. From a great distance."

The verbal slap left her pursing her lips, and sobered her immeasurably. "Really? Because I doubt you're getting much love at home."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, as I understand it, your wife's having to deal first-hand with the problems caused by your fooling around."

His face flushed, but with calm deliberation, he uttered, "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Perhaps if you'd spent a little less time chasing all those skanks..."

His face flushing some more, he barked, "Skanks? That's rich, considering how you are always parading about, flashing your swollen ass like a bonobo monkey."

She froze, desperately racking for a suitably stinging repost, but when that failed, she merely rolled her eyes derisively, and sauntered off into the crowd.

He turned and his eyes met those of Nick, which were wide and retreated. "She's got it wrong," he implored.

"I know," Nick replied without conviction.

Nevertheless, Briece's countenance was clearly shaken, and as soon as he'd downed his drink, he mumbled an ineffectual excuse and departed.

* * *

The following Saturday, Nick spent several hours in wait for Briece at their usual table, before apprehensively calling his home. Gabrielle answered with a chirpy, "Mowl-shi mowl-shi." They chatted for a time, though the conversation rarely breached anything more substantial than small-talk. As always, she was cheery and transcendental, with most of her vocabulary seemingly drawn at random from a poorly translated book of French poetry. But she did not betray any hint of animosity toward Briece, which at least allayed Nick's concerns that marital travails were the source of woe.

He hung up, gnawed his nails in fevered cogitation, and then, seized with a hunch, made his way to Gaaru&Gaaru, a strip club at the seedier end of Akita-machi. Seated at the bar, cradling a drink, was Briece, with his back to the salacious performance of a pair of girls whose flexibility was only exceeded by their boredom.

"Briece! I've been waiting for hours."

"Really?" he said, examining his watch with some difficulty. "It didn't seem that long. Though I've drunk three Screaming Geishas and in my experience they often trigger precisely this kind of time discordance."

"But why are you here?"

"I just felt like a quiet drink. How did you ever find me?"

Tapping his nose, Nick proclaimed, "This is the most expensive bar in town, so if you wanted to avoid company, obviously you'd go where the cover charge is more than any sane gaijin would ever pay."

"And yet you came in?"

"Oh, about that. I may have mentioned that we're in some kind of relationship and I was liable to make a scene."

"Great, another bar where I can no longer show my face," he retorted without humour.

Nick slid onto the stool beside him. "Are you OK?"

"Is it all right if I say I'm not?"

Nick smarted. "Well I'd rather you didn't..."

"Well, in that case, I'm fucking chipper."

"You know you can talk about if you want..."

Briece turned to him sombrely, "That's not really us, though, is it Nick?"

"No, I guess not."

The conversation thereupon veered in directions quite wayward and indistinct; Nick outlined in considerable detail, how successfully he had forgotten about Yukiko, while Briece advised that a US space shuttle had just docked with a Russian space station, which he considered a breakthrough in thawing cold-war rivalries. Though he did scoff that the joint announcement neglected any credit to the Nazis, upon whose shanghaied scientists and requisitioned rocketry they'd both built their space programs.

"Really?" Nick intoned with interest, expecting Briece to promptly launch into a lengthy recitation of the relevant facts, but he merely nodded earnestly. Soon it fell so quiet that he could hear the squelching of lithe thighs against a greased pole. Naturally, he didn't look, but the mental picture of it was occupying the fullness of his imagination.

Alas, his concentration was soon curtailed by Briece, who was spinning a coin on the bar, the potent, medal-sized 500-yen that could procure an entire meal. "We're not that different, you know."

"You're kidding?" Nick sputtered. "You are a man with everything, whereas I only aspire to be somebody with more than nothing."

Briece snatched the coin, flipped it from his thumb and caught it on its arched descent. "For both of us, our course was set when we fell for the wrong girl at university. By chance, my infatuation brought me wealth, whereas yours led you here," he explained, rotating it slowly before his eyes. "We're just two sides of the same coin." Then he lost himself in such earnest examination that Nick imagined he was calculating the volume of shrapnel if he converted his entire fortune to the denomination.

Finally, he opened his fingers and let it fall. As it hit the bar, he slapped his palm upon it and slid it to Nick. "What'll you have? An eighth of anything is on me."

Nick gagged. "The drinks here cost 4000 yen?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'll just have a water."

"That'd be good."

Briece took a long swig from his drink, a tall glass of an odd hue that looked eminently more suited to a middle-aged housewife on her bi-annual night out. "You know what I was thinking about before you arrived?" he mused. "What some future species will think when they dig up the artefacts of humanity. Will they gape at the awe-inspiring structures and the beauty of our art, and marvel at the glory of our civilisation? Because it is complete bullshit. We are, without equal, the most unsuccessful species in the history of the planet. Never has there existed a creature as discontent. Six billion humans inhabit the earth and all with varying degrees of ill-ease, maladjustment and despair."

Nick stared blankly at his friend wishing for enough alcohol to make his words comprehensible, or at the very least, entertaining. "You're the most successful person I've ever met; what have you got to be miserable about?"

Briece, who seemed only sporadically aware of Nick's presence, issued a long, rasping sigh, and then filled the vacuum with alcohol. "You don't get it. Success is not something that can be donned upon you, it's what you feel inside, and I can't shake the notion that I'm yet to achieve anything." He swallowed the last of his cocktail and with a secret hand signal, his drink was immediately replaced. Nick precisely replicated the gesture, requested a water and then the bartender instantly disappeared, seemingly to a parallel dimension without a return wormhole.

"You know when I was young," Briece continued, "my parents would tell me that in life, if you aim for the first limb of the tree you'll undoubtedly make it, but if you aim for the stars you'll get all the way to the top of the tree. Well I aimed for the stars and I made it to the top of the tree, but no one mentions just how empty a feeling it is sitting there, staring up at the stars, and suddenly realising there is no way you can go any higher."

Nick examined his friend who was wearing platinum spectacles of dubious corrective benefit and sipping 4000 yen cocktails. A man who owned the top floor of a building, which housed a lucrative business and a gorgeous wife, frequented an apartment that had seen more women than a Sogo shoe sale, drove an immaculate antique convertible, and probably never needed work another day in his life. As he did, he grew bitterly incensed.

"So that's what this is all about? This is why you've been moping about for months, because you're afraid you won't make your first trillion before you turn forty, that there aren't enough nights left to fuck all the girls you need to fuck, and there aren't nearly enough weekends to tan your white arse on Thai beaches. Jesus, Briece, you have more money than the Emperor. Whatever your fucking problem there has to be a financial solution."

Briece glared at him with dark aggrievement. "You're right," he said coolly, "some of my problems do have a financial solution." And he stormed up to the door of the VIP room, peeled off two brown notes, and handed them to the attendant. "Don't let that guy come in," he requested loudly.

Nick stared for a time at the empty seat beside him, then at Briece's untouched drink. It was, he decided, quite inexplicable, Briece was a lot of things, hyper-rational, egotistical and womanising, came readily to mind, but everything he did always made sense at some level that Nick could comprehend. Of course, occasionally it was too technical, and frequently, it was too base, but it was never inexplicable.

He longed for an understanding of Briece's mood, he longed for the words that would revert him to his former self, but most immediately, he longed for a drink. With a shameful desire, he gazed at Briece's frightful blue cocktail, but at that very moment, the bartender materialised, snatched away the glass and ejected the contents. Then he turned to Nick, looking set to offer a refreshment, when he spied the 500-yen coin on the counter and recoiled with a shudder. "I have money," Nick protested desperately, but the bartender was gone, and he had scarce expectation of him ever returning. He swung in his stool to observe the girls wildly gyrating themselves into a dispassionate anti-climax, but even they seemed to regard him with a certain disdain, and so he promptly exited to the street. Blowing past the bouncer, he was asked sympathetically, "Subeta OK deshou-ka?"

But Nick could only shrug, and clutching his jacket tightly around his frame, he headed toward the train station. As he walked, he soon came within a block of Briece's second apartment. It was an intersection so very distinct he could not comprehend how he'd struggled on the one evening he'd been accompanied by a girl.

He fondled the keys in his pocket, stroking the one Briece had suggested he hold onto, and with curious, but ill-defined intent, he made his way to the apartment. Cautiously, he let himself in, but it took several seconds to convince himself he'd unlocked the correct door. The apartment had been utterly denuded of its furnishings, the walls stripped of their art, and the air was thick with the musty malodour of infrequent ventilation. Nick paced from room to room, finding no hint of its former licentious glory, save for the tell-tale indentations in the carpet of a particularly oversized four-poster bed, then he leaned against the countertop and gripped his chin. Somehow, this was even more alarming than Briece's cryptic conversations and unexpected outbursts.

There was one person who might know, he conceded with a grimace, and he quickly returned to the Aka-Oni.

As he'd hoped, he spied Caroline Atwood. She was leaning on the bar, puffing indolently on a cigarette; the first time he'd ever seen her engaged in the habit. Gripping her by the elbow, he drew her into a corner. "Tell me precisely what you've heard about Briece."

"You mean you don't know? I thought you were his pimp?" she replied with a twisted smile. "Why should I ever tell you?"

"Because, if you don't," he said, leaning in closer, "I will be outlining most indelibly upon the bathroom wall just how easily accessible a catch you really are."

She pouted for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. "Let's just say, that according to a friend at the Medical Centre, a certain prominent local gaijin and his wife have been frequenting the gynaecologist. It would appear he's passed on a gift from one of his nasty girls."

Nick grimaced, and then thrust a finger in her face. "If you repeat any of this, then - so help me - I will adorn my bathroom scrawl with some especially graphic sketches too..."

* * *

His censure of Briece occupied him all the train journey home, gnawed at him long into the night, and then piqued him again at first light. As soon as was decent, Nick phoned Briece's house, but at first he was out and then he was perpetually engaged. So, on Monday, he called the school office to request a day's leave, which was to his best recollection, the first time he'd ever done so. This fact was immediately confirmed by the fretful reaction of the office lady, who saw fit to list every deadly outbreak ever featured on the news and seek his assurance that he was not so afflicted.

When he finally concluded the call, he drove into the city - managing to avoid every one of the pesky green lights that can so needlessly expedite a journey - and parked opposite Briece's building. Then he made his way to the top floor and stepped into the empty foyer. It was with some disappointment that he discovered the reception was not manned, as he had long imagined, by a young blond of such overstated physical attributes that Briece had flagrantly overlooked the excessive padding of her CV, but rather, by a wee bell and a sign that said in English, Japanese and what he presumed was Klingon, "Please Ring!"

At its jingle, a young Japanese male duly arrived, who Nick recognised from a former party as Nobu, one of Briece's programmers.

"Hi. It's Nicholas, right?" he asked with an oscillating intonation.

"Yes. Is Briece in?"

Gesticulating with the vigour of a French waiter assaulting a fly, he advised, "No. Most certainly not. He is - actually - out."

Nick glared. "Nobu, are you blushing from too much rouge, or because you're lying?"

"I'm sorry," he said, sheepishly ducking his head. "Briece is in his office, but he's just not himself."

"How so?"

"Well, for a start, there's his programming. This morning, I reviewed a function he'd checked into the code repository and I couldn't believe how byzantine it was structured and how poor was its commenting; if anything, it most closely resembled a recipe for Salmon Mousse."

"Oh, not Salmon Mousse," Nick winced, having not really understood the nature of the complaint, but feeling safe to assume any allusion to fish dip was especially grave.

"So complimenting him on his code, I said, 'Perhaps we could improve the readability with more liberal use of GOTO,' to which he said..." and Nobu paused to swallow a large, unpalatable lump, "'Sure. Good thinking.'"

Nick squinted at the young programmer, who he strongly suspected was wearing eyeliner, and waited for the punch line to grip him by the scruff and smack him squarely on the chops. When the blow never came, he stammered out hastily, "And that's bad, right?"

Greeting this frightful deficit in comprehension with undisguised bafflement, Nobu immediately engaged a voice he normally reserved for his four-year-old niece, "Only in the same way that one might construe the Pope holding a secret meeting with Satan as bad."

"Oh," Nick responded solemnly, feeling rather miffed that he hadn't led with this analogy. "Well, I guess I better see him then."

Nobu pursed his ruby lips and inhaled.

"What?"

"Well, it's just that Briece had me take down a list of all the people who couldn't see him," he explained with considerable ill-ease, before coyly adding, "Upon pain of death."

"A whole list? Really?"

"Yes, really," he said, drawing a folded page from his pocket and brandishing it authoritatively.

"Just how many names are on that list?"

"I wouldn't dare to guess."

"So count them then."

"All of them?"

"Yes, all of them."

He drew the page to his face and then peeling back the fold, he examined its content and enumerated silently. After a time, he snapped it shut. "One," he announced.

"Of course, there is, and by any chance, is it my name?"

Tight-lipped, he peeked again at the page. "Maybe."

"Well I'm going in anyway."

Decidedly flustered, Nobu examined his miniature hands of impeccable manicure and concluded rather quickly he was well out of his depth. "OK," he said, relinquishing his last efforts at defence, "but if Briece asks, I thought your name was Roberto Rodriguez."

"Roberto Rodriguez?" Nick confirmed, surprised that a fictitious name should come to him so effortlessly.

"Uh yeah," he replied, as a distinctly wistful quality washed over him. "He's the star of a Mexican soap opera I like to watch..."

Nick was led through a maze of hallways to arrive at an oversized office, but, as it happened, Briece wasn't there; a fact that surprised Nobu enough that he saw fit to peer under the desk and behind the filing cabinet. "Maybe you should take a seat, Roberto; I'll try to find him."

It was the first time he'd ever seen Briece's office, and he paced about, dazed by its grandeur. Two walls were simply glass, which he approached, and with a long, slow sweep, traced the path of the Yoshino River from up in the hills to its egress in the inland sea.

Adjacent to the southerly window was an elongated desk of dark polished granite, which housed a dozen computers that endlessly flashed and whirred. In the midst of the cathodic chaos, were a keyboard and two broad screens. Upon one, a flock of winged toasters flapped an interminable trajectory, while the other was filled with black boxes that cycled endlessly in unintelligible jargon. Beside a mouse, that was both more streamlined and functional than Nick's whole car, was a notepad titled "Weekly Statistics," and divided in two columns. On the left, headed "Bugs," there was but a single marking, whereas the curiously named "PEBKAC" column contained a score of tallies.

Upon the wall was a giant painting - undoubtedly the work of Gabrielle - featuring a programmer hunched over a keyboard, his gaunt fingers pecking feverishly, and his face with an expression of unrestrained glee, bordering on maniacal. From the keyboard, a thick pulsating cable extended to the focus of his obsession, the earth.

Nick circled to a high bookshelf, which was filled in masterful disarray with myriad boxes of esoteric titles, like "MS-DOS" and "Turbo Pascal," and innumerable science and programming tomes, including a series titled "Understanding Binary," though he had only the volumes, 1, 10 and 11.

Amongst it all, Nick was surprised to find a bible, which he withdrew and opened to the dedication, "For Briece, love Mom and Dad, Christening 1961." It was crammed with bookmarks, passages were highlighted and its margins endlessly commented. Nick gave a knowing smile. To Briece, everything was a clock. He was never satisfied being told that with every minute it advanced a tick. He needed to open it up, take it apart and inspect every cog and spring.

Nick thumbed keenly through the pages, "God had multiple sons!!!" it had been notated at Genesis 6:2, then at II Kings 3, "Moabite's deity stronger than God." He was inspecting Ezekiel 23:20 which carried only a three character cryptic code of a semicolon, dash and bracket, when it dawned on him he was not alone.

"Jesus, where did you come from?" he blurted to Briece's dishevelled form.

"I was sitting in my panic room waiting for you to leave, but I ran out of Oreos."

"Oh."

"So are you here for any other reason than to read the good book?"

"I kind of wanted to - you know..."

"Oh Christ, Nick, don't apologise; I would lose all respect for you."

Nick slid the bible back into the void between a fat volume labelled, "The Joy of Refactoring," by Virgil Abuceno, and Claire Bouving's book on marital intimacy, called "Give Colin a Rub," then he turned to Briece who was studying the screen of scrolling black boxes, seemingly finding immense interest in their mysterious output.

"I heard about the gynaecologist," Nick said sadly. "Did you give it to her?"

"I give it to her all the time, but it doesn't help."

"What?" Nick replied with sufficient histrionics that Briece's gaze was immediately averted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"A baby," Briece said with concern. "What are you talking about?"

"Uh, the same thing, I guess."

Briece advanced to a tiny circular table decorated with several mugs of coffee dregs. He sat down and gestured for Nick to join him. "She has an ovarian issue, which means that even with all my money - which, I have on good authority, exceeds that of the emperor - she can never conceive."

"Oh," Nick offered, struggling for something more comforting.

"Yes, oh," he confirmed. "So there will never be a Breyton Viceroy Junior. From an evolutionary perspective I'm a dead-end, a dodo, a Tasmanian devil." He examined several of the mugs until he found one that met his approval, then he took a sip and instantly recoiled. "I guess the only reasonable conclusion, is that there is a God and quite clearly, he hates me."

"You don't believe that."

"No, but if Isaac were here he'd undoubtedly say it was punishment for my wickedness."

"I doubt Isaac believes in a God so vengeful."

"Oh come on, those deities are all vengeful. You don't get to be Lord of All Things without smiting a few interlopers along the way." He smiled weakly at his sharp turn of phrase, but it faded quickly. "Damn it, I'd always had this niggling fear that it was all too good to be true. That when you're walking on clouds, one day a fall will come. Well here I am, lying on the ground, looking up and wondering why I let the thin air make me so giddy."

"So what will you do?"

For several moments Briece reviewed the content of his mug, seemingly quite perplexed that its flavour should be so strongly reminiscent of effluent, and then he began prodding it gingerly with a pencil as if it were a disagreeable insect. "Do you remember when you had choices?" he said, finally surrendering his pencil to the mug. "When everything in your life was new and nothing was decided. It was as if you were in Grand Fucking Central and there were a thousand trains heading to every destination you could imagine. But you don't stop to consider which to take, you simply jump on the first carriage with reclining seats and a bar service. After a brief nap, you wake to find ten years have passed and then, only then, do you realise that this train ain't ever gonna stop. This is it, this is your life, your course has been chosen, and all you can do is ride on until it plunges into the eternal tunnel at the end of the line."

"Christ, Briece, listen to yourself. You're only thirty-five; you've still got so many options." Anger had entered Nick's voice, not least because of his strong aversion to railway analogies.

"We like to pretend we have options," he said with a shrug, "But we don't. It's like fries on the side. I would never leave my wife, because I love her too much. I couldn't find another to bear my children, because then I could never look them in the eye and tell them how they came to be. I can't leave my business, because it's all I know. I can't leave Japan, because I have no life anywhere else. These are my choices. Fries on the side, or nothing." He paused to reconsider his decision to reject the coffee, and Nick waited for the tirade to continue, but he was spent. "I hate fries," was all he muttered.

"That's not true," Nick fumed. "I refuse to believe we don't have choices."

"Well, what about you? Is this the life you chose?"

"No, of course not, but what about Isaac? The universe offered him the easy life in suburbia with a pretty wife who'd dispense him babies by the dozen. Anybody else would have jumped at it and counted their blessings every day, but he didn't. He saw a chance to be truly happy and he chased it. If he gets a do-over, maybe you do too?"

Briece was silent for a long time, which Nick assumed to be in consideration of his comments, but then he said, "Do you know what happened to me today? I went by Isaac's old apartment to collect his mail, and in the empty lot next to his building, I discovered an exquisite little garden. It was filled with roses and carnations and those ones that look like triffids, and it had a rustic old bench, and even a quaint water feature. At first, I couldn't even comprehend how anyone could so heartily devote themself without any hope of physical reward, but as I sat there in muddlement, I became oddly overcome by its beauty. I swear, I must have stayed there for nearly an hour."

Nick nodded slowly to forestall the selection of an appropriate response. Finally, he said, "That's great, Briece."

"No it's not," he responded tersely. "I must have passed that very spot a thousand times, and this is the first I've ever noticed it. Don't you get it? There's a whole world around me that I never experience, because all I ever do is work. I used to think my life was so amazing, but it occurred to me today that it's really just a swank prison with exquisite creature comforts." Pushing together the index fingers and thumbs of both hands, he peered at Nick through the small square it created. "Outside this little box, I have nothing."

"So, think of this as your wake up call. Now you can change your life, cut back your hours, take the time to live more."

But Briece was no longer listening; his mind had meandered again to that curious place where he was apt to make comments to which Nick could never adequately respond. He was no longer peering through his little box either; he was biting both his thumbnails and staring at a space a mile beyond Nick's head. He stayed this way for so long that Nick grew exceedingly uncomfortable. After several minutes the discomfort passed, but Briece still hadn't flinched. Nick wondered whether he should say something to snap him out of it or just retreat quietly from the room. He was debating the merits of each, when he observed Briece transform. In fact, it was scarcely perceptible, and if Nick had not been so very focused upon him, he would surely have missed it. Indeed, he could not quite confirm what it was that had changed, but most certainly it had. There was something new in his posture, his breathing, and even the confluences of his face.

"What is it?" Nick urged in a pitched, suspenseful voice.

Slowly a grin extended across Briece's face. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I can have a do-over. Maybe I get to chase a dream like that lucky bastard, Isaac."

"So what's your plan?"

He nodded knowingly several times. "I need to work harder," he announced, then he wheeled his chair to the keyboard and began tapping.

Nick watched him, growing increasingly irate, until finally, he blurted, "Are you fucking kidding me? This is your plan? To cure your workaholism by working even more?"

"Trust me," he said, without his fingers ever stopping their dance.

Nick leapt up in disgust. "I have to go."

"OK, great chat. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Is that tomorrow or manyana?" Nick clarified.

"Tomorrow! Insha-Allah."

二十七

So long and thanks for all the sushi

From the day Nick had visited his office, Briece's appearances at the Aka-Oni grew ever more infrequent. He was always working late or jetting off to some unspecified Asian destination, where Nick imagined Pina Coladas were served in coconuts, and roly-poly German girls would sear their pale breasts in the sun. This left Nick on the periphery of conversations with young gaijin who would playfully rib him for being so quaintly Japanese, and then bitterly complain once he left how insufferably Japanese he was.

It was on one of these Saturdays that he chanced upon a fellow Kiwi. In a remote prefecture where gaijin were still so rare as to warrant from the locals a double-take and an awkward smile, New Zealanders were all but unknown. In fact, it had been four years since Nick had even heard the blunted vowels of a compatriot.

That night he made his way to the distant pub everyone had unanimously decided would be the new, improved gaijin hangout. Naturally, no one else had turned up at all, but sitting at the bar hovering over a dai-biiru was a stocky, broad-shouldered foreigner clad in a red and black striped rugby jersey. Nick didn't hesitate to introduce himself with the kind of stilted formality one would expect of two strangers, "Jesus, you're a long way from home."

"Home is wherever you park the waka!" the stranger retorted with a laugh.

"So you're from Canterbury?"

"Yeah, Christchurch by birth, but I've been all over. You?"

"Tikorua."

"Where?"

"Tikorua. It's in southern Taranaki."

"Really? I've surfed every beach on the west coast and I've never heard of it."

"Well, it's definitely there, I can assure you of that," Nick pouted, before adding, "It was once the site of Taranaki's largest cattle auction, I'll have you know."

"Oh," he replied, suitably impressed.

His name was Travis and he'd come down from Tokyo to surf the Kaifu rivermouth. Needless to say, they were instant mates and could soon be heard bemoaning the recent defeat of the All Blacks and the rumours that abounded, discussing their favourite beaches and beers, and exchanging the inevitable, "Do you know so-and-so."

They recounted tales of home for hours, lamenting endlessly how much they missed it and desperately wanted to return. It was terrible bullshit, obviously, because Travis too, had a look in his eye of someone on the lam, and neither truly expected to see their distant home before the century was out, but such discourse was ex-pat protocol and anything less would have been traitorous. Finally, in the early hours, egged on by drunken locals they climbed atop the bar and performed an impromptu haka to the whoops and screams of all who witnessed. In all his time in Japan, he had never felt so much a kiwi, nor wallowed in the rich culture it entailed.

When the alcohol was flowing, it was so easy for Nick to muse wistfully of New Zealand, because it was no longer a place, but a Shangri-La that awaited him in the afterlife. One day he would return, but that day was just an inconsequential speck on the horizon that glimmered brightly, yet never drew closer. And if New Zealand was purely ethereal, he could dwell on its ambrosial beauty without the irksome constraints of reality; it was a modern utopia, where the summer days were long, the streets glistened lustrously, and the people friendly beyond measure. And he could dream at length of the things he most wanted to savour, marmite on toast, a mince pie, a DB Draught... These were the talismans of his fantasy, and so he could forget that marmite was salted industrial sludge, a mince pie was a greasy layer of pastry encasing offal too inadequate for pet food, and DB Draught would be a shoo-in for Best Specimen at a urology symposium.

* * *

The languid limbs of the staffroom clock plodded toward the close of the week. Sitting at his desk, Nick was gainfully engaging his last few hours by studying the way the Japanese flag atop the gym twisted and turned in the wind, sometimes bouncing like a red ball against the roof, sometimes curling into an evil wink.

That was when the face of a student entered his frame.

"Hi Kenta," Nick said, visibly upset to be interrupted in a task of such magnitude. Kenta was one of the keen English students, often referred to as Nick's groupies. They were forever piping up during lessons, engaging him in the staff room, or accosting him in the halls. Normally Nick was happy for the company, but that day, he could not escape the grip of an insidious lethargy.

"Nicholas-Sensei, we had a spelling test yesterday."

"Yes, I recall."

"The hardest word you gave us was international, but can you spell it?"

Nick smiled softly. "Of course, I-N-T-E-R..."

"No, Nicholas-Sensei, that's not right." His voice was marked with hyperbolic concern. "Can't you even spell it?"

Nick shuddered with panic, he was quite certain he was correct, but he had recently found himself struggling for many common English words, most notably when he doubled one of the vowels while transcribing, "We love Bobbie." He tried again, slowly enunciating each letter as he visualised it in his head, "I-N-T..."

"No, no, no," Kenta screamed with a grin that stretched the width of his ebullient face. "Can you spell it?"

Nick finally gave a big chuckle, warmed by the interaction. "I-T," he answered. "You really got me good!"

It occurred to him then to visit Briece, who he hadn't seen in months, and so the following morning he drove into the city. Nick was happy to hear from Gabrielle when he buzzed their apartment, and not overly surprised when he was directed to the business wing, but that was the last of his expectations that were met.

All of the staff were there, which wasn't unthinkable for a Saturday, but they weren't engaged in their normal tasks of tapping robotically upon keyboards, screaming at the foosball table or propping up the water cooler. They were all milling about, moving furniture, stacking hardware and ejecting objects from their desks.

When he made his way to Briece's office, his foreboding reached its zenith. It was a chaotic maze of boxes that had each been crudely scrawled with cryptic notations such as "3.0 RC" and "4.0 BETA," and in the midst of it, Briece was kneeling before one marked, "Personal." He was drawing computer disks from atop a massive teetering stack, examining each momentarily, and then holding it over a bin and folding until it shattered. Occasionally he would pause, lost in thought, and place the disk in his personal box, then, inevitably, he would reconsider with a sigh and snap it into the bin. With an expression of frenzied excitement, he continued in this way, quite unaware of Nick's arrival.

"Briece?"

"Nick! I've been meaning to swing by and see you."

"When was that?" he contended.

Briece halted his task to stare at him quizzically. "Don't take it personally, pal. This deal closed on Wednesday and I need to be out by Monday."

"What deal?"

"Meglosoft! They bought the company."

"They bought you out? What do they want with it?"

"To kill it, I would expect. They're really only after my customer base."

"I thought you said you'd never sell out your customers."

"Fuck 'em," he said with a shrug.

"Fuck them?"

"Yeah, why not? I'm not some scientist on the cusp of a cancer cure and I'm not the last honest politician on Capitol Hill. I write software, meaningless ones and zeroes that bounce around pointless boxes of silicon. The world will go on just fine without me."

Nick observed Briece remove six disks from his personal box and convert them en masse to a fusillade of plastic shards. His box was now empty again.

"So how much are they paying you?" Nick pouted.

"How much?" he sneered. "You don't want to go there."

"Yes, I do. I want to know precisely what it costs to buy Briece Lauringtan."

"Fine. Think of all the money you've ever made and multiply it by about a hundred."

"So my life is worth 1% of yours? That sounds about right."

Briece laughed. He was punch drunk with glee, and Nick's solemnity couldn't infect him. "Look I've got a heap to get done here. It'd be best if I came by to see you next week, OK?" Then he recommenced his diskette destruction.

"Sure," Nick said and turned to leave. At the door, he remembered why he'd come. "Hey, you know that challenge you gave me about the orange?"

"Of course," Briece said with piqued interest. "Did you find any words that rhyme with it?"

"Yes, quite a few in fact: hit, bit, quit."

"Shit!"

"Yes, that too."

"Well done, but a week too late, I'm afraid. You see, the car is owned by the company, so it's not mine to give you anymore."

* * *

Following school on Tuesday, Nick returned home to find Briece in the car park leaning on the glistening bonnet of his Corvette. Once he was within earshot, Briece said, "I'm flying out tomorrow, so I wanted to wish you farewell." He was still wearing the same stupid grin that had come to him on Saturday when describing the magnitude of his deal, but it didn't bring any cheer to Nick.

"Are you coming up for a drink?"

"I wish I could, but I've still got so much to do."

Nick nodded slowly, and he leaned against the car opposite, a teeny Suzuki that was inexplicably straddling three spaces. "So you're done with Japan then?"

"Yep."

"Where to now?"

"South Asia."

"That's not a place, that's a loose wave at a map."

Briece shrugged.

"Is it business?"

"Not entirely."

"Is it pleasure?"

"Not quite."

"I don't understand," he said despondently. "Why is it you can't tell me?"

"I'm sorry Nick, but it's still too preposterous for words."

Nick had shared hundreds of perplexing conversations with Briece: the inefficiency of recursion to generate a Fibonacci sequence, how mitochondrial DNA can retrace the migration of ancient humans, and the existence of dark matter to explain away gravitational inconsistencies in the universe, but of all of them, this was undoubtedly the most confounding. And for better or worse, there wouldn't be a two-hour dissertation to reduce it to a level comprehensible to him.

"But you're happy?" Nick asked.

"Gloriously!" Briece stood and gazed up the valley where the sun was laying its weary head. It had taken on a deep hue of scarlet as if it were the last dying embers of something once so grand. "My whole life I only ever had one goal; to be rich. It just seemed the ultimate achievement. Well I got rich, crazy, crazy rich, but nothing changed, I still felt the same; it was just middle class with a couple more zeroes and a flasher car. But I kept acting like I was happy because I couldn't accept that I'd spent my whole life yearning for something so utterly devoid of satisfaction. The day I admitted I was wrong was the most liberating of my life."

"But you must have so many regrets?"

"What regrets? I'm where I am now because everything I've done, good and bad. If you are happy with your life then there can be no regrets."

"What if you're not happy?"

"Then change. Like me."

"Doesn't that scare you?"

"Are you kidding? I'm scared shitless. But it wouldn't be much of a destination if the journey were not so frightening."

Nick smiled. There was something deeply intoxicating about Briece's levity, and desperately, he wanted to pretend that he too, could change.

Checking his watch, Briece smarted at the news it delivered. "I have a parting gift for you." He thrust out his fist and dangled a set of car keys stamped with the logo, GM.

Slowly, Nick inspected the offering, and then the smirk of his friend, and finally, the gorgeous red and cream convertible behind him. "I can't take that. Are you insane? It's too much."

"Well, here's the thing. Yesterday, a team from Meglosoft turned up with five trucks, a dozen packers, and one very obnoxious bean-counter. He had a manifest, and everything - absolutely everything - had to be checked off it. He even made me pop to the store because there was a line item for sixteen hundred paper clips, and four were found to be defective. Then, as they were about to leave, I noticed they weren't taking the car, so I suggested they check their manifest. After all, it clearly stated 1 x Custom 1962 C1 Corvette, directly between 24 x Stapler and 3 x toilet radio. But he scoffed, 'I think we know what we're doing,' and left."

Nick laughed a little, but Briece had become oddly serious. "So this car owes me nothing and I want to give it to you," he said. "I bought it once when I was especially down thinking it would bring me pleasure. It never did. I hope for you, it will."

Edging back as much as he could without imprinting his mass on the soft body of the Suzuki, Nick exclaimed, "But it's not yours to offer."

"Au contraire, I have spoken to my lawyer, and the contract clearly states that any items available at the time of transfer, but not removed by sign-off, remain my property." And he jingled the keys again.

Nick folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. "I don't know, it doesn't feel right."

"Christ, if you knew how Meglosoft used a team of 30 lawyers to whittle away their final offer you wouldn't be bringing ethics into this argument."

Briece's hand stretched even further, but Nick still did not budge. "So why don't you sell it?"

"Because I want you to have it."

He committed himself to a brief shrug.

"Jesus, I'm giving you a fucking car. Why are you being such a bitch about it?" And Briece took the keys into his fist and drew it to shoulder level. "Look, either you take these or I toss them into the rice paddy."

Finally, Nick extended his hand, and as the warm shrapnel fell into it, he did his best to smile. Then he opened the heavy door and slid into the leather seats, which gripped him like an aunt's embrace. "But what will I do with it?"

Briece flapped dismissively. "Cruise along Kitanowaki Beach waving at the girls, take a road-trip to Hokkaido, melt it into a paper weight, I don't care. That's for you to decide."

He ran his fingers over the sculpted steering wheel, admiring its extravagant beauty. "Do you ever sit in here and feel you could drive forever?"

"Trust me," Briece sighed, "you can't outrun your problems."

"I don't know; a car like this and you just might," he replied with a laugh.

There was a honk from an arriving taxi, to which Briece gave a wave. "I better go."

Nick jumped up to shake his hand, "So you're really leaving Japan then?"

"Yes. It's high time for you to go too."

"Go where?"

"Go home."

"Home? I've spent all my adult life in Japan. Why does everyone assume I wouldn't consider it my home?"

"This is not home. This is some odd parallel universe where everyone speaks Dalek and we're treated like kings. You have to go back to real life."

"I can't go back; there's nothing for me there. I didn't just burn my bridges, I scorched the earth."

"Well goodbye, my friend, I shan't be returning to Japan."

"Then this really is goodbye."

They approached each other awkwardly, and shook hands. It had threatened to become a hug, but this was narrowly avoided, much to the relief of all involved. Then Briece turned toward the taxi and yelled over his shoulder, "Hasta luego, mi tomodachi!"

"You do know that's half Spanish, right?"

"Who cares? From now on it's Zai-jian!"

Once Briece had departed, Nick returned to the car and slid the keys into the ignition. It howled into life, and he sat there listening to its exquisite rumbling and delighting himself when any nudge of the pedal would raise its roar to a notch below ear splitting. It was far and away the most amazing thing he'd ever possessed.

Examining its interior, he flicked the button on the glove-box and it burst open under pressure from innumerable screeds of paper. "That bastard," he seethed, immediately envisaging the years he would soon be imprisoned for so many unpaid parking fines, but inspecting one, he found it an offer of purchase for the car. There must have been hundreds of them, all written in the same hand, with the numbers growing increasingly stratospheric.

As he glared at the most eye-watering proposal, he was overcome by the absurdity of owning a vehicle worth more than three years' his salary. And with that, he climbed out, unfolded a cover that Briece had provided in lieu of a garage, and drew it over the vehicle.

* * *

When Nick arrived at the Aka-Oni that Saturday, he was promptly escorted to the bathroom by the proprietor.

"But Sano, surely we should save something for the wedding night," Nick protested with a nervous laugh.

Sano eyed him with menacing bewilderment. It wasn't that the joke made little sense in Japanese, but because he had scarce appreciation for any humour that did not involve wayward baseballs and testicular trauma. Gesturing to the cubicle door, he barked, "Korya nan darou?"

Nick examined the graffiti, which read, "So long and thanks for all the..." Followed by a particularly crude drawing of sushi. He smiled knowingly. "Don't you get it? It's Briece. This is his parting message."

"Briece?" Sano sneered, instantly flying into such a rage that his frizzy hair cracked and sizzled, and he punched the squat door so forcefully it smacked against the bathroom wall and then flew back and rapped him across the knuckles. "Fucking kusottare! Fuck! I fucking kill him!"

In five years, Nick had never heard him speak a word of English, and here he was, swearing like a marine. Briece sure could bring out the best in people.

While Sano nursed his bruised hand, Nick edged from the bathroom, gingerly sidestepping what he assumed to be a coprolite, before it scurried into the darkness. As he gripped the door handle, Sano said, "I always thought it was you."

"Me? Why?"

"It all started about the time you came."

"No, it was well before me. It was Briece, all right. Look at that sushi, it's bluefin tuna. He would order it all the time, even though I'd always joke it was just mackerel with a dash of food colouring."

"It is mackerel with a dash of food colouring. Why would I waste tuna on these drunken idiots?"

"Right, well, it was Briece's favourite, so clearly he's your culprit."

Sano considered the testimony with tight, twitching lips. Finally, he said, "That fucking Briece."

However, upon Nick's appearance the following week, he found Briece's scrawl not yet erased from the cubicle. In fact, the door itself now hung on the wall above the gaijin corner like it were some kind of plaque. It also marked the very last time the men's bathroom ever featured an internal door.

二十八

Be there a greater disability than a blind person afraid of the dark?

But with the departure of Briece, rapidly the Aka-Oni became unbearable; no one remained that he knew well, and the latest intake of Gaijin were even more incompatible than the last. They didn't seem interested in getting drunk or chasing girls or any of the usual youthful indulgences, they were all oddly disciplined and conscientious. They didn't even seem to like the Aka-Oni. They thought it a dive, and not in a good way. And they complained loudly about the rudeness of Sano, but without deferring to him the requisite respect. And, unsurprisingly, they considered the price of drinks obscene. Not because they were obscene, but because it meant a shortfall in the evening's budget. And when they vomited from the undercooked yakitori, they could never appreciate what a favour they were doing their colon. And most of all, they could not understand why there was a door affixed to the wall and not to the bare set of hinges in the lavatory.

Gone were the high level discussions on God or the nature of man, or even the scientifically improbable elevation of waitress Oyama's tits. Instead, everything seemed to revolve around the internet, a subject that Nick knew nothing about, other than once hearing Briece describe it as a worldwide network of interconnected computers for the efficient and robust dissemination of pornography. Which apparently was a joke but he was never entirely sure why. In fact, he had often recounted it to others who all found it exceedingly amusing, and he still did not understand it.

That night, he made the mistake of asking of a new recruit the purpose of the internet, and with unbounded incredulity, it was explained as, "Dude it's the revolution. It's the gold rush of the 20th century. There is a fortune to be made; all you need is an idea."

Nick shrugged, realising immediately that an answer would not be forthcoming, and so he quickly steered the conversation back to safer ground. "Uh huh, so what are you doing in Japan?"

"Oh, I'm just here to save enough seed capital to bootstrap a web project I'm working on."

Promptly appearing at his shoulder was a fellow entrepreneur. "So what's this grand plan?"

"I probably shouldn't tell you, but I'm creating a site that's an index of all the other pages on the internet. I'm going to give it a name that grabs you like Yippee or Wahoo."

The other boy scoffed, "That's ridiculous. Who wants to go to a web site that doesn't have any content, and just tells you to go somewhere else?"

"So what's your big idea then?"

He stepped back to give himself room for his presentation, "What do you do when its 10pm and you don't have any pet food for your beloved Chihuahua?"

"I don't know," the Yippee guy said. "Give him scraps?"

"Scraps? No, no, no. You'd go online and buy from my web site."

"Oh, OK, and so it arrives immediately?"

"Well, probably not, I'll need to work out the details. So far I only have the domain, epets.com."

Nick, who realised he was now standing decidedly distant from these two dreamers, could only shake his head. "I speak English, Japanese and a smattering of Chinese and French. At university, I studied language and linguistics. Yet, not a single word you've said is comprehensible to me."

And with that, he deposited his empty mug on the bar, left the Aka-Oni, and did not return.

* * *

October rolled around again, what the Japanese call, "the Godless month." He was now twenty-four, but the years hung heavy on his shoulders like they were four score and twenty. On the occasion of his birthday, he went alone to a notoriously expensive Japanese barbecue restaurant and ordered for himself the "Feast for Four" platter, then, still feeling somewhat peckish, he ordered another. This was all washed down with several flasks of warm sake. Finally he weaved his way home, successfully navigating all but one of the lampposts he encountered, and delayed only briefly by an altercation with an exceptionally disagreeable pot plant. His final celebratory act of the evening was to vomit into one of his shoes, and then fall asleep with his pants around his ankles and his pale arse shining in the moonlight.

He is woken by movement. A figure in the doorway. In a faded yukata stands a girl. Yukiko? Wordlessly she enters, shedding her garment and letting it fall gracefully to the floor. Her pale form glows in the moonlight as she nears.

"Tessa?" he stammers. "Why are you here?"

She touches a finger of silence to his lips, and with a flicker of her mischievous eyes, climbs upon the bed and kneels over him. With a hand, she reaches to grip where he is hard, and breathlessly lowers herself. A wicked grin comes to her face, and her luminous teeth stretch to the middle of her cheeks. Desperately, he wishes her away, to be rid of her at once, but the ecstasy melts his resolve and grabbing her buttocks, he forces her upon him. She gasps at his vigour, and a tongue appears between her lips. Her body glimmers, the moon reflecting in every bead of sweat, and his eyes are drawn to her perfect breasts, which bob gently with the motion. He takes one in his palm, its spiked tip piercing his flesh. Her tempo elevates, she writhes in pleasure, and her fiery eyes glow through the gash of shuttered eyelids. And with every thrust, she nears her destination. Finally her breath becomes shallow and disjointed, and in her shame, great ruby tears well in the corner of her eyes and stream down her pale cheeks, and she falls upon him, limp and sodden with sweat.

When he woke, he was already on his feet. An inexplicable urge had seized him and he began to rifle through his drawers, casting about his belongings in the flurry. He was maddened with the fear he may have discarded it in a drunken bout, as he was wont to do, most recently with the unknown device in his kitchen that constantly went ping. He had ejected all his drawers and was ferreting amongst the oddments on his shelf, when an object fell from the hollow belly of a porcelain sumo wrestler. With nervous excitement, he held it before himself, a roll of undeveloped film.

He dropped it off on his way to school and anxiously collected the photos upon his return home. Then he rushed to his apartment and breathlessly drew the first image.

There was Tessa, asleep in the grass on a lovely day when she had wanted so very much to study, but he had talked her into taking a drive. They had swum in Lake Taupo, and then lazed on the bank beneath the hot sun. It was a perfect day. How had he forgotten it?

Rapidly, he wearied of the images, so he secreted them in his old briefcase, locked it and slid it far beneath the bed.

* * *

To make his life agreeably predictable and reliably consistent, Nick had constructed himself an elaborate architecture of routine and habit. Every day ran to a finely honed schedule that eliminated any need for reckless spontaneity or incautious optimism.

Though, of course, even in the life of a monk, there is wine. So his visits to the city each Saturday night had provided the perfect rounding of his weekly schedule, but with his enduring snub of the Aka-Oni there opened a sizable hole in its fundament.

It began slowly, but soon he was going out most nights with colleagues. Not the ones, however, who were well-grounded and would return early to their comely wives and stable lives, but the type who huddled in dark izakeya bars and struggled even to remember the name of their significant other. The sort that liked to chase down their whiskey with whiskey, who would unfailingly assist the waitress pour drinks by supporting her buttocks with their stubby fingers, and the sort - most abhorrent of all - that enjoyed karaoke.

When Nick didn't feel up to it, he'd be berated until he did by Kurotani, the most vocal of the troop. Kurotani was notoriously crapulous and had scarcely been home since 1985 when he wearied of the onerous chores of marital life, changing light bulbs, tightening dripping taps, and attending to the abundant sexual requirements of his bride.

It wasn't that Nick liked or respected the group, or even that he particularly enjoyed their company, but it did serve to distract him from other matters, because, most assuredly, there is nothing so distracting as a middle-aged Japanese man belting out the tunes of a teenage pop princess.

29

Tuesday, a little after Twelve

It was well into the afternoon when Nick left the cemetery. He hadn't intended to stay so long, but as he knelt there reminiscing with his grandmother, the hours inexplicably slipped by. Perhaps he'd even slept a little, he considered.

His stomach really was baying now - he'd always found it quite uppity at times like this, when the promise of food had been made, then rudely withdrawn - so he thought to elevate his walking pace, but somewhere between the command from his brain and the motion of his legs, the communication kept breaking down, and in exasperation, he just let his mutinous limbs be.

It wasn't just his muscles that decried their indignities either, he could feel a burn between every vertebra in his back, and there had developed in his ears, a pitched ringing that no amount of prodding would moderate. And every weary step required a capacious gulp of air, which he inhaled with a turbulent wheeze, and despite the belated arrival of the sun, it appeared to him that a dark shutter had descended, giving everything the drab imbuement of grey. Though in his right eye, this was marked with a tinge of sepia.

He soon arrived at the mall, intent on a meal that was suitably austere, but his stomach too usurped his authority, and he found himself before the aromatic American sandwich shop, and then - much to his disgust - entering.

He was met by a pimply faced teenager wearing such an inane grin that clearly his paltry wage was underwriting an outrageous drug habit.

"I'd like a roll," Nick said.

"Ass-ubway? F'long orhaf?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Footlong orhaf?" he repeated, maintaining his winning smile.

Despite Nick's desperate squinting, it was quite obvious that this was most certainly not English. Of course, it had the cadence and tonal inflection of English, but in content was absolute gibberish, so presumably it was Dutch, if he were to hazard a guess. Seeing no solution other than leaving, which he was not entirely sure he could convince his stomach to do, he leaned forward and asked softly, "I don't mean to be rude, but is there anyone here who can speak English?"

The stubborn smile then perceptibly quivered, and for several moment there engaged an internal battle between opposing facial muscles. When it was won, he had miraculously gained the ability to converse in basic English, albeit in a tone a native speaker might interpret as highly sarcastic. "You can have a big one, which is a foot long, or a small one, which is half a foot."

Having thus cleared up that frightful confusion, he was expecting to receive his desired sustenance forthwith, but thereupon commenced an interminable series of question that probed quite intimately into his predilections for objects of a lubricatory and enhancing nature. Nick was not generally one to be easily embarrassed but indeed, by the time he reached the counter, he was decidedly flustered.

* * *

He carried his gangling purchase to the alfresco tables that congregated beneath the canopy of an immense oak. Awash in dappled sunlight and milling with cheery office workers, it would undoubtedly have been quite pleasant on a day less marked by sepia imbuement. He cautiously unwrapped his roll, spent a moment considering the optimal logistics, and then manhandled it in the direction of his mouth and snatched a sizeable bite. With surprise, he found it rather good, though he immediately ascribed this to his overwhelming hunger. Several voracious mouthfuls later, however, he was forced to concede it was not actually inedible, and possibly even deserving of a less vocal denunciation in future. Struggling thus, to enjoy his meal, he gazed about at the teeming activity in the mall, staggered by the lack of familiarity in any of the faces.

At a nearby table, a group of young girls, who were all elbows and chins, supped enthusiastically on ice blocks. They wore the uniform of Tikorua High, a rich lilac hue that had not grown any more flattering with the years. Despite attempting to be discrete, their animated conversation would frequently rise in shrill crescendo, before they would remember themselves and then glance about furtively to check they weren't overheard. Central to their focus was a mousy brunette gushing effusively of her date with a Collegiate boy, where they had, with apparent romance, dined on fish'n'chips and then patronised the local games arcade.

The other girls, who each had their own prerequisite for an ideal mate, were constantly probing her for details. "What car did he drive?"

"A Toyota, I think. It must have been his dad's, because he was, like, crazy careful at parking it."

"Is he handsome?"

"Oh yeah, he's kind of like Tom Cruise, but not so ancient."

"So..." one of the girls finally asked, as if the whole conversation had been leading up to this point, "Did you fuck him?"

"Shhh," she said with exaggerated horror, and then they all gathered in close for a hushed debriefing.

Nick disposed of his rubbish and proceeded toward home, though obviously this was not nearly as direct as it might have been, necessitating as it did, the circumnavigation of a shoe store by a wide berth.

He passed a line of heel-scuffing teenagers, each sporting pants that hung so very low that Nick presumed it was only sheer willpower that prevented them plunging to the ground.

Then he staggered. His mind was churning, which somehow, was no longer compatible with walking. He was trying to focus on a moment in time, attempting to pinpoint the specific tipping point when he became so very old.

When did he stop imagining that the perfect marriage would be to a pair of hyper-competitive Swedish nymphet twins and fantasise of a woman who would love him for all his flaws? When did he stop believing he could change the world and begin to cower from it? When did he last look in the mirror and recognise the gaunt face staring back at him?

Nick probed his temple trying to dislodge a nagging ache. His face was drawn, and his eyes had so retreated that his brow cast a dark shadow upon his cheeks.

His legs commenced their languid march - Nick had ceased wondering from where they were taking their lead - but he noticed then that he felt somehow lighter, and touching at his pockets, he realised he was without his wallet. Finding an unexpected burst of speed, he darted back to his lunch table, cursing himself all the way in the kind of language that would shock a dairy farmer chasing an orphaned calf in a storm.

But the wallet had gone, as too had the prurient girls, or anyone else who might serve witness to its disappearance.

He dashed into the sandwich store and to the pimply Dutch kid, he appealed, "I need to report a lost wallet. Can I use your phone?"

"Sure. It's ten cents."

Ten cents? Seriously? This struck Nick as odd beyond all measure. Obviously, he had expected it to be free, though he would even have accepted that they provided a phone service for a dollar a minute, but ten cents to borrow the store phone seemed as pointless as mandating jumping jacks to access the loo.

Grabbing one of the golden dollar coins that had been rattling in his pocket, Nick slammed it onto the counter. "Here. This is for me and the next nine people that ask."

"You can't do that," he said, recoiling with no less revulsion than if a slaughtered goat had been offered as way of payment.

"Why can't I?"

"Look, I'm trying not to be dick about this..."

"Well you're not trying very hard," Nick was about to say, but instead he issued a long sigh, and dug into his pocket for a lesser coin.

Of course, the phone call proved fruitless. Nothing had been turned in, and he must file a report if he had any hope of it being returned. As it happened, he had no such hope, but he felt oddly compelled to complete the procedure anyway, and so headed off to the police station.

* * *

The police station was now a video store, and its gaols reserved for a selection of curiously misspelled titles that included Forrest Hump, The Joy Fuck Club and Raiders of the Lost Ass. Though, after a series of unsuccessful detours and the anxious inquiry of three locals, each of whom provided a different set of directions, he arrived, seemingly by way of triangulation, at the new station. Approaching its door, however, he realised how decidedly off colour he felt, and took pause to steady himself against a pillar. His heart seemed to be skipping every third beat, and then every second, and it felt very much like when he was dragged into the principal's office after Morita had nearly had him fired. Methodically, he drew breath through his nostrils, inflated his lungs and exhaled from his mouth - just as he'd once been taught - and soon he could proceed.

The front desk was empty and so Nick tapped the buzzer and waited, then he pressed the buzzer and waited, and finally, he leaned on the buzzer and waited. At length, a figure appeared from a rear door. He was dressed as if he were a police officer, but of a physique so wholly inappropriate for the role that one would guess he only ever caught a perp when they shared the same queue for pizza. His legs had bowed under the weight of their lading, and his shirt stretched around his expanded girth looking for all the world like an elephant hiding in a pup-tent. Indeed, each button appeared under so much strain that another toffee-pop would surely see them bursting forth in a blinding hail of plastic. His own corpulence was so exceedingly taxing that from beneath his armpits sprawled sodden yellow stains, and with each step, he released a high-pitched wheeze as if compressing a small rodent underfoot.

He inched his way to the counter, then immediately apprehended a chair and sat with a marked displacement of air. "How can I be of assistance?" he asked, with identical disinterest to that of Nick's telephone call.

"Afternoon, constable, I..."

"Sergeant," he corrected, tapping the chevrons on his shoulder. Clearly, he was a man accustomed to throwing his weight around, despite the significant logistical difficulties involved.

"Right, sergeant, I lost my wallet..."

"Oh yes, you just called. Well, we're on a skeleton staff here in Tikorua because of the shit-storm brewing in Wanganui and I'm on my eighth shift in a week, so you'll forgive me if we don't assign a dozen staff to it."

Nick shrugged. "You mentioned I could complete a form..."

The sergeant surveyed him bitterly, and then finally produced a pen and lengthy document. Nick reviewed it, his eyes drawn to the space for his name.

"If you could move this along," he implored. "I haven't got all day."

Quickly, Nick scrawled his details and returned the form to the sergeant, monitoring his expression closely as he transcribed the details into his computer, but mercifully, there was no hint of recognition or other cause for alarm.

He was typing with a single pudgy finger from each hand, and paused at the completion of each word to issue an elongated heave. After several interminable minutes, the sergeant chuckled to himself, and then as way of explanation, he said, "I heard a funny one today; why is a computer like a Maori?" Without awaiting response, he replied, "Because you need to punch in the information!" And he chortled again, oblivious to Nick's reddened face and tightening jaw.

When he finally finished his two-fingered concerto, he handed a slip to Nick. "This is your case number. We'll call you if we hear anything. You'll need to go to the bank and cancel your cards."

The final instruction hit Nick with a dizzying strike; he hadn't even considered having to return to the matronly teller to confess his negligence. "You know I once left my camera in a busy train station in Japan. When I came back the next day, it was still there, right in the same place."

"This isn't Japan, this is Tikorua," the sergeant tersely advised.

* * *

The Tikorua police station was housed in one of the town's original colonial homes, a handsome old homestead on extensive grounds that had belonged to its very first mayor. Upon his death in 1902, it had been gifted in perpetuity to the town. An act of generosity that endeared him to local historians, almost as much as the enormity of his beard.

Elsewhere a committee would have formed to endlessly discuss the preservation of this treasured landmark while sipping tea with a mellifluous slurp. It would have been tastefully restored and its interior stocked with the tawdry surplus of myriad garage sales, and generations of mothers would have dragged their listless children to remind them how good they have it.

But the Tikorua council, unable to decide how best to honour such a weighty endowment, successfully debated, delegated and deferred any agreement for eighty years. Councillors were elected on the strength of their plans for the building, and retired having grown hoarse defending their failure not to implement them.

As the building fell into disrepair, it seemed a solution might never be reached; that no one could ever forge a compromise. What was needed was someone special; a man of boundless drive, a man of flawless vision, a man of bombastic speeches bolstered by gin and elevated by custom footwear with generous heels.

Henry Kochlieczek was just such a man.

The product of a large extended family in Eastern Tikorua, he was just a simple man of simple tastes, he liked to confess, as he squeezed his steak and kidney pie onto a plate and garnished it with a dash of Worcester sauce and a pinch of pepper. He was a third-generation New Zealander, which made him feel significantly more entitled than anyone of more recent arrival, but certainly no less entitled than someone who'd been here for thirty generations. He considered himself knowledgeable and worldly, which was quite an achievement for someone who seldom ventured outside Taranaki.

While few would consider him handsome, he was not called ugly either; he was something like a French car of such elaborate styling that you could never bring yourself to denounce. His audacious features were trumped by a shock of red hair leading many to assume he was an Irish Catholic, much to his chagrin. He was Jewish, he would passionately defend, despite only being Jewish on his paternal grandfather's side, having never seen the inside of a synagogue, and invariably mispronouncing the holy book as the tor-ha.

"It is good to be Jewish," Henry had announced to his half-brother, Patrick, the day he'd appointed him his campaign manager. Patrick was the only person Henry ever trusted enough to reveal his dark ruminations, solely because he considered him docile and stupid. "There are already so many eminent Anglicans and Presbyterians in New Zealand history. Even those damn Irish Catholics..." Henry added with blithe indifference to half his bloodstock. "But Jews, what have they ever done for this country?"

Patrick nodded his low head sagely. In fact, he was not nearly as short as he looked. If you were ever to unfurl him like a pinwheel sponge, you'd find he exceeded six foot in length, it was only his stooping, obsequious manner that made him seem so much more diminutive.

"Yes, that is why I want to be the first Jewish mayor of Tikorua." Henry said, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"Being Jewish is good," Patrick added in the quiet, diffident manner with which he always spoke, "but perhaps Greek Orthodox would be even better?"

"Oh don't be daft, Patrick. We're only one quarter Greek on our mother's side."

Patrick slowly nodded again, silently suppressing a troubling snippet of knowledge with regard to an earlier Tikorua mayor.

"And who's to say where this might lead? Perhaps, one day - our Gods willing - New Zealand's first Jewish Prime Minister? Wouldn't that be grand?"

"Wouldn't it?" replied Patrick, who was widely considered to be docile and stupid simply because he was always better at listening and reading than he ever was at speaking and writing. "Only..."

"Patrick! I don't want to hear any of your foolish doubts."

"Sorry Henry," he croaked, seeing fit not to also advise him of Julius Vogel, the widely popular eighth prime minister who modernised New Zealand, championed the rights of women and Maori, and was more Jewish on a Tuesday afternoon than his half-brother had been his whole life.

That September Henry Kochlieczek won the mayoralty, and with his indifferent wife at his side and his cowering half-brother at his rear, he gave an acceptance speech of such verbosity that the local rag needed to expurgate 500 references to overwhelmed to reprint it on the front page.

His victory had been sweeping; he was, unquestionably, the perfect politician. He was a man gifted of a boundless drive to prove himself an unprecedented leader, and also a flawless vision that allowed him to reflect on his string of achievements with unsurpassed clarity and realise that in every instance, his glory had been pre-empted by another.

Firstly, there was his appointment as captain of the local rugby team, the Turd Slingers, which only occurred after the first choice had been injured in an unwitnessed incident at an after-match function. He'd gone on to marry the prettiest girl from high school, but, he lamented frequently, he hadn't even been first to fuck her (nor, if there was anything to the rumours, was he the last). But most troubling of all, was that his greatest achievement was soon undermined when he learnt he was not actually Tikorua's first Jewish mayor. That honour, he discovered courtesy of a public secretary who promptly found herself unemployed, belonged to a long dead, hirsute predecessor, whose former home occupied so much of the council's energies.

"There is no place for sentimentality in a modern city," he had subsequently announced with such a solemn visage that it was scarcely diminished by the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His statement was so profound and forward thinking that it was immediately passed with unanimity by the council, all of whom were related by blood or marriage, or in many cases, both.

Thus under the Historic Buildings Beautification Plan, work was soon commenced to rejuvenate the homestead. Its intricate wooden-framed windows were upgraded to aluminium joinery, the delicate ironwork of its extended veranda was scrapped lest it obscure the fluorescent lighting, and the grand, carved doors that squeaked with antiquity were replaced by glass sliders that opened with a silent, soulless whirr.

The building was then leased to the police who enhanced it further by painting it in a stark white with a thick band of blue around its girth, and gutted the interior so that none of its former opulence was wasted on the incarcerated.

Where the frontage once stretched out in elegant lawn and coiffured gardens, there was now a concourse paved in alternating tiles of dark grey and light black in the pattern of an unfolded dodecahedron, or possibly, a polyangular shit, and in case there was any confusion as to its purpose, a sign read:

No Loitering

No Smoking

No Running

No Skateboarding

No Roller Skating

No Ball Play

Nick exited the station and at the edge of the concourse, he paused to inhale. It ached in the back of his throat, where it was parched and raw, and he stifled a barbed cough. The sun had dipped low in the sky and there was no longer warmth in its caress.

His attention was arrested by a phlegmy hack. Against a signpost leaned a woman drawing lustily from a cigarette, whose hair had been dyed to a colour rarely seen in nature except as a warning to predators. She had a baby stroller, but it was laden with a crate of beer. Her toddler was, in fact, running about quite shrilly, swiping at the world with a sword cut from toetoe. "You little shit!" she hissed when the tip of his weapon connected with a parked car.

Her scruffy dress hung from her emaciated body like a flag on a windless day, and its injudicious neckline revealed the most desperately unappealing cleavage that Nick had ever been party to. Adorning her wiry arm was a wilting tattoo. It carried the date, 21-11-1994 and featured a hideously unflattering visage of a baby, though with due consideration for what the artist had been given to work with he'd actually performed rather admirably.

She dropped her cigarette, stubbed it beneath an unpolished stiletto, and advised the child to congregate immediately lest she clip him about the ear. At length, he joined her, and received a clip none-the-less, and then she stormed away, wheeling her precious cargo, while her toddler bounded behind.

For no good reason, Nick realised he was staring at his hands. They were held out before him, and quite clearly empty, yet they felt so very cumbersome. He staggered under their burden and then his body released a most mournful groan.

He could take it no more. He could not endure the unendurable. He would drive back to the airport this very minute, board a plane to Japan, and never come back, not ever, not even when he was a withered corpse, hollow and lifeless, and they hadn't even a grave to inter him. He would sooner spend his eternity rotting in the feculence beneath the Black Hole of Kawauchi than spend another moment in this horrid, unrecognisable place.

Instantly drained of his energy, he crumpled into a dishevelled pile, a wrinkled mass in a worn suit. It seemed he could stay that way forever, or at least until the council swept him up away the old newspapers and drink cans, but finally, he remembered why he'd returned, and after leveraging himself against an empty concrete planter, he wearily trudged on.

30

Tuesday Evening

Nick had already eaten everything palatable in his mother's fridge. He'd also devoured anything that looked even faintly edible. Now he was reduced to offerings that steadfastly defied any culinary categorisation. The dish he'd chosen at random - because there seemed no other reasonable criteria - proved truly remarkable, not on any gastronomical basis, obviously, but by the fact its appearance was totally hostile to its aroma, which itself held no resemblance to its taste. He couldn't even say with any certainty whether it was a dinner or a dessert. It was savoury and quite clearly contained mushrooms, but he frequently found himself gagging on a marshmallow or spitting out an M&M. After he had eaten as much as he could eat and reasonably expect to hold down, he took careful note of the label attached to the container, E. Woodward, and vowed to track her down and kick over her letterbox.

He was sitting on the couch, silently trying to banish any thoughts of a maritime nature, when there was a knock. Before he could think better of it, he swung open the front door to find a squat figure in the darkness. "Sneakers?! I mean, Stephen, how's it going?"

"Good," he said, though with an appreciable lack of commitment. "I'm sorry to hear about your dad. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm OK," Nick said and shrugged to confirm the extent of his wellbeing.

"Really? Cause you look like shit."

"It's just jet-lag. And home cooking."

Sneakers shuffled uncomfortably in the doorway, which did not befit a man so impeccably presented in grooming and attire. In fact, he was not nearly as homely as Nick remembered. He had grown into his face quite well, and it was no longer dominated by a few queerly sized features. He was not as short either, perhaps not taller, but certainly of more bearing. With exasperation, he finally blurted, "So are you going to invite me in?"

"Of course." Cautiously, Nick led him through to the lounge, which involved the circuitous navigation of several assemblages of empty bottles.

"Jesus, your Mum's hitting it pretty hard, is she?"

"I guess..."

"I didn't even know you were back till I saw you at the store."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I wanted to come in, but..."

Sneakers nodded heavily, then pretended not to notice as Nick gestured to the couch. Instead, he commenced rocking from one foot to the other, and with every undulation, the light dazzled in the sheen of the immaculately polished leather shoes jutting from his shortened trouser hem. "Look, I have something I must tell you," he finally said, and after significant internal struggle, he forced his eyes to Nick. "I know you think I'm some kind of loser because I dropped out of varsity to work in my father's shop..."

"I don't..."

"Let me finish. I'd be the first to admit that I fucked up a lot when I was younger, but I need you to understand that the one thing I will never regret was coming back to help Dad. He may be a tough businessman, but everything he's ever done has been for my sister and me. I might never be anything you'd call successful, but if I can be half the man he is, I will be content. You can do a lot wrong in life, but if you do right by your kids, therein lies redemption."

"Stephen..."

"No, there's something else that has to be said, because I've lived with it too long." His eyes gazed about the room again, and they settled, after a time, upon the couch, as if he were regretting his decision not to sit after all. "For the longest time you never liked me - I get that, I was always goofing off and half-arsing it. But then came that day at Mangahume Beach when you nearly drowned..."

"For which I will always be grateful," Nick interjected.

"But here's the thing..." He ran a shaking hand through his short hair, which was already threatening a future of sparse foliage. "You never would have become so separated from my surfboard if I'd given you the lanyard. Maxwell asked about it, but I told you guys it was lost because I couldn't be bothered scratching around for it in the garage."

"But that doesn't matter; you still came out to pull me from the water."

"No, I never did. I saw my surfboard tumbling in the waves, so I rowed out to fetch it. If I hadn't nearly run you over in my eagerness, I wouldn't have even given you a second thought."

"You still saved my life," Nick protested weakly.

"No, I saved my board. You were just en route."

Stephen strode to the door, and exiting, he said, "So you don't owe me anything and you needn't pretend we're friends."

Nick couldn't respond. He had never considered the role of the remissful lanyard, or probed Sneakers on his miraculous appearance. To him, there had only ever been one person negligent, and that was himself, and only one person heroic, and that was Sneakers. He'd lived with this memory unadulterated for a decade and he wasn't about to countenance such blatant revisionism.

Once he'd recomposed himself, he dashed out to find Stephen already climbing into his car. "That day isn't what made us friends. It's what happened after," Nick shouted.

But the comment was acknowledged with a shrug, and then he was gone.

* * *

As Nick re-entered the house, he was reproved by the monochromatic mien of his father. Gracing the wall opposite the entrance was their wedding photo, especially stark in black and white, like the horrid daguerreotypes of war. He was irrepressibly stern for the happiest day of his life, while his bride, for her part, looked surprisingly beautiful and quaintly optimistic, which betrayed a distinct lack of foresight, Nick considered, given the grunting, sweating introduction to human relations that was about to befall her.

The default state of his father was of brooding discontent, and the closest Nick ever saw him to happy was when he was most angry. He seemed quite ill-suited to his posting within humanity. While he adroitly mimicked the majority of human emotion, endearment and warmth were inherently alien to him, and he never seemed more awkward or maladjusted than on his infrequent attempts to be gracious.

When James had been too busy one weekend to accompany him, he had enquired of Nick, undoubtedly after much backroom prodding on the part of his mother, "I wouldn't imagine you would like to play some golf?"

Nick gazed up at the face that had ventured no more than two inches into his room - undoubtedly some sort of record in itself - which appeared an endless ruddy expanse of subcutaneous tremors and twitches.

"Well?" his father said at length.

"Oh, I hadn't realised it was a question."

"Harrumph," he had announced - a curiously concise retort for someone who prided himself on his verbosity - and his face disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Nick returned to the lounge. He'd decided not to bother with bed that night. If he was going to be thrown from his sleep, he reasoned, he may as well meet it halfway, and so he sat himself on the couch and watched as the contents of four wine bottles evaporated before him, filling the air with a haze that softened all the angles, and made all the surfaces slick and prone to slippage. When all the bottles were empty, he just sat there, incapable of movement, and stared ruefully at another picture that faded in and out of his focus. This one, with its broad smiles of such vibrant hue, somehow offended him even more; a balding old git and his pretty waif, a perfect son, and the other little shit. He sought then, to throw something at it, but all at hand was a cushion, and the last thing he saw before everything went dark was the curious sight of a star crashing to the floor.

Hunched from his study books heavy on his back, he cuts across the park, giddy in the warm afternoon sun. He hurries to their flat and skips up the steps to entreat Tessa to loll with him in the long grass, but as he enters, the sun dips below the horizon. His disappointment enfeebles him, but recalling what he need ask her, he blunders from room to room.

A great door looms up, and pressing an ear to its cold surface, he can hear her sobbing within. He seizes the handle, which spins vainly in his grasp, and incensed, pounds with his fists and lunges with his feet. But the door callously absorbs his every strike, growing ever broader and stretching ever higher.
XXXI

26.214: Fluid Mechanics and Conjugal Discord

Tessa had shut herself in her room. For hours, she'd been playing on her violin a dirge so very forlorn that Nick found himself pacing outside the door debating whether to admit his betrayal. Time and again, he reached for the handle, twice even touching it, but each time, he was restrained by the weight of his arguments, some noble, most not. But at its crescendo, his guilt finally overcame him, and he burst into the room with such violence that she immediately halted.

"Sorry, was I playing too loud?"

"No, that's not it." And he knelt down on the floor before her, which he hoped would heighten his contrition. "I have something I must tell you..."

Her face contorted with concern. "Are you sure you need to do this?"

"Yes, I must." And in a breathless babble, he blurted the details of that blurry evening, leaning heavily on the psychoactive properties of alcohol, and avoiding all reference to woeful Japanese poetry.

He had practised in his head a thousand times; carefully selecting his vocabulary, gauging the timbre of each syllable, measuring each soulful pause, but not once had he pictured her face or imagined her doleful reaction. In fact, it was only as the first words passed his lips, that it fully dawned on him just how much hurt he would unleash.

But by then it was much too late to stop. It was the locomotive steaming through Tangiwai oblivious to the buckled bridge in it path, and as it careened into the flooded river the engines fell silent.

He wasn't looking at her then, just the violin, twitching in her grip. Desperately, he wished she would speak, but there was not a sound. 'Please say something', he pleaded silently, 'Anything. Call me an F-hole. Tell me to fuck off and die, but please, just say something.'

He forced his eyes to her face. It was pale and sullen, as if she'd just staggered from the mangled wreckage and was still too dazed to comprehend it. Finally then, she spoke. "You prick! Why are you telling me this?"

He gasped. Of the thousands of questions he'd rehearsed an answer, this was not one he'd even considered. "Because I'm sorry, and I can't lie to you."

"Confession is nine parts guilt to one part contrition," she scoffed. "If you were sorry, you would never have done it. If you weren't capable of lying then you would have told me well before now."

"So I shouldn't have told you?"

"You shouldn't have cheated," she screeched. "But once you had, you should have lived with your shame, tortured yourself for fear of my finding out, and vowed never to be so selfish again. But you didn't, did you? You unloaded your guilt onto me, and now I must live with it. Your pleasure, my pain."

"But how is this any different from you and your ball date?" he spurted.

Her jaw slackened and her eyes narrowed, and with a sudden lurch that encompassed all her rage, she swung at him with her violin. Instinctively, he blocked and the strut broke across his forearm with a staccato note of curious melody.

Examining the dissevered remains in her hands, her face drew and quivered. There appeared a tear, and then another, and soon her violin fell with a trill thrum to the floor and she covered her eyes to quell the torrent.

There was nothing he could do; he was helpless to console her. He was not even entirely sure whether she was weeping for his disloyalty or the destruction of her beloved instrument, so he collected the pieces, placed them carefully in the case, and said, "I'll get someone to fix this for you."

Then he placed an arm around her, but she immediately rose, locked herself in the bathroom, and redoubled her sobbing.

In penance, he waited at the door long into the afternoon, until she finally emerged with her cheeks rouge and her eyes marbled. "I need to help at the restaurant," she announced dispassionately. Then she vanished into the bathroom and reappeared at length with her wounds suitably masked.

As she left, she paused to offer him a faint smile. "I understand why this happened and I forgive you. But you can never speak of this again, to anyone."

"I promise."

Nick found himself strangely ecstatic. In his mind, he'd pictured a myriad of ghastly outcomes, and even the most optimistic had not come close to this. She'd forgiven him and now they could go back to how they were. Just like the violin, it would be repaired, and everything would be as when it was new.

Though, as it happened, that was the very last time he was ever to hear her play.

* * *

It didn't take long for Nick to discover that not everything was quite the same. It wasn't that anything was particularly wrong, just that there was a perceptible undercurrent to all their interactions. The niggling issues that had been silently swept under the carpet, now piled into unsightly mounds. There was so much more Chinese in their conversations too, and it was never subtitled or elucidated parenthetically. In fact, he needed a dictionary to translate "Yan-tao, Jyu-nou" as "Head of a man, brain of a pig." And her food never seemed to taste as good; he didn't actually believe she was poisoning him, but it didn't hurt to secretly exchange their dishes either.

Of course, these matters only served to make his like difficult or, at times, unintelligible, but not anything that approached physical discomfort.

That was, until Saturday.

He especially showered and shaved, and then retired to their room for their usual tryst, but she immediately brushed aside his advances. This was quite unexpected; Tessa was always an active, enthusiastic mate - though perhaps not nearly as lithesome and lustful as his friends might suppose - but tonight, it did not matter how much he coaxed or canoodled, bartered or begged. Indeed, her excuse was so patently thin and obviously trite that there was only one conclusion he could draw.

"Am I ever going to have sex again?" he finally heaved in exasperation.

"Oh, I'm sure you will," she replied with a cool smile. "Assuming, of course, you are willing to take matters into your own hands. So to speak."

Rigid and unable to sleep, he cogitated long into the night. Finally, he decided he would have her violin repaired. If he could fix it, he reasoned, surely then she would forgive him. So after she left for classes on Monday, he presented the mangled instrument to a store, but the quotation was so unimaginably high, that he would need to set money aside each week toward it. Given his miserly student allowance, reparation seemed a distant hope, as did any prospect of copulation.

* * *

Several weeks later, Tessa stormed into the bedroom and plonked a test sheet before him. He could clearly read the C+ grading, but she saw fit to stab at it anyway. If it had been one of Nick's results, the inclusion of the plus would have been cause enough to celebrate, but he doubted she would see it that way.

"I've never had a C in my life," she raged. "Look at what you're doing to my grades."

Nick shrugged. "Speak for yourself. Since you swore me off the weed, and kept me from my beer-swilling friends, I've never done so well."

But she was not about to be deflected by humour. "If my mother ever saw this she'd skin me alive."

"I'm sure she realises you're studying one of the hardest courses at Massey."

She gagged. "You don't understand her at all, do you? Even if I got an A she would say, Well you should really be aiming for an A+. And then when your grades are all A+, she says, If only you work a little harder you can be top of your class. Then you're top of your class for three years running, and all she says is, You never made School Dux though, did you?"

"Well it's probably just as well you don't live with her now. You live with me, and I think any grade not written in red is just grand."

"Is everything a joke to you?" she exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air, and then storming out before he could mount a defence.

Subsequently, he could hear her cursing the discovery of his unwashed dishes, and she appeared again in the doorway, even more aggrieved. "Why must you be such a slob?" she screamed, her temples throbbing wildly, as if rage were her drug and each outburst delivered a fresh injection.

"It's just a few dishes from lunch."

"It's always just a few dishes, and if I didn't clean them they'd sit there forever."

"No, I would have done them in the evening. It's just that you can't stand to look at a dirty dish for even a moment. Tell me which is better, being a little untidy or totally anal-retentive? Bearing in mind the latter is a recognised psychological disorder, which invariably requires a psychiatrist."

"And the former is a recognised pain in the arse that inevitably necessitates a relationship counsellor."

The last of Nick's humour escaped him then too, and he leapt up to stand in her face, his hands gripping tightly. "Why are you always so angry?" he barked. "What the hell have you got to be angry about? Ethiopians who don't eat for weeks because of the worst drought in living memory, they can be angry; Kurdish kids orphaned by ethnic violence, they can be angry. But you... you are an attractive, young woman from a wealthy family, what possible right do you have to be so angry?"

"Christ, Nick," she heaved through clenched teeth. "Can't we ever have an argument that's just about you and me?" And she departed to the guest room and slammed the door.

He shrunk back to his seat and gazed forlornly at a carving that hung opposite. It read Yu-Jie, though the jade had lost its sheen. There was a time, he remembered, when the colour of her eyes would shift almost to green, but now they only ever seemed as dark and cold as obsidian.

* * *

Then came that peculiar day. He remembered well that it was a Tuesday, because it was so unexpected that a Tuesday could cause such unease. A brash Monday, obviously, perhaps even that quirky middle child, Wednesday, but Tuesday was always the quiet, unassuming one.

He dragged himself from bed at the usual time after a typical night's sleep. He peered out the window and observed the weather was nondescript, and upon consideration of his day's timetable, he found it too held no surprises. Thus, he made his way to the bathroom, turned on the shower and undressed. At that point, if he'd stepped into the cubicle, it would have been a typical Tuesday, but as it happened, his fractious stomach gave him pause, and he sat upon the toilet.

It was in this position that he soon observed the shower fluctuating wildly in pressure. The issue had first appeared several weeks earlier and was getting progressively worse, which often made bathing a torturous experience. When he raised the mattered with Tessa, she complained of it too, and promised she would call the landlord. He was yet to appear, but fortunately the issue had resolved itself for a few days. Now, however, it had returned with a vengeance.

In anger, he rose from his throne and exited to the kitchen. "The bloody shower's playing up again," he said, or at least, meant to say - it was never clear in his recollection how much of it actually passed his lips - because he immediately spotted Tessa at the sink wrenching randomly at the taps.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

She flinched briefly, but didn't turn toward him, just lifted her gaze to the window over the sink. "I'm doing the dishes."

But even from where he stood, he could see there were no dishes on the bench and the plug sat lonely on the sill. He was about to scoff at her ineffectual lie, but, overcome with foreboding, the laughter never arrived. Nothing good could come of that argument, he reasoned. If their relationship was going to founder, then it would not be today, not now, not standing there in his birthday suit. So he backed from the room and returned to the shower, and though its flow was now constant and warm, it failed to melt the chill. Holding his head beneath the stream, he let it flood his face until he was gulping for air.

This is broken, it finally occurred to him, and from here, there could be no repair, only an inevitable fracture into two malfunctioning halves.

XXXII

15.306: Principles of Russian Negotiation

Nick had decided to visit Tessa's pseudonymous Uncle Shan. He'd suggested she accompany him, but Tessa bemoaned an important assignment she had due, the hesitancy heavy in her voice, and then promptly disappeared into her room.

Uncle Shan lived in a tiny brick flat, tucked behind a racecourse, a markedly nondescript abode for someone of such coloured history. He was slow to answer the door, but brightened immediately upon seeing Nick. Ushering him out of the cold, he commenced steeping a pot of Jasmine tea.

"I heard you were sick," Nick said, sitting at the small table that crowded the kitchen, "but you're looking good."

"Really? Well that'll explain why I can never get my doctor to take me seriously," he quipped.

"Tessa wishes you her best, too. She wanted to come, but you know how she is with her study."

He nodded forgivingly. "What about you? Surely you must have better things to do than listen to the tiresome yarns of an old man."

"Your yarns aren't tiresome, and you're not that old..."

"I'm old enough to find myself looking back more than I ever do forward," he said without sadness. He positioned two ornate porcelain cups on the table, and filled them with an unsteady hand. "When I look back at my life now, it comes to me as one endless day without sleep. So clearly, I can remember the morning, bright and long, and me with all the energy in the world. But I fear I worked too hard in the afternoon, because it slipped by without me ever noticing. Now with darkness approaching, I'm so very tired that all I wish for is sleep."

"That's just the flu talking," Nick chastened. "You still have many good years ahead."

With a laugh, he said, "So you would have me believe that one man can affect our orbit of the sun?"

"If anyone can, it will be you."

"Well I did survive the Red Guards for five years," he conceded. "Hey, did I ever tell you how I hid a half-pound of gold by painting it black and using it as a door stop? Those bumbling cretins must have tripped over it a dozen times..."

Upon returning to their flat, Nick dropped in on Tessa. He intended to debrief her on Uncle Shan, but she promptly blurted, "I've decided to stay with my parents for a few weeks in June."

Tessa was a master of the Babushka defence. Like those crazy Russian self-nesting dolls, she always concealed her true motives beneath layers of diversional justifications, each of which would seem compelling, but secretly served only to protect the truth.

"The restaurant is booked solid with private functions, and they really need me to help out," she explained.

Nick, who always failed to recognise the technique until he'd blundered through the first few layers, immediately attacked her rationale, "Why not just leave earlier from the flat?"

Naturally, the first layer was always easiest to dispatch, because that was for her most brittle defence, but each successive one was strengthened by increasing levels of forethought and complexity. "Yes, but I want to spend more time with my family; they hardly see me these days..."

After much haranguing and fighting, you'd be near your wit's end and demand to know the "real reason," and then, finally, she would break down in sorrowful confession. "We're always so busy with each other that I need time by myself to study for midterms," she would wail. And that was it, the sign that you were close, and there were only a few levels to go.

The final truth, when it arrived, washed in on a flood of tears, "Nick, I think we need some time apart. We were so good when I was just your girlfriend, but this... this pretend marriage... it's not sustainable."

'Sustainable?' he repeated to himself. He knew the definition of the word precisely, he could translate it to Japanese, and even identify its French cognate, but he had no idea what it fucking meant. He thought to probe her questionable vocabulary choice, but her actions soon proved elucidation enough. She was removing belongings from her drawers and piling them on the bed. At first, he scoffed at her histrionics, then he attempted to replace the items faster than she could remove them, and finally he held her in the hope he might stem the rush of fluids.

He couldn't let it end like this, not without fighting for her, not without him telling her how much he loved her, not without him dictating any of the terms of the dissolution. So he pleaded with her to stay, and he made dubious commitments and unconscionable promises until they finally collapsed together in a ball and wept, mourning the last breath of their affection.

But in Nick's memory, this was just an incident, isolated and inconsequential. Just like the peculiar day with the shower, and the evening of the new nightwear of which he would not speak. He still firmly believed then of the malleability of fate, and that in his hands he was crafting his future. That these incidents were all interconnected and inexorably dragging him to a destination, he was totally blind.

XXXIII

19.243: Mating Rituals of the Animal Kingdom and the Role of Lingerie

Nick's favourite professor was Gordon Cauldwell, who taught most of his Japanese lectures. He had long hair that he drew into a ponytail, and an unfathomable predilection for the kind of sideburns even an Elvis impersonator would call gauche. In his early days of lecturing, he had embraced pipe smoking in the belief it made him look scholarly, and now the implement resided permanently in his top pocket, or hung from an imperceptible gap beneath his unruly moustache. He wasn't old, but certainly of a maturity that people stopped calling you middle-aged and struggled for a diplomatic alternative.

Lessons with Professor Cauldwell were always enjoyable, but equally haphazard, as they would flail whimsically between Japanese grammatical structures, the glories of Asian history and curious anecdotes of his youthful travels.

There was a persistent rumour that his pipe was regularly filled with weed, and he would puff away on it while lustfully embracing the lithe Japanese assistant on his long leather couch. Nick had lost count of the number of times he'd heard from someone who knew someone who'd walked in on them, but he found the idea inconceivable. Not because he doubted the Japanese assistant could be enamoured by his old world charm, nor that mood enhancing substances had ever passed his lips, but rather, that he considered the professor the type of man who prized his woman, not skulked about behind closed doors. Consequently, Nick had argued the absurdity of it many times, but only a few days would pass before he'd hear it again from another authoritative source.

Nick was sitting in Professor Cauldwell's office and must have been staring at the leather couch, because the professor said jarringly, "Oh, that it were true," and lost himself in the fantasy for a moment too. "But this is reality, where I am an old grey curmudgeon, and you, my boy, are a gnat's scat away from failing."

With a drawn out sigh, Nick issued a solemn nod. He was gripping a test sheet he'd been returned earlier that day, upon which was penned a notation to come by the office for a chat.

"When you started here you were one of my best students," the professor said, fondling his pipe. "You soaked up your learning like a spongy, soaky thingy. But now you're just a train without a pilot, careering wildly down a highway. Your test grades are falling faster than panties at a hostel party, the only time you're not late is when you don't turn up, and when you're there, you contribute less than that kid who eats pencils, and I'm not even sure he's in the right class. I figured you'd just got in with a wild crowd, so I held my tongue, because you must make your own mistakes to learn from them, but then it occurred to me that wasn't it. There's some conflict going on with you and I can only assume there's a girl involved. So you've got to sort it out, fix it. Talk to someone about it too; I expect it would help. Not me, by God, but someone."

Nick nodded again.

"So we're good?"

"Sure, I'll take care of it," Nick advised, jumping up.

The professor smiled, suitably impressed at a job well done.

* * *

When Nick and Tessa had moved into their flat in the spring, the weather was always fine as they stepped out, yet as they held each other at night under the sheets, the rain would drum melodically upon the roof. But the seasons had turned. Now whenever they ventured out, they were whipped by the wind and the wet, and as they hunkered beneath the quilt on opposite sides of the bed, it was forever chilly.

Their argument began soon after sitting for dinner. He was only a few forkfuls into his fried rice; she hadn't even waited until they'd eaten when at least his rage might be tempered by a sated appetite. Indifferently, she said, "The guy from the ball has asked my parents if he can take me on a date."

"And what did you say?"

"I said I need to think about it."

"What could you possibly need to think about? You have a boyfriend. Do you really expect me to be OK with this?"

"Of course, I'm not going, but I have to be tactful."

"Why?" He was trying not to yell, if for no other reason than he might shower her with a mouthful of rice. "You must make them understand that you're not a child anymore. You want to live your own life, and make your own decisions."

Rolling her eyes melodramatically, she retorted, "So I should just sit them down and tell them how it's going to be?"

"Why are you so afraid of change? I swear there's never been a proposal you did not think preposterous, nor a compromise you did not consider untenable, and you're yet to meet a new idea you don't detest with a burning passion."

"That's not true."

"Then tell them."

"Why must you make this so hard for me?" she groaned. "You seem to pretend you're dating some Kiwi girl, well you're not. I'm Chinese. You knew that from the start, and yet you asked me out, remember? So you need to accept some of the cultural baggage that comes along with it."

"But you're the one who's always complaining how that shit drives you crazy."

"I know, it does, but it's still a part of me, and expecting me to disregard it is like asking me to give up one of my limbs."

He scooped another forkful of rice, and then debated whether he had the appetite to stomach it. "So, why did you move in with me if you weren't ever planning to tell your parents about us?"

"Really, Nick?" she scowled. "You think you have the moral high ground here?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't you think I know you only moved in with me to stick it to your father?"

"That's not true," he screamed, so explosively that the room instantly resembled a wedding departure. "If it was only about getting back at him, I could have dated your sexually ambivalent cousin, Christopher. I asked you to move in because I love you."

Resting her cheek on her fist, she stared up at him and heaved. "It seems forever since you've told me that."

"Well it's true. That will never change. Even if you ran off with my brother and all my Pink Floyd albums."

She smiled a little. "I'll always love you too," she said, smarting at the confession.

"So why do we so rarely touch or embrace anymore? You might think it normal that two people could reside without physical contact, but to me, that's not lovers, that's flatmates."

She examined him dourly for a few moments, then promptly departed to the couch and buried her face in her hands. Her sobbing twisted him inside and he rushed over to wrap an arm about her shoulder. Immediately, she jerked away.

"What's the matter with you?" he demanded.

Slowly she lifted her face and gazed at him pitifully. In her eyes, there was something betraying just how much she was holding back and longed to disgorge. Her jaw quivered and she motioned to speak, and he knew then that she would reveal it all. Everything would come out, her family, her life, her love... But then she hesitated, and her features drew in wretched agony.

Nick recoiled, suddenly burdened by the fear of the very words he most sought. "Just tell me," he begged weakly.

But Tessa was already dabbing her tears. "It's fine," she uttered as she blew past him, and soon he could hear her dumping their uneaten dinner into the bin. He rose and stood in her wake, steeling himself to confront her again, but the longer he waited, the more his will slipped. Finally, he retired to his room and cowered behind a book.

* * *

Then came the evening of the new nightwear of which Nick did not speak.

They were sitting in front of the TV, as they often did. It was one of the activities they most enjoyed together. It provided Tessa the opportunity to study, while Nick would polish off a good novel. But that day her routine was different. After mumbling a trifling complaint, she removed herself to shower and when she returned, was wearing a new chemise of a sheer, red material that clung to her breasts and hips. From his vantage on the chair, Nick observed as she crossed the room with a notable bounce, and then reclined upon the couch and hiked her legs, delivering him a brief glimpse of the smooth, white flesh of her inner thighs.

His face immediately flushed with blood, as it did elsewhere on his person. What did this mean? She hadn't let him sleep with her for months. 'Was this some primal invitation for the initiation of reconciliation?' he wondered, unravelling his tongue. Or was this her twisted retribution? To whip him into salacious frenzy then withdraw before culmination, a scenario which featured prominently in his visions of hell. If that was the case, then she was succeeding quite admirably, because the frustration was clutching tightly at his abdomen, not to mention his underwear.

Twisting her torso in a seemingly innocent adjustment, her hem rose, revealing more to Nick than a desperate man should ever be forced to see. He could take it no more. He was suddenly before her, his hands drawing apart her knees, and his face plunging between her thighs, inhaling until his lungs were full, bathing in her scent. An elixir surged through him, and he felt boundless and virile. Frenzied, he scratched off his jeans and clambered upon her. There was an urgency in his loins that begged to be purged, and though his weaponry was potent, his parrying adept, and his thrusts spirited, he could not temper his thirst for the kill, and too soon, it was over.

Instantly, his need and anger drained, and all that remained in its ebb was emptiness. He pulled himself from her and sunk back into the couch, flaccid and feeble, while she adjusted her clothing and touched at her hair. And not a word was said. Blankly, they stared at the rectangular flash of gaudy drivel, pretending to be enthralled.

三十四

Quitters never win Sometimes you gotta quit to win

Nick was washing dishes in his tiny Japanese kitchen when the doorbell rang. He assumed it would be old Mrs Hirata, clad in a kimono and clutching her purse. It was Saturday afternoon, which was typically when she would come by to enquire if he'd seen her car keys. His most unenviable task was advising that she did not, in fact, own a car, which never failed to disappoint her. Inevitably, it then followed, he would spend the entire afternoon taxiing her around town. Mrs Hirata was a cunning old bird, however, and he did not doubt that half her forgetful spells were feigned. The problem was that he never knew which half, so couldn't ever call her out on it.

"Have you come round for a ride, Mrs Hirata?" he asked as he swung open the door.

"Clearly you're expecting someone else then?" Standing in the entrance was Briece.

"Yes, the old lady from next door," Nick replied gingerly, shocked by the presence of his old friend.

"Oh well, whatever floats your boat, I guess."

"What are you doing here? I thought you said you were never coming back to Japan."

"That was the plan, but then one of my old programmers decided to marry his sweetheart. The romantic fool."

Nick invited him in and placed the kettle on a hob, then once they were both seated and all pleasantries and protocols adhered to, he asked, "So what the fuck happened to you? I haven't heard a word in eight months."

"I know, and I'm sorry, but once you see what I've achieved you won't be giving me a hard time."

Nick hiked a dubious brow, and Briece drew a set of photos from a pocket and placed them on the table. The topmost image was of a wide brick building, and in the doorway, Briece and his wife were beaming at the camera. Above the entrance it read, "Jin-Xiu School for Girls."

"What's this?" Nick scoffed. "There weren't enough women for you in Japan, so you've started mass-producing them?"

"Nick! Those are my daughters you are talking about!" And he was quite serious, which befitted him about as much as a sombrero is becoming to a nun.

"What do you mean?"

"It's an orphanage Gabrielle and I are building. I expect it will soon be the largest private, non-secular orphanage in all of China."

Still reluctant to be drawn into the charade, Nick slowly drew the pile closer and pawed suspiciously through photos of shirtless men pushing wheelbarrows, Gabrielle painting bright murals upon tall walls, gaily coloured cots with white starched sheets, and faces, endless photos of the faces of smiling wee girls.

When he looked up, Briece was wearing a broad grin. "I'm not sure what to say," Nick stammered.

"How about, what ever happened to that selfish ego-maniac I loved so much?"

"Yeah, that."

Briece gave a smirk. "Last year we were advised we could never have children, not by hormones, not by IVF, not even by super-secret Roswell technology, so Gabrielle asked if we could adopt instead. I dutifully agreed and we started visiting orphanages in Asia to set the wheels in motion. But this was when things began to unravel for me; my whole existence served no other purpose than the pursuit of an Uncle Scrooge sized pile of dough, and having lost the joy in watching that mountain grow higher, I discovered I had nothing else. I could add a child to that life, but it would never have been enough to allay my discontent."

His slender fingers seized a photo from the pile - a favourite it would seem by the extent of its thumbing - of Gabrielle embracing an infant. For several moments, he admired it wistfully. "I was at my lowest ebb that day you came by my office. That's when we spoke of Isaac and how he'd thrown it all away for a crazy dream, and I thought, why can't I have a crazy dream too?"

"But why didn't you tell me your plan?"

He sighed heavily. "Have you never had a crazy dream? In your head, you can already picture it, but you know if you revealed it to anyone they would laugh in your face and you'd be instantly paralysed by its absurdity. That was this dream. I didn't even dare to hold the enormity of it in my mind at once or it would have crushed my will. There were just too many hurdles: my wife would think me insane, I wouldn't have the guts to walk away from my company, or the mettle to start my life all over again. I hadn't nearly enough money, nor would the Chinese government ever allow it."

He replaced the photo on the pile, his fingers betraying a tremble. "That very night, I leapt at the first hurdle, Gabrielle. I sat her down and explained how adopting a child wasn't going to make me happy; I wanted to adopt all the children. I wanted to save all the orphans living in squalor, praying for the day they'd be plucked from their pitiful existence. I wanted to give them an education, happiness and purpose even if that magical door never opened for them."

"So what did she say?"

"She didn't say anything, she just wept. Eventually, she told me that in all our fifteen years, she had never loved me more." He chuckled. "I guess, I finally found the right thing to say."

"What about your company? How did you snare Meglosoft?"

"Ah, yes, that one was all black ops. It seems an online rumour circulated that Meglosoft's rival were looking to buy us out. Within a week, they were knocking on my door. They didn't even want the company, they just couldn't bear for their competitor to have us either. A girl's twice as pretty as she's walking away," he said with a smirk that quickly faded. "Actually, it was the Chinese bureaucracy that proved the biggest challenge. I was turned down more times than Quasimodo at the prom. But every time someone said no, I would just go over their head. I knew that sooner or later I would find someone corrupt enough that it would only be a question of price. I climbed all the way to the Provincial Governor before I found my man."

"And what did it cost you?"

"His secretary had called me in Japan at first light to advise I must meet him the next day. I was too crazed to pack so I just stuffed as much cash in a suitcase as I could muster. He sent a car to collect me at the airport, then he wined and dined me like a lovesick paramour. He kept probing me on my plans and feeling me out. Finally, as he drove me back to my plane and told me of all the great locations for a school, I took the suitcase and lay it on my lap, and hoped beyond hope that it held enough..."

"So how much did it cost?"

Briece held a hand out before Nick and curled his pointer finger until it touched his thumb. "The Governor explained how much he wanted me to build my orphanage, but was ashamed he could offer no official assistance or public monies, as the party would lose face if the problem were highlighted. But he did most solemnly promise that not a single bureaucrat would stand in our way, even if it cost him his position."

"But why would he put himself at such risk for you?"

"Do you know of Mao's Great Sparrow Campaign?"

Nick shrugged.

"Nor did I until the Governor told me. Apparently, Chairman Mao had once announced that the sparrows were stealing the wealth of the peasants by eating their grain, so they must all be eradicated. His people blindly heeded his word and millions of birds were shot, their nests were robbed, their eggs were crushed and the nestlings were dashed. Great roaming mobs would even bang pots to scare the sparrows from landing until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. When they were done, there was no birdsong to be heard throughout the countryside. Only then did they discover what many knew, but never voiced, what the sparrows ate most were the locusts. Soon the skies were black with swarms that devoured the entire harvest. In all, twenty million people starved in three short years. There is value in all life, the Governor said, but sometimes we just don't see it until it is lost. Then he showed me a photo of his wife, Jin-Xiu, and after telling me of her many great deeds, he explained how she was abandoned at birth, most certainly because she was female. Were she not found by a stranger who delivered her to an orphanage, he said, she would have been one of the sparrows."

Briece blew upon his black tea, and then sipped delicately. "The Governor kept his word. We had only to mention his name and the roadblocks would evaporate. After just six months, we opened, and so when we did, I named the school after his wife. We're still building, of course, but even what we have already surpasses anything else we've seen. I owe so much to Gabrielle too; she runs the whole show. I honestly never knew just how amazing she is. I just do the technical stuff, like publishing the website with pictures and letters from the kids. We've already arranged thirty adoptions, from Beijing to Belgium. But I hope that even the ones who never find another home can have a great childhood with us."

"Wow, Briece," Nick said, still staggering, "it really seems to have come together for you."

"It really has. I'm poor and I'm gloriously happy."

He did look happy, truly happy, and Nick realised he had never seen him like that, he'd seen him enhumoured, enthralled, engorged, inebriated and even in flagrante, but never truly happy. It warmed Nick to see him so transcendent, and yet equally it made his own existence seem dark and base. "I'm glad," he said, wrestling with a smile.

Over the horizon of his teacup, Briece examined his conflicted friend. "Nick, have you ever considered how many sperm your father squirted into your mother at the moment of your conception?"

Nick recoiled. "Actually I have spent a lot of time trying not to think about that very thing."

"Yes, well, it will have been in excess of 300 million. Out of which, you burbled to the front and snatched first bite of the apple."

Nick shook himself violently.

"Do you appreciate just how unlikely that was? We could replay the moment a million times and your conception still wouldn't be odds on. In fact, the occurrence was so incredibly fragile that if we were to change even one single thing from that day, the inclemency of the weather, the queue at the supermarket, what they ate for dinner, whether your father caught the eye of a comely lass as he drove home... Anything you can think of, and the outcome would have been completely different. And not just that day. Did they argue a week earlier and he apologised with flowers? Was your father a sickly child? Was your mother instilled with a repugnance for sex, or was she some crazy freak between the sheets? If we make any tiny, imperceptible change to that interaction, the dice is rolled all over again, and in all likelihood you cease to be. And don't limit it to your parents, the dice has rolled in your favour for every one of your ancestors all the way back to the single cell. Can you even comprehend just how staggeringly you have beaten the odds? In a billion billion parallel universes you never come into existence. So just by being born, being alive at this very moment, you've already won the greatest lottery of all, and any riches life should thus heap upon you are all just bonus."

Nick, with eyes wide and jaw dislodged, stared wordlessly at his friend. He wasn't quite sure what he was on, but without question, it had come from Gabrielle's medicine cabinet. "Jesus, Briece, what's got into you?"

"Nick, what I'm saying is that you don't need everything in perfect alignment to be happy, you only need what you need, and when you discover what that is, everything else will fall into place."

"But perhaps there are people who don't deserve to be happy."

"Of all people, you deserve to be happy."

"But what if my happiness lies beyond an unassailable mountainous peak?"

"You've still got to try. If Isaac taught us anything, it's that the best route isn't always the direct one. Even if you never make your destination, that path has no regrets."

"But what if..."

"Nick! Why are you fighting me on this?"

He shrugged off a guilty grin. "Fight is all I got."

Briece threw back the last of his tea and rebuffed an offer of a top-up. He had to go, he brusquely apologised. Nick gave a long, forgiving nod. He understood. If Briece never had a spare moment when time was money, he had even less when time equated happiness.

"I have another present for you, though." He produced a tall envelope, fat with documents. "It's not as big as my last one, I'm afraid."

Nick spread the contents across the table. "What is it?"

"Everything you need to send that bigoted prick, Alexander, home."

"How so?"

Briece pointed to an internal university discharge record where a brief notation advised he had dropped out for family reasons. "He never graduated."

"So? Maybe he got an exception like me?"

"No, I checked that, he came in through the program. That means he must have forged his documentation to get accepted. You need only show this to his headmaster and he'll be gone by the third ring of the Westminster Chime."

"How did you even get this?"

He shrugged. "In the US, it's not a question of how, only how much."

Nick regathered the documents. "I'll take care of it."

"And check this out," Briece said, pointing to a list of affiliations. "He belonged to the Society for the Betterment of America. Don't you just know that any organisation with betterment in its title is up to no good?"

* * *

Nick reflected on Briece's visit for days. While he realised such redemption was impossible for himself, he wondered if there were some way he could aid Briece in his. Only he wasn't sure how. Quite obviously, he had nothing to offer.

At length, his mind ventured to the fine automobile that had sat under cover for eight months without a glimpse of daylight. Just as with Briece, it had brought him no joy. Each day he regarded it in passing with the same revilement that one might for a wife wed solely for her aesthetic qualities.

For several hours, he fought a heated internal debate on the morality of selling a gift, before finally convincing himself that Briece would understand, or at the very least, forgive him. Then he proceeded to the car, popped open the glove-box and fished though the screeds of paper in search of the highest offer. As he did, he came across one that was overwritten with a note, "Briece's Hard Learnt Lesson #107: Shit don't make you happy. Only you can make you happy." He discarded it and continued searching.

When he was satisfied, he dialled the number, reiterated the offer, and was surprised to find the caller insisted on coming immediately. He arrived in a long, black Lexus, and as he approached the hastily polished Corvette, he clasped his hands together in the manner of a child on Christmas day. Judging by the impeccable cut of his suit, he was some kind of businessman, though the scarcity of his fingers clearly cast a shadow over its legality. Nick encouraged him to take a test drive, or at least, sit within and make engine noises, but he was satisfied to pet the fender and slam the door a few times.

"It's good," the man finally announced, and he reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a fat envelope.

Grasping it with scarcely suppressed glee, Nick peeked inside to confirm it was filled with cash, but dared not count it.

The suited man simultaneously bowed and shook hands, then departed with the keys, advising someone would be along shortly to collect it.

Nick retreated to his apartment and sat at his table admiring the mountainous pile of brown notes. He tried to imagine what it would be like to spend it all, to buy whimsical things, splurge on holidays or rent a nice house. But he knew that without her, such things would bring little joy, and so he snatched up the money and hid it beneath a loose tatami mat. As he rose, he observed a few notes jutting from the gap. He withdrew them and paused in consideration. Then he slid them into his pocket. These, he decided, would be spent on himself.

The following morning Nick encountered the deputy principal on the occasion of a fresh pot of coffee. He was a thoughtful man who always looked on the bright side of life, otherwise, he conceded, you would be overwhelmed by its futility. He was a pessimistic optimist, or possibly an optimistic pessimist, so in any conversation you were never entirely sure which way he might veer.

Nick told him of his friend with the orphanage and his plans to remit him some money, which initiated a surprising bout of chin stroking, but no further comment. Until the afternoon, when Nick found himself in the Principal's office sipping green tea.

"The principal has an idea," his deputy advised. "He feels your donation could benefit from the support of the school. We could make it a project and encourage the students to collect money and write letters to the children."

Nick smiled warmly. "That is a great idea," he advised the principal, who agreed with a brief nod.

"We were just discussing who would be best to manage it..."

"Well, I'd be more than happy to."

Drawing a breath through the back of his teeth, the deputy advised, "Sore wa chotto muzukashii na." Nick smarted. In his experience anything described by the Japanese as being a little difficult was about as likely to occur as the principal somersaulting the desk to deliver a crisp high-five. The deputy rotated his handle-less cup until he achieved the optimal orientation for gripping. "The problem, of course, is that you're..." He paused to pensively sip his tea. "You're busy. With your commitments to other schools."

"Of course."

"Though, naturally, you will still be fully involved. You might even want to suggest someone suitable."

"Perhaps, then," Nick said as he stroked his chin, aping the manner of the deputy principal, which he hoped would look suitably contemplative, "Kamihara-sensei. She is very... worldly."

"Worldly? Yes, exceptionally so. In fact, you might even say her involvement might prove so engaging that she's a little less worldly in other areas."

"Oh, I would most definitely say that."

"Excellent. Then we are in agreement?"

And they all nodded to show they were, even the principal, by way of the imperceptible elevation of his grey, bushy eyebrows.

* * *

It took just as much deliberation for Nick to decide how he could spend his fractional share of the windfall. Finally, at the recommendation of a colleague, whose teaching career had obviously displaced a promising vocation as a car thrashing delinquent - what the Japanese call a "Yankee" \- Nick found himself outside a small mechanic's garage on the outskirts of Inoshiri. Clutching his wad of notes, he observed the approach of a thin man in impeccably clean overalls, who introduced himself as Ando.

"What can you do for my car?" Nick asked, brandishing the wad.

Ando inspected the car, and then the cash. "Well for a quarter of that I will dump it, and then you can use the remainder as down payment on something actually worth driving," he said with a laugh.

Nick's face tightened and the thin man observing the reaction, adjusted himself immediately. "What I mean, is that the annual sha-ken on this car must be more than it's worth."

He was right, of course. Taxes were lower in Japan than everywhere in the G8 solely because anyone who could sit in a chair without drooling could get a job. Full employment was the result of strong domestic manufacturing, and that was due to thousands of government-enforced rules, regulations, quotas, tariffs, agreements, backroom deals and outright bribes that protected manufacturers from foreign companies and encouraged local demand. Rice was twenty times the international rate, fruit eight times, and if you held a car more than five years, the yearly inspection became prohibitively expensive. Nick, however, considered it quite unconscionable that something so functional should be discarded.

"I know how much the sha-ken is. I haven't managed to pay it yet without shedding a tear, but I love this car and it has treated me well."

Ando surveyed Nick for a time, and then something twinkled in his eye. He too had owned cars that he'd loved and lost, and many that were dear to him, he'd dismantled with his own hands. Wordlessly, he climbed into the vehicle and turned over the engine. Then he peered under the hood, kicked the tires and licked the paintwork. Finally, a pad was drawn from his breast pocket. "Well if you're happy to throw silly money at this old bucket of bolts," affectionately stroking the car roof, as he spoke, "we could overhaul the interior, give it some mags and low profile tyres, pop out those dents and give it a swish paint job..."

Nick nodded appreciatively, but he had one more request, "Is it also possible that when I plant my foot, you can make the engine will go vroom."

The man regarded him quizzically long enough for Nick to assume that "Vroom" had not translated properly. There was undoubtedly some onomatopoeic Japanese equivalent that went buda-buda or something similar, but he had simply made his best impersonation.

"VROOM, VROOM," he tried again, more emphatically.

Ando's expression still did not change, but slowly, he nodded. "You know," he said, choosing his words carefully, "this vehicle has a cubic displacement of only 800 millilitres - I drink more sake than that at lunch - Vroom is not an option."

Nick's face hung in dejection.

"I can manage a peppy vimm, however."

"No Vrooom?"

"No Vroom. Vimmmmmm!"

* * *

It took several long weeks for Ando to upgrading his car, so when Nick arrived to collect it he had already formulated a particularly impassioned complaint. He was strongly considering the possibility that perhaps, he might even think of uttering it, or at the very least tempering the graciousness of his gratitude, when his eyes fell upon his vehicle, and his quivering jaw immediately slacked. It really was that gorgeous; the paint glistened, the mags shone and even the headlights managed a flirtatious wink.

Ando offered Nick his keys with discernible reluctance. "I had fun with this," he explained, before disappearing into his tiny garage and returning with a lockbox. "Here's your change."

Receiving the cash, Nick recognised it as the same wad he'd supplied. His face drew in bewilderment, which Ando did his best to evade, before finally, he smiled weakly. "My daughter... She goes to your school..."

Nick froze, fearing he would immediately be called upon to identify which of the innumerable girls surnamed Ando might be his.

"She's named Emi. You probably won't know her, because she doesn't like to study and she's very quiet, but she cares about things. A lot. One night at dinner she was telling me all about the gaijin sensei who was collecting money for orphans in China and I realised it was the same yatsu who wanted me to soup up his silly red car. So I promised her I'd donate the cost of the upgrade."

Nick gazed at Ando for a time, then at the shiny new car and finally at the scruffy old shed from which he toiled each day. "This is too much, let me take ichi-man, and your daughter will still be very proud." And he proffered the remaining notes to Ando.

"No," he said quite angrily, and then repeated himself softly. He exhaled slowly and after the turbulent air had departed, the silence left in its void was profound. Eventually, he said, "There's another reason too." And his head dropped low enough that Nick could no longer see his eyes. "I always knew my father as a quiet, solemn man, but according to my mother, this was only true after he returned from the war. I read that he served in Northern China, but that's all I know, because he would never speak of it, and we were forbidden to ask. But from what was never said, I believe this is something he would want me to do." Then Ando hastily departed to his tin shed.

From the doorway, his final words were, "Easy on the pedal, I've added some pep."

Nick slid into his new car, admired the lustrous black dash, and then gripped the leather steering wheel like he were Ayrton Senna. Gently, he twisted the ignition and it instantly hummed into life, but even when he tapped the accelerator, the aforementioned pep was notably absent. He edged out of the driveway and observing the long, empty road ahead of him, he eased the pedal all the way to the floor. His disappointment was about to crystallise when he suddenly noted a dashboard needle flick ahead quarter a turn, and precisely as it did the car lurched forth as if it were rear-ended by a shinkansen. All about him, houses and trees blurred, and soon the entire stretch of road had been devoured by his wheels. Wrestling feverishly with the steering wheel, he rounded the corner and rocketed toward Inoshiri. He knew he must slow; he knew he must overpower his leaden foot, but there was something so very raw and beautiful about the danger.

His teeth clenched, and he plunged inexorably toward the first traffic lights. They still shone green and so he silenced the screaming pleas and gripped the wheel ever tighter. Closer he drew, the intersection busy with cars and then, with only a few metres ahead of him, the lights flicked to red. But he still wasn't ready to stop. It felt too real, and for a few seconds, he didn't. Then, as the first cars loomed up and he could see the fear on every one of the desperate faces, his foot landed heavily on the brake, and he squealed to a halt.

He sat there at the intersection, shaking uncontrollably, sodden with musky sweat. He could not fathom how sublime it had felt, as if he'd torn off all his bandages and screamed naked at the world. He hadn't been directing his body from afar by remote control, he was there, sensing and feeling everything about him, and knowing that his fate was his own. In all his time in Japan, he'd never felt so alive, and only once more before his departure, would he get to feel that way again.

Finally, the light returned to green and slowly and soberly, he eased out of the intersection and inched home.

* * *

The following week, the deputy-principal approached Nick's desk, with Nagai, the calligraphy teacher, in tow. "Good morning, Nicholas-sensei, I see the Orphanage project is progressing well. Even better than we'd hoped, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, definitely. Kamihara-sensei has been very diligent, and I expect we'll be working more closely as things culminate," Nick replied, betraying a smile as he was greeted with a pleasing mental image.

"Undoubtedly. And let's not forget the students. It's so gratifying to hear that their collections now exceed even your generous donation. I dare say this is one of the best ideas the principal has ever had."

"Quite."

"On that matter, he has suggested our calligraphy teacher have his top student craft a document of goodwill to accompany our offering." The deputy principal gestured to Nagai, who Nick had once engaged in the Kendo event of a school sports day and subsequently received such a resounding blow to the cranium that for three weeks, he saw the world in triplicate.

"I was thinking of Shiwa Terashi, her work is most exquisite," Nagai advised.

Nick nodded in agreement, but he promptly thought of his benevolent mechanic. "Have you considered Emi Ando?"

"Ando?" he replied, quite taken aback. "She's capable, but..." Then he paused to examine Nick's impassioned visage. "Yes, of course. Ando. She would make an excellent choice."

三十五

A wolf's testimony is always compelling in the absence of the lamb

For the best part of a month, Nick had been studying the envelope Briece had supplied. In that time, he'd learned a lot of the life of Alexander Pike, much more, in fact, than he cared to know of someone he should detest. It had then occurred to him not to present the evidence to the school, but directly to Alexander. Much better he should quit, Nick reasoned, than require the school wade through the bureaucratic cesspool to have him dismissed. For his confrontation, Nick had chosen the final Saturday of the month. Firstly, as the day after payday, Alexander could depart with his last salary, and secondly, to prevent himself from forestalling.

He drove out to Alexander's apartment in Naruto in the early afternoon. It was a narrow building within spitting distance of the inland sea, where great whirlpools have threatened fisherman for millennia. He thumped the doorbell, seemingly quite enraged, then drew sharply through his nostrils until the anger filled his chest. He was still heaving when the door swung open, and immediately, he thrust forth the package. But before him stood the buxom girl Alexander had picked up at the police station. "Kaiya?" Nick said, quickly withdrawing his offering.

"Yes," she clarified. "It's Boozy, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, but you can call me Nicholas for short. Is Alexander in?"

"No," she replied curiously. There was something about her stature that struck Nick as unnatural, and the way her hand rested protectively on her belly instantly removed all doubt. "Son of a bitch!" he muttered aloud, his shoulders slumping. Not least, he was furious with himself for having not acted earlier when it might have made a difference, for having held his tongue despite the shattering glass in the night. Unavoidably, his utterance had been quite audible, but he expected her rudimentary English would render it as good as a whisper.

"Whatever do you mean by that?" she demanded, her intonation coming somewhere between concern and interrogation.

He gasped at her markedly improved fluency, then recollecting himself, said, "He's gone, hasn't he?"

"Yes," she confirmed, oddly excited. "He's back in Michigan."

Her reaction confounded Nick for a time, before it occurred to him that Alexander had undoubtedly plied her with poppycock to escape her clutches. Now he had the lamentable task of advising she'd been left in the lurch. "He's not coming back, I'm afraid."

"Yes, he is."

"No, I'm sorry, but he's not," Nick reiterated with utmost empathy.

"Oh yes, he is."

"No, he's not!" His anger at her staggering gullibility was swelling. "Don't you get it? He's like a mouse with a gobful of cheese. You're never going to see him again."

"Yes, I will." And now she was equally irate. "We're engaged," she said, flaunting a ringed finger.

But Nick barely glanced at it. Did her stupidity know no bounds? "It's quite obviously fake," he retorted.

"Uso! Real desu yo!" she spat, waving her pudgy fingers before his face, desperate to prove the fact to Nick and herself.

"Fine! If you're engaged, then why has he left?"

She drew a deep breath. "We are planning a small wedding in his home town. But first, he must tell his parents about the two of us, and that soon, they will have an Asian grandchild. Apparently, his father does not care much for the Japanese, so he thought it best to smooth things over before sending my ticket. After the wedding, we'll return to Japan to finish out his contract..."

Nick was slack-jawed in disbelief. She seemed utterly incapable of seeing the truth. He wanted nothing more than to slap her hard enough to wake her from this ridiculous fantasy. "He will never send you a ticket," he barked, slowing each word to give it more bite. "Do you understand that?"

"But he's already sent it to me!" she pouted.

Nick recognised her pathetic lie for what it was. "No, he hasn't."

She stared at him long enough that he was overwhelmed with remorse for having broken the news so harshly. Then, without further word, she was gone, and the door, jerked by its mechanical spring, slammed hard in his face. Nick stood there, stroking his temple, wondering whether it was wrong to leave her like this. But before he could decide, the door flew open again and an envelope was brandished before him. He observed her name and address written in crude katakana, and then two fingers slipped into the opening and withdrew a long handwritten letter and a computer printout. She held the document before his eyes, and slowly his corneas traced the text: Name: Kaiya Abe, Destination: Vainlace, Michigan.

He fell backward a little, before steadying himself against the railing. "I'm... I'm really sorry," he finally said as he staggered off. At the end of the landing, he turned back to see her still astride the doorway. "And congratulations, too," he called, which she greeted with a wave, though not all her fingers were extended. When he reached the street, he glared at Briece's envelope in his shaking hands, and then thrust it into a bin.

三十六

The tenderness of a kiss fades in a moment.

A slap burns a lifetime

Scarcely awake, Nick scrambled from his bed and blundered toward the ringing telephone. "Moshi-moshi?"

"You bastard!"

"Excuse me?" He withdrew the receiver and stared down the mouthpiece for a moment. When that failed to provide any clue, he asked, "Who is this?"

"Who is this?" the caller parroted with a hilarity that Nick recognised instantly as Briece's. "Just how many people call and abuse you?"

"More than you'd imagine," Nick confessed.

"Did you really flog off my beautiful car?"

"That I did."

"How could you?"

"Well, as it happens, I once read something along the lines of, 'That which is feculent in nature cannot induce enchantment.'"

"Preposterous," he gasped in mock outrage. "It's like those diamond encrusted cufflinks I gifted you in '93 and you never even wore."

"They weren't diamond encrusted, they were Hello Kitty, and you said they were a giveaway from a sales rep..."

Briece expectorated haughtily. "I do believe it's the thought that counts."

Nick shrugged, before it occurred to him the gesture might not transmit well over the medium. "How did you even hear about this anyway?"

"Your deputy principal has been in touch. There's actually quite a lot of paperwork that needs to be completed just to ensure that goodwill is not misinterpreted as something sinister."

"That figures."

"Yeah, but I'll try to act surprised when the donation arrives unexpectedly on or about the fifteenth of the month depending on the vagaries of international mail," he said with a chuckle.

"I expect at some point in this conversation there might even be some hint of thanks?" Nick joked.

"Of course, of course, I'm working my way up to it. These things don't come natural to some of us, as you will know."

The line immediately went silent. Long enough for Nick to tap the receiver to ensure the call was still live.

Eventually, he said, "So, when it goes through I will have some of the students write a message of thanks to your school. Perhaps I could fax you a copy to proofread?"

"Sure."

"And, to you, I wanted to say..."

Once again, the troublesome line hung. "Yes?" Nick encouraged.

"I just wanted to say..." He sighed. "You know."

"Sure, I do. And you're welcome."

"Hey, maybe your school could do this every year?" he said brightly.

"Maybe," Nick replied with a smile.

Arriving at school, he approached Yukiko to extend Briece's gratitude. For the past few weeks, they had been working quite intimately, though it had all been maddeningly platonic. While she drew up plans to increase their fund, he would tot up the donations of each class, and try not to be distracted every time she pressed the tip of her pencil to her lips, though inevitably he would find himself plotting ways to have her enunciate his favourite vocabulary, scrutinise, milestone, countrywide...

Later that morning, she happened to be chairing the staff meeting - a role that each teacher took in turn, though let the record show, in four years it was yet to fall upon Nicholas - and speaking of the upcoming school ski trip to Ebari, the melon capital of Japan. It was with such detail she was describing how much she looked forward to getting her hands on some that Nick completely missed her announcement that a space had opened up due to an incurable bout of pregnancy on the part of Ohara-sensei. In fact, he was only snatched backed to reality when he observed an empty coffeepot making the rounds and everyone furtively cramming it with slips of paper. Nick grabbed his pad, then emitted a low groan when he realised every page was emblazoned with teaching notes. Loudly cursing his diligence, he rapidly ferreted about in his drawers with one eye on the approaching pot. As it neared, his hand finally fell upon a book of post-it notes. He grabbed a leaf, scrawled his name in katakana, and deposited it in the pot.

It wound its way back to the deputy principal who proffered it to Yukiko to draw. With elaborate theatrics, she dug inside, prolonging the suspense for several seconds, before drawing one of the white slips and showing it briefly to the deputy principal for confirmation - though without his spectacles, the best he could offer was a cursory squint. "Nicholas-sensei," she finally announced. Nick gaped with shock, then remembering himself, quickly uttered, "Arigatou gozaimashita," and bowed several times. His humility might well have appeared convincing were it not for a broad celebratory smirk.

Yukiko approached him after the meeting to offer her congratulations, though specifically, she phrased it as, "Oh crap, does this mean I must spend a whole trip with you?"

"So it would seem."

"Well if you keep out of my hair, I won't get on your wick," she advised heavily.

"Agreed. So apparently you've been to Ebari before?"

"Yes, with my last school. You'll love it! They grow rock melons by the million up there, so everything is melon flavoured; melon candy, melon chocolate, melon jelly, melon pocky, melon ice cream, melon cookies, melon mochi, melon cheese cake..."

"Actually, I don't really care for melon."

"Oh? Oh, you'll probably hate it then."

* * *

Ebari is located on the hyperborean island of Hokkaido, which in February is white with snow. This, combined with its wide roads and large wooden buildings, always makes it seem more Alpine than Asian. The Japanese are taller there too. Their diet features a sizeable amount of red meat, and melons, shit loads of melons.

The group from Inoshiri High School arose early each morning for a long day on the mountain, and each night would return in darkness to a lovely old chalet nestled in the hills. For Nick, the trip was progressing pleasantly, though if he had thought it would give him more time with Yukiko, then he was quite mistaken. On the other hand, if he'd predicted he would humiliate himself on a pair of parallel planks and marginalise his chances of offspring due to the poor alighting of a ski-lift, then he was right on the money.

The final night of any school trip is traditionally one where the hotel rewards the teaching staff for their astute choice of accommodation by footing the bill as they descend upon a local restaurant to devour everything but the tables and guzzle more beer than a dozen Dublin weddings. A less enlightened person might suggest this was scarcely worse than bribery, which unfairly inflated the students travel expenses, but after five years in Japan, Nick had learned to silence those nagging voices, or at the very least, pay them no more mind than one might a henpecking spouse.

He was awaiting their transportation in the clutches of some of his more thirstful colleagues when the deputy principal emerged from the hotel and requested another teacher remain behind as they were having some difficulty with Shoji, the special-needs student. While Nick had never taught Shoji in his classes, he frequently encountered him about the staff room whenever he had learnt a new English word, usually from a teacher, but alas, often a ribald student. With agitation, Nick observed that none of his regular teachers were volunteering, and so he raised a weary hand.

It was several hours after lights-out when his charge was finally asleep, and Nick found himself pacing the deserted hallways. He considered turning in, but strongly suspected that the moment he fell asleep, his roommate would return, incredibly drunk, and then regale him at length just how great a party he'd missed. Instead, he made his way to the hotel onsen, an alfresco hot spring.

The male onsen was accessed by way of a dank changing room, where Nick disrobed and showered. He then pushed through a wooden door and found himself in the open air, clutching frantically at the matchbox-sized towelette that had been provided to maintain his privacy en route.

He really wasn't prepared for how magnificent it was. The onsen sat on the edge of the hill overlooking the town below, and the steam diffused the distant light, giving it an almost ethereal glow. But as he paused in admiration, he was immediately enveloped by the chill, which bit at every inch of exposed skin and erected every hair, so he quickly advanced along the wooden walkway and slipped into the bubbling depths.

His regret was instant; the onsen clearly drew its water directly from a nearby volcano, and he was faced with the choice of being slowly boiled or jumping back out to shiver in the snow. Though, he soon conceded, only the latter presented the real risk of bits actually falling off himself and so he remained there, desperately trying to relax, despite his clenched teeth.

Eventually, his body acclimatised and he was able to vanquish the troubling thought that he might not, in fact, be any brighter than a frog in a pot. He rested his head, stared up at the stars that wafted into view amidst the swirling steam, and with a deep sigh, his eyes grew heavy and his body limp.

He was suddenly aware that he was not alone. He wasn't even sure how long had passed; it felt like he'd been asleep, and he instinctively wiped his mouth to confirm it.

"What a gorgeous view," she said.

Nick swung to face Yukiko, not more than a foot from him.

"You're aware this is a male onsen," he blurted, which was followed promptly by a wince as he kicked himself with considerable force.

"Really? I guess I took the wrong door."

"No matter," he said, immediately conciliatory. "As you are here, we may as well flesh out some of our lesson plans..."

"I heard you stayed behind to supervise Shoji. That was good of you."

He shrugged humbly, and in a dubious segue, tried to snatch a glimpse of her naked body beneath all the bubbles and steam.

"I expect you missed out on quite a feast though."

"Frankly, I doubt I could take another night having melons thrust in my face."

She hiked an eyebrow. "Oh? Then this evening might not progress at all how I'd imagined."

The machinations of Nick's mind cranked at a feverish pitch. Should he make the first move? Or was her being here - alone with him in the male onsen, most certainly very naked - already the first move, and he was merely expected to reciprocate? Would doing such a thing lead to a slap? Or worse? He was picturing himself prostrate before the headmaster's angry eyebrows, when she said, "You needn't overthink everything."

He'd paused to interpret the statement, when her brow furrowed. "Look, it's not quite as hot in here as I thought it would be. I should probably go..."

"Wait, I've got something to say," and he struggled for the marvellous things he'd once penned her in a letter he never sent. But as he gazed at her brown, crescentic eyes, and her perfect skin glistening in the steam, and the delicious lips he so loved to see stretched with lengthy diction, his mind went blank. He really had nothing that he could say to her, and devoid of any other option, he quickly brought his eager mouth to hers. And she didn't slap him, and he doubted even that she'd report him to the principal, barring only a particularly sub-par performance. Beneath the water, his trembling hand touched her soft skin, and traced its way up her torso. His chest heaved, and the tiniest fissure appeared in his shell, and through it, a warmth flowed into his bloodstream and swept its way into the very coldest places within. This was it. Finally, he would have her.

In the depth of his consciousness, he registered a flicker. He initially disregarded it as a symptom of the blood departing his brain for urgent assignment elsewhere, but with a stab of realisation, which was followed instantly by a concussive punch of disappointment, it occurred to him that someone had activated the changing room light.

Their lips parted, his hand disengaged its hemispherical grip, and limply, he howled, "You better go..."

She gave him a brief kiss, and winking, said, "See you, Nicky, tomorrow." Then she burst from the pool and made a beeline for the side door, delivering such an exquisite view of her departing form that it was several hours before his excitement deflated enough to entrust it to the diminutive towelette.

Well after midnight, Nick made his way back to his room and discovered his roommate had already returned from the party, forgone the unwieldy task of unfurling his futon, and opted instead to climb into Nick's suitcase.

What followed was his longest night in years, partly due to the vehemence of his dreams, but also to the thunderous beer snore of his roommate that no amount of violence would curtail. But none of this bothered Nick, he knew how near she was, and that mattered so much more than sleep, or workplace harmony, or mental equanimity.

三十七

Cast out my eyes for never again shall they behold of such beauty

The next morning, Nick caught Yukiko's eye at the communal breakfast where she was surrounded by students, and then again on the plane when she was seated with teachers. But her expression betrayed nothing of their encounter in the scalding onsen the previous evening, just an equivocal smile, so he dealt with it the only way that seemed reasonable, which was to construct a mental list of every possible reason her affections may have changed so abruptly, and then ranking them by probability. This process, which occupied him the entire flight, revealed a number of anxieties related to his labial skills, and naturally, these bubbled to the top of his list, whereas he was sufficiently confident that she had not been seduced by her roommate, the lemon-faced spinster, Ikeda-sensei, to place it pretty close to the bottom.

He made a final attempt to engage her when they returned to school for drop off. "Will we get a chance to talk later, Kamihara-sensei," he asked, interrupting her debrief to Ohara-sensei.

"Maybe," she curtly replied.

"Does maybe mean yes or no?"

"Of course, it does, Nick. You should know what maybe means."

Quite agitated, he decided he could wait no longer and would head home for a long, cold shower, or quite possibly, a warm, soapy one. He was tossing his crumpled suitcase into his car when she snuck up on him yet again.

"Do you think you could give me a ride?"

"There is nothing I would like more," he replied, melting into a wide grin, and squeezing her baggage into his backseat.

"You know," he said, as they exited the school, "perhaps I should take you by my apartment. There are some matters regarding the charity project I'd like to show you."

"I do hope it's your endowment. You've been beating around the bush for the last few weeks and I'm anxious to see how large it is."

"It is quite reasonably sized, I believe. I do hope you're not disappointed."

"If it's anything like I've imagined, I'm sure I won't be."

"Well, I better let you get your hands on it then."

He was busily congratulating himself on his suave pillow talk when he was overcome with the nagging concern that he may have been altogether too subtle. Perhaps what he considered to be urbane double entendre was, in fact, quite opaque, and from Yukiko's perspective there was just the one entendre on the very prosaic matter of charitable donations. Perhaps Briece was right, and he'd been totally misinterpreting her affections all along. Perhaps even what he believed had occurred the previous evening was actually just a lucid manifestation of his rampant fantasies.

Nick suddenly felt awkward and embarrassed, not least because of the sizable edifice that had erected itself plumb centre of the driver's seat. With a sideways glance, Yukiko observed the conflict that transfixed him. She allowed the torture for a time, then she leaned closer and placed a firm grip on the inside of his thigh, close enough to the edifice that it was immediately appended with a roomy annex. "Do hurry; my curiosity really is quite inflamed," she breathed into his ear.

He accelerated up the short driveway and pulled his car into misalignment with the neighbouring Suzuki, then he proceeded quickly up the stairs, checking his pace with every step for fear he might seem too eager. He dared not speak either, because he simply couldn't trust himself not to sabotage the moment.

Throwing open the apartment door, he rushed to engage the lights, though this scarcely lifted the gloom. Yukiko cautiously removed her footwear and then paced about, examining her surrounds. Japanese apartments are always small and so invariably, they're cramped and overflowing, but Nick's was conspicuously desolate; a poorly made bed, an ill-fitting set of drawers and a dusty shelf of old books. The only hint of activity was a desk covered in notes and teaching guides. Her eyes returned to the bookshelf. "So you read a lot?"

"Yes, I love to read," he confirmed, before conceding, "Though I haven't had much time for it lately."

"Not even Popular Science?" she asked, kicking a tall box of magazines in the open closet.

"Actually those are all old. I've been meaning to toss them," he said, rapidly sliding shut the closet door.

"So what do you do, you know, for fun?"

"Oh," he said defensively, "I go out or I... watch TV..."

She had hardly noticed the appliance, a small screen that was lending its support to a teetering bookshelf. It clearly wasn't even plugged in. "Really? So what's your favourite TV show?"

"Uh, you know the one with the smooth-talking talento who's always slapping his sidekick..." he stammered unconvincingly.

"That's all of them." She surveyed his face, trying to understand what was going on behind his eyes, but failed, and this saddened her. As the silence became awkward, she quickly approached and drew him into an embrace, hoping to renew the joy that had escaped her.

And it did. He hungered for her like the leopard desires the gazelle. Escaping his grip, she made a dash for the bed, but he pounced upon her, tearing at her clothes and biting at her neck. There they wrestled until his prey was subdued and he could gorge upon her flesh.

Then with a hollow growl, the gazelle became the wolf and the leopard became the lamb.

Deep into the night, weary from the fray, she rolled upon her side and entreated him to spoon, but only then did he spy what he had most definitely not seen on her hasty exit from the onsen. North of her buttocks was a small tattoo.

Breaking the serenity, he demanded, "Why do you have an N tattooed on your arse?"

"It's not an N, its ryoku \- power," she said, passionately defending an artist who'd shown such immeasurable foresight to dissuade her from eternally advertising her love for Jon Bon Jovi.

"It's quite definitely an N."

"Why would I have an N tattooed on my arse?"

"I don't know. To taunt me, I guess."

"Taunt you? I had this done when I lived overseas. I didn't even know you then."

Nick scrubbed at the tattoo with a moistened finger, sighing as it failed to abrade.

"You do know how tattoos work, don't you?"

"But why put it here?" he pleaded, tapping the enreddened spot.

"Well it had to go where no one else would see it. Also..." she added, slightly abashed, "I wanted to cover a birthmark."

"A birthmark?" Nick parroted, his face drawn. "What did it look like?"

"Like all birthmarks, it most closely resembled a splodge."

"A splodge?" he parroted again. "In what shape?"

"Well, I guess if I must categorise it, I'd say it was kind of like a banana, or possibly an arch."

"So which is it? A banana or an arch?"

"Oh, definitely an arch," and to clarify, she drew an upside-down U in the air.

"How long have you had that?" he probed, squinting at her skin for its traces.

"Well, since birth, so very nearly all my life," she teased.

"Is this some kind of joke?" he asked, wondering whom precisely, would play such an awful trick.

"Apparently not a very good one. Are you OK?"

"Yes, I'm sorry," he heaved, laying down behind her and enwrapping his arm. "I'm just so very tired." Regarding her testimony with a smouldering disquiet, he closed his eyes.

As she drifted off, she said, "I wish I could say this was the strangest conversation I've ever had, but then I did board a year with potheads."

She woke several hours later to find half the bed empty, and Nick standing at the window, gazing into the night.

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"Slumber is the refuge of the indolent, and offers no quarter to the damned," he quoted glibly; the only lines he could remember of a James K Baxter poem he'd once read.

"Everything OK? Not buyer's remorse, I hope."

"Not at all." He smiled weakly. "But it's a while since I've been with someone."

"Yes, I noticed that," she said with a smirk. "For a moment there, I thought you'd booked me into the Bellagio."

He returned to the bed, held her, and pretended again to sleep. Alone in the darkness, he silently chastised himself for his gullibility. Briefly he'd glimpsed happiness and remembered how it was to be alive. Like a fool, he'd assumed it was some kind of redemption, when clearly, it was intended only to emphasise what he'd promised to forgo.

* * *

As always, Nick arose with the morning sun, but he so rarely had an audience to the event that he highlighted it by kneeling up in bed and aping Rodin's Thinker, if indeed, the Thinker had been utterly preoccupied with matters of a libidinous nature.

"You're certainly standing proud today," Yukiko observed.

"Well I don't think we'll see it on a float at the Hōnen Fertility Festival anytime soon, but surely a garland is in order?"

She beamed in admiration, then playfully hit the tip with her fingers such that it thronged. "So tell me, Mr Fairfield, is this useful for anything other than hanging hats?"

It was thus several hours before they ventured from the bed.

"God, I'm hungry," he lamented. "Perhaps I could cook us something?"

"You cook?" she replied optimistically.

"To be honest, living by myself, I tend to just heat up a bento. Cooking for one always struck me as a little pathetic."

"And it's not pathetic to eat bento every night?"

"Oh certainly, but you don't have to dwell on it so long. What about you? How's your cooking?"

"Well, I always get a lot of compliments," she said, before adding with disquiet, "though I'm yet to have anyone ever ask for seconds..."

"We could go out for ramen..."

"I thought you'd never ask."

They dressed and descended the hill to a dusty wooden store, which was utterly nondescript save for an indigo curtain above the door that read, "Soba." Gesturing from the kitchen as they entered, the chef boomed, "Hey Guys!"

Yukiko leaned into Nick. "Did he really just say Hey Guys, instead of Irashaimase?"

Nick grimaced. "Yes, that's Takemura-san. Unfortunately the only English he ever learned was the subtitled broadcasts of Beverly Hills 90210 on NHK."

Duly, Takemura approached their table with two plates, each containing a hot cloth rolled into a tight cylinder. He wasn't wearing a chef's hat either, but a reversed baseball cap. "Nicholas-sensei, how's it going?"

"Genki, genki," Nick replied. "And you?"

"Genki yo! Kyo nani ni shimasu-ka?"

Nick surveyed the menu until his eyes fell upon his usual dish, Beef Ramen. "Boku wa biifu."

"Cool!" the chef confirmed. "Anata wa?" he enquired of Yukiko.

With a smirk, she replied, "Boku mo biifu."

Clobbered by her masculine vernacular, Takemura's easy-going smile momentarily faltered, and then he seemed to leap to the only plausible conclusion, that she was a transvestite who had briefly forgotten himself. This was quickly followed by something equally troubling, that he should find a man so incredibly attractive. Eventually, he composed himself. "Awesome," he announced, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the kitchen.

Nick was already glowering at Yukiko. "Why do you do that?"

"Do you know how many variations of 'I' there are in Japanese," she said, quite unfazed.

"I can think of eight off the top of my head,' he replied, before realising she wasn't listening.

"There's Polite I, Very-polite I, I as your superior, I as your inferior, I as a man, I as a mere woman... Why must I announce my standing every time I open my mouth? Why, in this country, are you never judged on your actions? Except, of course, when you try to do something a little differently..."

He thought about her words, which kindled something he could scarcely recognise. "I guess I can understand that," he finally conceded.

"But..." she asked leadingly.

But? There was a huge but, Nick judged, Takemura was just a regular Jiro fulfilling his station in life. What could possibly be gained by challenging his view of the world? Why provoke your own little skirmishes in a war that cannot be won? "There is no but," he insisted, which she accepted with an unconvincing smile.

Nick observed Takemura grab two bundles of dried noodles from a stack along one wall and then drop them into a pot of boiling broth with consummate finesse. He always impressed Nick, not because of his considerable mastery of the kitchen, but the unexpected elegance in his motion. He appeared quite lost in himself too, having clearly dispensed his earlier torment.

Returning to their table with a tray of two steaming bowls, he seemed on the verge of skipping, as if completing his task to perfection delivered him the utmost satisfaction. No doubt, he was like this with everything in life, and particularly with a girl that he loved. He would hum a sweet tune when she brought him hot tea, he would grin inanely as she gifted him a kiss, and undoubtedly, would break into song at the height of copulation.

They lustily sucked up their noodles, endlessly complementing the flavour with arched eyebrows and hearty nods. And as he watched her, an unexpected smile stretched across his cheeks. There was something so natural about them involved in such a mundane task as drenching each other in noodle broth. He could do this. He could be the pleasant, stable boyfriend, and hide from her his past. Even if he never slept another minute, even if it hurt every time he touched her, she would be worth it.

When they were finally sated, they slumped in their seats with a low groan of contentment. "So you eat here often?" she asked.

"Once or twice."

"Nick, he knows you by name!"

"That's just because I'm the famous gaijin of Inoshiri."

"Famous, huh? I guess I should count myself pretty lucky for snagging you then?"

"Well I didn't want to rub it in."

She pressed the wet cloth to her lips to suppress a resonant burp and Nick glared playfully at her.

"Too soon?"

Reaching across the table, he gripped her hand. "You're so much more attractive in English, you know?"

"Not Japanese? That'll explain why my mother never warmed to me," she joked.

"Don't get me wrong, you're undeniably cute in Japanese, but you always have a small, pursed mouth, whereas in English your lips are so wide and gorgeous."

"Aren't you the one that says it's my big mouth that's always getting me into trouble?"

"Oh, that mouth of yours causes me no end of trouble," he confirmed with a salacious grin.

* * *

As they returned to his apartment, a jet black cat rubbed up against Nick's leg and he stooped to pet it.

"You have a cat?" Yukiko asked.

"It's not mine, it's Mrs Hirata's, my neighbour."

She gestured to the saucer by his door. "But you feed it?"

"Just when he's looking hungry. Mrs Hirata is not always on top of things. A good day is when she remembers that her underwear go inside her slacks."

"That's nice of you."

"I do it for Mrs Hirata, not the cat. I hate cats."

"How can anyone possibly hate cats?"

He stopped petting and placed a hand under its chin, drawing its face toward his own. "I once shared a house with a girl," he advised the cat. "It was opposite a park where we would often walk in the evenings. One night, we came across a sparrow chick that had been blown from its nest. She picked it up and clutched it in her hands, and for hours, we searched for its mother, but without any luck. So she took it home and made a nest from a shoebox of shredded paper, and slowly nursed it back to health with bread dipped in warm milk. Soon it was greeting us with bright chirps each morning and making tentative attempts to fly. But one day while at university we left a window open and we came home to find the neighbourhood tomcat scarpering with our pet bird in its jaw. I gave chase but it was much too fast. When I returned, I found my girlfriend beside herself. She rebuked me for leaving the window open, and then disappeared into her room and cried for hours."

"Did she ever forgive you?"

"Yes, eventually," Nick replied to the cat. "The thing is, I never left the window open, she did."

"So why didn't you tell her that?"

Nick sighed heavily, and then tickled the quizzical moggy's neck. "Because I knew she would forgive me much sooner than she ever would herself."

Mrs Hirata appeared then. Without word, she snatched away her pet and retreated to her apartment.

"It seems today is not a good day," Nick observed sadly.

"So what was she like?"

"Mrs Hirata? I imagine she was the kind of wife who made you pray for a job with long hours and short holidays."

"No, the girl you lived with."

"Oh, her. She was quite perfect. At everything she did. She was always getting A's and special commendations, and beating off the advances of lecturers who assumed someone so smart must be a closet slut. She never failed at anything, even her love letters were of impeccable grammar, all semicolons and interrobangs..."

"So what happened?"

"As I said, she was perfect. Too perfect for me, it seems."

"I guess I must be quite the comedown then?"

He regarded her curiously. "I think you've misunderstood; perfection was her ugliest trait."

三十八

The end of the world is nigh!

There will be fireworks so do bring a picnic

The first few months of Nick's relationship with Yukiko progressed surprisingly well. In fact, his pretences of happiness were so convincing that he frequently fell victim to his own deception, and would revel for moments in his joy, before he caught sight of that dark spectre and need remind himself how illusory it all was.

Soon, they were spending every weekend together and often staying up till a rash hour on a school-night. They even acquired their own hangout.

Of all the visual entertainments, Nick was a fan: books, newspapers, periodicals, journals, encyclopedias, almanacs, guides, and even the occasional atlas. The only trifling exceptions were TV and film, which he could scarcely abide.

So when she had first advised of her predilection for art-house comedies, he'd recoiled in the manner of someone encountering a particularly disfiguring facial injury. Though even that was not sufficient to reflect the true horror of her revelation. As it happened, this did not descend on him until he made two further realisations. Firstly, that the genre of comedy is an exceptionally forgiving one, and secondly, that even in a backwater like Tokushima, one could, if one was of such a disposition, locate the kind of establishment that would quite willingly screen such movies. Indeed, one could potentially frequent said establishment with sufficient regularity that even the mention of art-house comedy would trigger a throbbing in the temporal lobe that could only be suppressed by aspirin and thinly veiled sarcasm.

The establishment in question was, "Toshi's Movie and Cafe," and it was neither a movie theatre, nor did it serve coffee, though thankfully, it was at least run by a man named Toshi, which he had abbreviated from Anikawa. It was a trendy bar in the glitzier part of Akita-machi, which - for reasons that can only be explained by the fact that Toshi skipped every class of business school save for one on niche marketing that coincidentally provided free donuts - featured a broad screen in the spot one would normally expect to see a sweaty DJ, upon which was projected an endless stream of questionably obtained cinema.

As part of the pretence, Toshi would even go so far as to advertise his upcoming films in the local rags, and on several occasions these even aligned with what was played. While he had a wide range of awful flicks in his stockpile, he rarely purchased anything new, so everything was shown on a semi-regular basis. He had a particularly tragic and misguided respect for the work of Kevin Smith, most notably Clerks, because the monochrome format daubed the cafe in "Noir lighting", he would testily defend whenever asked why he was showing it for the third evening in a row.

With some deliberation, it occurred to Nick that a hideous facial injury might actually be preferable to an art-house addiction. At least it would make for a great conversation starter, whereas Kevin Smith movies would only ever be less humorous in the retelling, if indeed, such a thing were possible. None-the-less as a dutiful boyfriend, Nick would accompany Yukiko on her viewings, satisfied just to be in her company.

After four months, they were even on the verge of decrypting Toshi's devious announcement code. For example, if the evening's listing was for Trainspotting and it was the first Saturday of the month, then clearly, it would be substituted by Mallrats. Except, of course, if he had played Dr Strangelove the previous week, in which case it would be Swingers or, when Venus was waning, The Graduate.

They would catch the late afternoon train and eat at a conveyor sushi bar if the weather was inclement, or gnaw on yakitori sticks in the park when it was warm. Arriving early at Toshi's to ensure the best view, they would remind him that as he had advertised Mallrats he had better be playing Clerks or they would take their business elsewhere. Toshi would always feign the rolling of his eyes and pretend to draw a videotape at random from under the bar, though as often as not, it would almost appear as if he had chosen it at random. Then they would order whatever cocktail was on special and heap complements upon Toshi in direct proportion to how vile it tasted, and he would always jokingly request they stop calling him Toshi.

As the lights dimmed, they would retire to their table, and then Nick would sneak a novel from his jacket and she would pretend not to notice. They would graze on large bowls of edamame, squeezing each pod until the bean popped out, landing in your mouth when you were lucky, bombarding another patron when you were not. And Yukiko would perpetually nudge him as it came up to the best lines, though she needn't have bothered. He could soon anticipate every one of them, and would inevitably peek up from his book to gaze at her. It delivered such an odd thrill to see her lose herself, and she had a laugh too, that was utterly delectable.

He drunk much less when they were out together, often nursing a single glass all night, partly because he found reading significantly easier when the letters did not randomly transpose themselves, but mostly to keep tight rein on his demons. He did not doubt just how quickly her love would sour if he ever revealed of himself the truth.

As the credits rolled and the lighting returned, Nick secreted his book.

"That was hilarious," Yukiko enthused.

"Wasn't it though? I must have laughed as often as I did last time we saw it." Which, sadly, was quite true.

"Isn't Kevin Smith amazing?"

"Absolutely. A genius. The Shakespeare of our age."

She glared at him.

"Too much?"

"A tad," she said with a forgiving smile, and reached across the table to grip his hands within hers. "What's your book?"

"Book?" he replied innocently.

"Yes, the book."

"Oh, the book. It's Lucky Jim, a farcical comedy about a man ill-suited to his life."

She nodded approvingly. "You're reading a lot more than when I first met you."

"I'm finding more enjoyment in it now. I can't imagine why."

She considered this for a time, before asking, "You feel like another drink?"

"Only if you're having one."

"They sell Steinlager here, you know."

He frowned. "It doesn't taste any good at home and I wouldn't imagine the journey has done it any favours."

This saddened her a little. "OK, then if I could serve you one thing from New Zealand right now, what would it be?"

He thought briefly. "Some tuatua."

"Tuatua?" she said, her expression revealing just how strongly she suspected he'd made the word up.

"They're a kind of shellfish. When I was a teenager, my friends and I would often head to the beach to dig for them. You needed only to plunge your fists into the sand and you could gather them by the dozen. Then we'd make a fire with driftwood and boil them in an old pot. Once they were steaming, we'd wrap them in buttered bread, wash them down with cold beer, and talk bullshit about girls until we were toasted." He betrayed a brief smirk. It was a good memory. He'd found himself thinking about those times a lot recently.

"Sounds delightful." Her hands gripped his more tightly, and in hastened pursuit, she blurted, "So what would you do if you went back home? Would you still teach? You seem to enjoy it."

Nick shrugged, but seeing that was not enough to deflect her, he said, "When I was a kid I once took a school trip to the Marlborough Sounds; it was the most gorgeous place I'd ever been. Sometimes I imagine I could buy an old villa there with the money I've remitted home. I'd keep half as living quarters, but the rest I'd convert into a language classroom. Then I could take small groups of ten to twenty students and billet them to local families. It would be fully immersive, so they'd have to use English all the time. We wouldn't even need to advertise for students, we could just use our contacts here. And the best part, is that one day a week, we'd take them out to interact with the locals, visiting the vineyards, whale watching, boating in the sounds, walking the Queen Charlotte..."

Yukiko's eyes became damp as she gazed at him so dreamy and excited, and beautiful in a way she had never seen, but always suspected he would be. But as Nick saw the smile stretching across her face, he instantly cringed at his own absurdity and his dour expression returned as quickly as it had left.

"Did you just say, we?" she asked brightly, still too enchanted by the fantasy to recognise his mood shift.

"I meant we, as in, we do not approve of these scones."

"Of course," she said with a trace of disappointment. "So why don't you do it?"

He scoffed, presuming she'd have been just as enthusiastic if his plan was to breed unicorns on the steppes of Mongolia. "Because it's just a dream, and dreams are like underwear," he quipped, "everybody has them and they're always full of holes."

And with that, he announced he would fetch another couple of drinks, plus one for her, if she so desired.

* * *

August brought the annual Inoshiri Hanabi-shiki, the town fireworks festival. Since the event his first year, which had confirmed his suspicions that the only way to make Inoshiri attractive was by sustained use of high explosive, he had attended every one, though this was to be the first time he would take a date.

Yukiko arrived at his apartment swathed in a gorgeous yukata, pale blue and adorned with images of windblown sakura, and she greeted Nick with a lingering kiss. Quite desperately, he wanted to drag her to bed by the obi and unwrap her like a splendid gift, but as he made play for it, she quipped that the fireworks would have to wait till after the fireworks, and with vocal disappointment, he accompanied her out the door.

At the eastern end of town, within the stopbank of the Yoshino River, lay a lush field that flooded often enough to resist all attempts at productive use. The Japanese quite despise when nature so defies their control, so to mitigate the slight, they kept the field mowed to a height of 2.3mm and installed a pair of soccer goalposts, which were instantly replaced every Thursday when they washed downstream. Its expanse also made it suitable for festivals, and with the announcement of each one, the council would confidently declare there was absolutely no danger in filling the field with the town's entire population, and in their defence, they had almost always been proven right.

The sun had already sunk well beyond the horizon by the time they arrived. This was undoubtedly by design, though neither of them had explicitly vocalised the request. Entry was by way of a narrow alley where food stalls and red lanterns luminesced in the night, and the mugginess was made more oppressive by steaming skillets and the sweating multitude.

They navigated the throng to a quiet spot on the bank where they could freely enjoy the spectacle in each other's embrace without concern for curious eyes. With a wide blanket, they marked their territory, then sat and stared with anticipation at the black vista. Though, even from this distance, the aroma of searing cuisine tickled their nostrils, and unsurprisingly, Yukiko soon asked, "Feeling hungry, Nicky?"

"You bet."

"What do you feel like?"

"Beer."

"Hmm? OK, you get the drinks and I'll grab a snack."

He soon returned with two bottles of iced Kirin and sipped his while observing the approach of Yukiko. "Takoyaki?" he lamented, wondering how she'd successfully bypassed all the delicious offerings, then out-manoeuvred anything even faintly palatable and found herself at the one vendor hawking sticks skewered with broiled balls of octopus meat.

"It smelt too good to pass-up."

He took one with a groan. "OK, but if we happen upon a highly agitated cephalopod, you're on your own."

The food was soon dispatched, which was only achieved in Nick's case by being chased down by a hearty swill of beer, then Yukiko nestled into his lap, safe in the anonymity of night.

The fireworks began at the tick of nine. Naturally, the performance was very orderly and composed, as these things in Japan always are. The sky would alight in fluorescent dazzle for precisely fifteen minutes and this would be followed by a short break to announce the sponsors and allow everyone to regain control of their senses.

During one such respite, Yukiko rolled onto her stomach, with her chin in her palms, and gazed up at her man in the moonlight. "Having a good night?"

He smiled as he examined her pretty features, diffuse in the rubescent glow. A gentle breeze wafted off the river delivering a cooling caress and teasing the thin fabric of her garment. "Better than any I can remember," he replied honestly.

"You know, we could have many more of these..."

"How so?"

"We could move in together," she replied quickly. Undoubtedly she had intended it sound offhand, but she must have stumbled on the delivery because Nick immediately lurched back to sidestep the pratfall.

"I doubt my apartment is big enough for two."

"Well it's plenty bigger than mine and I have heaps of room."

"What if the school found out we were cohabiting?" he said gravely. "Then we'd both be out of our jobs."

She studied him for a time. "That's not the real reason, though, is it?"

He drew a long breath; his heavy eyelids making her seem even more diffuse and distant. "No," he said at length, and staring into the darkness, begged the return of the fireworks.

"That's all you have to say? Do you have so little respect for me that I don't even warrant an explanation?"

Respect? It had been a favoured word in his father's vocabulary and it annoyed Nick greatly whenever he was accused of lacking it, but just how much respect could he ever have for a woman who would love somebody like him?

Yukiko was silent, and he feared to look upon her in case she was crying, but she wasn't sad, she was enraged. "I don't understand you, Nicholas. You have surrounded yourself with a wall, and every time I try to surmount it, you build it a little higher. So now I'm giving up hope that I can ever make it over the top, but one day soon, it will dawn on me that I'm beating my fists against the Tower of London and then I will leave you, and you can squat in your lonesome little cell and gaze out at the fading glow of the only star above."

Nick thought to defend himself; he rapidly conjured excuses and crafted justifications, until there was so much flurry in his head, that it suddenly became quite empty, and as his mouth opened there was nothing he could do but fill it with beer.

Evidently, there would not be fireworks that night.

XXXIX

28.392: Newtonian Physics and the Optimal Trajectory of Vulcanised Footwear

His last day out with Tessa began on a Sunday morning at the sort of ungodly hour where the only people awake were those compelled by faith or guilt to attend their house of worship. Tessa had nudged him from a deep slumber to suggest they head off to the market.

"There's no market on Sunday," he protested. And this was a fact he believed almost as strongly as that he had several more hours of sleep still ahead of him.

"Not here, silly, Taihape."

"Taihape? That's an hour away." He seriously considered burying his head under his pillow and returning to his curious, but oddly enticing dream in which Tessa was a milkmaid and all the girls of Bay Watch her flock. But her demeanour was strangely insistent, so he dragged himself from his bed with an overacted groan and gathered his clothes. "I thought you said you had a big exam coming up, and if you didn't study you'd fail for sure."

"Oh, relax, It'll be fine," she said with unexpected nonchalance.

"Relax?" he gasped, clutching his cheeks dramatically. "How can I relax when my girlfriend has clearly been abducted by aliens and replaced by this impassive impostor?"

She delivered a playful whack to his arm.

"Oh, thank God, you're back."

Nick checked his car's oil and water, as his grandmother always would before a long drive, and then they took the highway north. It was a journey they'd made many times. On the last occasion, they'd stopped to eat at a cafe built from a converted DC3 plane, and then - on a whim - drove all the way to Taupo. Without sufficient cash for a motel, they had parked up beside the great lake and slept in the car.

It was Nick's favourite stretch of highway. Though at first quite uninspiring, once you turned off at Bulls, the traffic thinned, the scenery became more lush, and the road lolled and curved agreeably as the miles were devoured with ease.

Only as he rolled into Taihape, did he suspect he'd been brought here on false pretences. The town - which always had an odd fixation with the lowly gumboot - had gone completely welly-mad, they had been painted onto store fronts and hung like baubles from streetlights, and a monstrous gumboot-shaped placard detoured them to the site of the Taihape Gumboot Day.

"Tessa, darling."

"Yes, Nicholas?"

"Will I be expected to toss gumboots?"

She grinned widely. "Come on, it'll be fun."

"Did I ever tell you I once spent a week in detention for striking the headmaster with a discus?"

"Really? Is that true?"

"Yes, mostly. It's possible the discus was, in fact, a Frisbee, and the headmaster may have been a neighbour's dog."

"Well, you'll do fine today. I imagine you've developed quite some strength in that arm of yours," she said heavily, and then gripped his hand to lead him toward the crowd.

Having significant experience in the discarding of footwear, Nick was actually feeling quietly confident for his chances. This was until he entered the melee and realised that such an apparently simple act was regarded with no less respect than if it were an Olympic event. Indeed, one could frequently overhear competitors deriding Olympic shot-put as too full of lily-arsed she-men and limp-wristed namby-pambies.

Quite naively, Nick had assumed that all that would be required was to throw a gumboot, but he soon learned there were a myriad of factors he must consider: breathing, length of run-up, launch stance, rotational velocity, angle of trajectory and even the volume of one's caterwaul. As such, Nick's efforts proved decidedly middling, edging dangerously close to mediocre, and certainly nothing like the kind of performance he hoped would have Tessa dragging him into a nearby bush to heap praise and other such sexual gratuities upon him. But, at the very least, he'd not embarrassed himself, no hapless dogs had been needlessly injured, and no more than once, had his efforts sent spectators scurrying for cover.

Compounding his underperformance, he was also beaten by Tessa on the race track. Though, for the record, even in the notoriously lawless ride-on lawnmower event, nudging one's competitor into a stack of hay bales is generally frowned upon. She then escorted him to the pavilion to watch the performance while they feasted on giant German sausages and tried not to gag on the sauerkraut. A local troupe of Maori were engaged in traditional dance, and at the very front, a teeny girl oblivious to all other rhythm than her own, whirled, twirled and beat her poi as if she had been gripping once since the womb. She was ineffably cute and Tessa was so taken that her eyes soon grew quite damp.

It was late in the afternoon when they navigated to the market stalls, where they sold homemade foods of questionable quality and knickknacks of uncertain utility, in short, the kind of tat that no one in their right mind could possibly be interested. Tessa, obviously, was over the moon, stopping at each stall to handle the handicraft, prod the produce and endless engage the vendors over their curious choice of ingredients. When she saw a marmalade vendor she would ask why they favoured banana, over - say - orange, of another, she queried why a tray that was clearly labelled peanut brownies did not contain a single nut - some people have allergies, she was told gravely - and even suggested to a man selling Pigs-in-Blankets that his Halal certification was a touch dubious. It wasn't necessarily that she was petty or contrary, rather that, with food, she was exceedingly discerning. Of all the ills that plagued the world, it seemed culinary malfeasance was her bugbear.

She became surprisingly enamoured with a stall that sold the type of clothing accessories that shimmered in the sun or fluoresced in the dark, and Nick watched with a growing sense of dread as she pondered a lucent green hat for a moment, before thinking better of it. She then pawed at a gaudy necktie that was wide enough to shelter a small family of rodents and announced with flashing LEDs, "World's Greatest Lover." Fortunately, it was returned to its rack, before she selected another, which was tastefully patterned in burgundy and tan. Naturally, she haggled like mad over the price and threatened to walk away twice, but once she was satisfied, she presented it to Nick and explained it would make him look dapper, confirming her delight with a kiss. It was his first necktie, and though he suspected he would infrequently have recourse to wear it, owning as he did, not a single collared shirt, he adored it immensely.

As darkness descended, they wearily made their way back to the car and drove through the night. And despite their late return, sexual gratuities were heaped upon him, and having finally freed himself of his anger and mistrust, his performance proved not the least bit middling, nor mediocre.

It was a great day, he concluded as he held her in a post-coital embrace, and as the euphoria gave way to sleep, he could silence the dissenters and hush the doubters, and let himself believe their relationship had turned a corner.

Nick was not a betting man, and this was probably just as well. For all the money in the world, he would not have imagined that within a few weeks, he would be six thousand miles away, lying on a futon, alone.

40

Wednesday

Nick lay on the couch well into the morning. He existed in a state that was neither awake nor asleep, where the pounding of his head did not register as pain but as a concept he could parcel away, and every irksome thought that flashed in his mind could likewise be immediately quashed, leaving him blissfully empty. But soon the pungent silence of Tikorua became overwhelming, and with irritation, he opened his eyes and scowled at the world.

He managed to shower, then made his way to the kitchen to see if he could talk himself into breakfast, and decided at length, that he couldn't. Not because there wasn't an edible morsel remaining in the house - though, most definitely, there wasn't - nor because he was queasy from his unfathomable intake of alcohol - though his liver had clearly seen better days - but rather that he felt no compunction to eat whatsoever.

He stepped out the backdoor and sat on the porch beside a row of bowls overflowing with cat-food. The sky was grey and the air was damp, and it permeated his skin through every pore, crept into his bloodstream and oozed to his extremities until his limbs were leaden and his mind was dull. He squatted in that diffuse state for a considerable period, and, indeed, could have done so all morning, were it not for the garage glaring at him in its irksome way until Nick could take it no more and decided to confront it quite sternly.

He entered by the rear egress and noted the first of the three bays overflowed with his father's aging Mercedes, the second was empty, and the third contained a covered vehicle. He approached it with a queer curiosity. There was something familiar in its confluences, with its long nose and its rear-slung body, and this confounded him greatly. In fact, it significantly troubled and unnerved him. He should have left that very moment, this was certainly the request his brain was making most adamantly, but he didn't, he gripped the cover and snatched it away.

With faltering respiration, he gazed upon the metallic blue curves of his former love, his Mark 1 Ford Capri. He had purchased it soon after he turned sixteen by delivering in excess of 30,000 newspapers over two years of frenetic afternoons, while all his friends were wasting their youth on pornography and music lessons.

Stroking his jowls uneasily, Nick pondered how it could be here. He'd abandoned it on a side road of Auckland Airport after secreting its plates in a nearby rubbish bin (as he couldn't bring himself to toss them into the pristine Manukau Harbour). Now it was here, and aside from the dust and bug spatter, it looked as it always had. Was it a copy? The plates were no longer silver on black reading GU4954, they were now white, but everything else was precisely how he had left it. His custom wooden steering wheel, the chrome gear knob, his music tapes in a wooden box on the floor, with one half-ejected from the stereo.

"Jesus Christ," he finally uttered, "why would they drag this rusting heap of shit all the way back to Tikorua and then never bother to sell it." He stiffly kicked the door, then recoiled in agony as he was reminded how vehicles of the era had the metalwork of a tank.

Tessa had always hated his Capri, endlessly alluding to its feculence by transposing the R whenever referring to it. She derided the carpets of three different shades of blue, she lambasted the windscreen wipers that slowed to a crawl if you cranked up the heating, and she complained every time the door facia popped off when you miscalculated a judder bar. She wanted him to buy a Japanese car, like her parents' Honda Accord, which always ran perfectly, and was, she never ceased to emphasise, of impeccable workmanship.

He could never make her understand it was precisely all the flaws that made the car so endearing. Above all else, it proved it had been handcrafted by humans (who, admittedly, could have benefited from a stronger prescription of spectacles) and thus there were no two Capris that were exactly alike. Unlike its Asian equivalent, it had not been cranked from a soulless machine, identical in every respect to the million that preceded it. He would never buy a Japanese car, he would loftily announce.

And while on the face of it, on this promise, he'd remained true - having acquired his Daihatsu without payment - Tessa was right. There were several factors of trifling benefit where it was undeniably superior to his Capri, most notably, it never flooded in cold weather and then stubbornly refuse to be nudged into ignition, it never slipped out of third when ascending a steep incline ahead of a line of traffic, and it never needed a push start after you forgot to disengage the interior light.

In fact, its personality had been markedly lacking with regard to maddening idiosyncrasies. It was indefatigable and understated, but it wasn't soulless. It may not have been unique when it rolled off the factory floor, but through a life of scant use and frequent abuse, it had inherited its own quirks and foibles, and become quite lovable in its own way.

Nick swung open the door and slid inside, ostensibly to relieve his aching foot, but soon curiosity got the better of him, and he tweaked the ignition. After a throaty hack and a phlegmy splutter, it burbled into life. He remained there in the embrace of the cool vinyl, listening to the engine as it hummed, and occasionally sniffled, and considered how he should react to this unexpected manifestation. After several minutes, he decided he should proceed immediately to Wanganui and have Maxwell explain his peculiar conduct. From there he could even make his way to Palmerston to visit his alma mater, Massey University. And while he never surfaced the thought, he knew, of course, that Tessa's parents were there, as was their restaurant, and...

He found himself trying to imagine how Tessa would now look, what she would be doing, and whom she'd be with... The notion of her loving another would once have driven him into bilious ferment, but such matters now seemed so very remote. Undoubtedly, she would have done so much better than him, a doctor perhaps, and they would live in a large house in an immaculate suburb, and there might even be talk of kids. He tried to massage this thought into an image in his mind, but for all his mental aerobics, he could not, and this compelled him to quickly elevate the garage doors and take to the road.

Of course, the gearbox of his model was notoriously vexatious, but he glided it into gear and slipped the clutch like he'd driven it that very morning, and soon he was drifting through town with an arm on the sill like he were sixteen again.

Exiting town, however, it came rapidly to his attention that for all his experience in Japan, he was utterly unprepared for local driving. The maximum speed in Tokushima was 50kph, so finding himself on the New Zealand open-road, where, save for four inches of paint, cars blew past him with a closing speed of 200kph initiated such duress that he would constantly slow to a crawl, much to the chagrin of other drivers who would endlessly honk as they passed. Most regrettably, he was even issued a two-finger gesture by an elderly lady who could scarcely see over the dashboard of her Fiat Bambina.

* * *

Nick rolled into Wanganui on the crest of a squall washing off the Tasman Sea, the clouds whipping about the buildings as if the city were smouldering in thick, grey smoke. He eased through the empty streets, reminding himself that this placed had begotten such fond memories as a child.

Wanganui was rarely a destination for his mother, who thought it much too provincial, but even when passing he would always badger her to stop. It was the only city in New Zealand where you could enter a long, dark tunnel at the bottom of a mountain and climb into a creaking wooden elevator of an antiquity that was second only to the feeble woman that manhandled its cantankerous controls. She would always offer you a sweetie and ask of your origin, seemingly quite oblivious to the inevitable moment that this archaic box of death would make a final free-fall plunge into oblivion. But then it would mercifully emit a mechanical bing, which was presumably a bell constructed precisely for this purpose, but may equally have been the snapping of yet another strand of the suspension cable, and you would find yourself - quite miraculously - at the summit. Even then, you still weren't high enough, you must dash to the top of the old sandstone tower, counting every step as you did - 218 in all - and then, and only then, were you at the very top. From there you would gaze down at the beautiful river city below, and on a perfect day, you could make out Mt Taranaki to the west and Mt Ruapehu to the east. To a young Nick, there existed no greater city on earth, but now it seemed its name was only ever uttered amidst a bitter stream of invective.

Nick beared onto the main street in the direction of Tawauwau Park, which lies just south of the town centre on a bend in the mighty Whanganui River. It was once an important sanctuary and trading post for the river tribes, before becoming a staid public park that enshrined the brave men who defeated the barbaric natives during the great land wars.

He felt exceedingly queasy. Not because he hadn't eaten, but because his brain was endlessly reciting the words with which he must confront Maxwell.

* * *

Maxwell Nelson would always trail behind Vince, laughing at his every joke, shrugging off his every query. That was how Nick met him. They quickly became friends, having so very much in common, most notably, fractious relationships with absent fathers and over-achieving brothers. Tending toward shyness and introspection, it was not unusual for the garrulous Vince or outspoken Nick to usurp his speaking duties. He was quite Maori in the stockiness of his stature and about the features of his face, though not in his complexion which was no darker than Nick's. In fact, for the longest time, Nick was rarely cognisant of his racial admixture at all. It was Vince that first discovered it a solid basis for ribbing. If Maxwell was tackling ineffectually in backyard rugby then he might be chastised with, "I thought you Maoris were s'posed to be tough?" If he was too busy with homework to go out, it necessitated the jibe, "Oh c'mon, you're not Ollie Ohlson."

To all appearances, he took it well, but as happens, he quite detested it. Almost as much as he detested being Maori, which he considered the source of much disadvantage. While he struggled in his schooling, he watched his brother - who looked completely Pakeha - succeed with such ease, and in his mind, there was only one conclusion.

So he went to every length to ensure he fitted into Pakeha society, all his friends were white, he eschewed any kind of cultural activity, and there was never a hat that was broad enough to protect him from the summer sun. Even for university he chose the whitest of all subjects, accountancy.

Only, he didn't go.

A few months prior to enrolment, he paid Nick a visit to advise he was taking a year away from study. "My great uncle suggested I spend some time on the marae," he explained, "so I can learn more about my heritage..."

"Your Maori heritage?" Nick clarified.

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

"There's nothing wrong with it, but you can do that anytime. If you give up your study now, you'll never go back."

"Nick, there's much more to learn than what you can read in books."

* * *

He left his car at the north end of the park, hoping he could avoid the melee by entering through the rear, but as he approached, he could see the fence lined with Maori youth in gang patches eyeing him menacingly. At the gate, he was intercepted by the imperturbable scowl of one, whose brown belly emerged from a filthy vest stitched from off-cuts of leather and other flayed animals. "You can't come in here!"

"But I need to see someone. Isn't this a public park?" Nick uttered, surprising himself with a brashness that was as unexpected as it was foolhardy.

"Public park? This is a marae now, so bugger off. You bastards have had your sticky fingers on this place too long already," he spat, leaning in so close that Nick could smell in his fetid breath, recent indulgences in cigarettes and beer.

Nick backed away, suddenly fearing for himself, and as he did, he caught sight of another man dashing at him. He was dressed more smartly, except that every inch of his face was cut with swirling tattoos. He placed a palm against Nick's back and led him aside. "Sorry about Pio, but we're all a bit jumpy here. We've heard shots during the night, and yesterday somebody tore right through on a horse. We've got kids around, you know!"

Nick nodded, feigning his forgiveness.

"Everyone's quite welcome here, but we ask you enter through the marae gates at the front and respect our protocols." Then he gestured across the rippling roofs of the sprawling tent city.

Nick rounded the corner, and nearing the throng, he reconsidered his decision to come no less than a dozen times. The noise was thunderous; an endless stream of cars were honking their horns and pumping their fists in support, or revving their engines threateningly and leaning out the window to scream an obscenity or eject a middle finger. A crowd of hundreds screamed an indistinct chorus of enmity, their rageful faces separated only by a scant wire fence and a jostling line of police officers. In its midst, a middle-aged white man held back by police stabbed a pudgy finger at a bare chested Maori. "Why don't you fuck off you lazy black bastards! You want everything for nothing! Why don't you try working for it like the rest of us?"

"You're pretty fucking tough with all your pig mates aren't you, honky," howled the Maori who was gripped by two friends.

They continued at each other as Nick passed, their eyes narrowed, teeth bared and mouths contorted, looking for all the world like two dogs baying for the taste of flesh.

On the fringes were the media with cameras and microphones pointing in all directions, catching every detail, gorging on the discord. Beyond this a mass of voyeurs stood in wait of the last great Maori land war.

Nick pushed through the crowd until he reached the gate, where a vast carving had been erected above the entrance. At its centre, a lurid face stared down at him with its icy paua-shell eyes, scowling wickedly and deriding him with a protracted tongue.

His way was barred by an elderly man in a tasteful suit and polished shoes, who would not have looked out of place in a boardroom, save for a single pounamu earing that extended past his shoulder, and a wooden walking stick that'd been as extensively gnarled in life as it had been carved in death. "Where are you heading?" he asked, in a manner that was not quite angry, but clearly nearing the end of its patience.

"I need to talk to Maxwell Nelson."

"You mean, Makai? He's probably over by the meeting house." And he motioned to a teenager to accompany him.

The atmosphere improved as they moved from the entrance. Acrimony gave way to the congenial faces of small chatty groups and kids playing tag, who kept appearing from unexpected vantages. The shouting died away too, replaced by the snap of the wind upon shelters constructed of random lengths of timber and oddly matched tarpaulin. Passing a bustling field kitchen, a dozen women stirred giant pots over gas cookers, and teenagers knelt around buckets washing plastic dishes. At the rear, a young girl clutched a red coat to herself and mumbled the verse of a waiata.

They trekked across an uninhabited lawn surrounding a lofty statue, which may well have been deathly contagious the way nobody neared. Nick paused to gaze up at the monument, trying to make sense of what he saw. It seemed at some point during the hubbub the concrete figure had been decapitated and his head replaced with a large pumpkin, which Nick found strangely troubling, not least because the replacement appendage seemed oddly suited to the corpulent body. His teen minder looked on anxiously, though Nick wasn't sure if this was due to their proximity to the cursed statue or just that he had more pressing teenage activities to attend to.

The statue had stood for 100 years unmolested by anyone but the pigeons. It was, quite ironically, of the notoriously hard-headed, John Bryce, a four-term MP for Wanganui and esteemed Native Minister who was once much beloved for his officious handling of Maori rabble-rousers and quickly forgiven for such minor transgressions as commanding a fatal charge upon a group of unarmed native children.

Bryce's most glorious effort was the suppression of Te Whiti o Rongomai, the Maori leader whose piteous efforts at non-violent resistance proved no match for his 1600 well-armed troops. Te Whiti and his like-minded agitators had founded Parihaka, undoubtedly the largest Maori town in New Zealand, with its own police force, bakery and bank. Of course, this kind of self-sufficient independence reeks of insurrection and once they began ploughing up farmland that had been quite legally seized by the government for settlers, it behoved a man of principle like Bryce to exert the kind of pressure that would show who was in charge, once and for all.

He had sent in his troops at dawn to storm the town, but they were met immediately by force, hundreds of children, singing and offering food. Obviously, this kind of fanaticism would not weaken his resolve and so he ordered all the leaders arrested. And the inhabitants dispersed, the village demolished, the livestock killed and the crops destroyed.

As one would expect, his soldiers upheld the dignity of civilised Europeans, and though there may have been looting of greenstone and other treasures, certainly the claims of rape were never substantiated by anybody reliable.

Nick and his minder proceeded toward an expansive marquee, where a group of older men addressed a small crowd. They circumnavigated its border to arrive at a small tent, which was powered by a tremulous generator rumbling at the rear. A broad placard on the flank read, "Tawauwau is Maori Land. Return it now!" and atop a tall, rusting pole, a flag of black and red danced wildly in the wind. Inside sat a single figure hunched over a computer.

The teenager gestured to the man, "Here's Makai." Then he left Nick alone in the entrance.

* * *

"Maxwell?" Nick enquired tentatively. The man rose to face him. He was dark and solemn, and his broad chest and bulging arms were emblazoned with Maori tattoos. To Nick, he was utterly unrecognisable.

"Nicholas? Christ, is that you?"

"In the flesh. Am I supposed to call you Makai now?" he asked with a trace of derision.

"It's just a nickname; it kind of stuck."

Maxwell stretched out a hand and he shook it, but Nick wasn't smiling, his head was still swimming with all the things that needed be said. "So you're responsible for this melee?"

"Oh no, I'm just a spokesman," he said, almost proudly. "It's the kaumatua \- the elders - who are in charge."

Maxwell entreated him into the tent and offered a seat, which was, in fact, a canvas picnic chair. Nick eased himself into it slowly, stifling his concern for its structural integrity. "But what's this all about?" he asked, adjusting himself. Every time he moved, the chair issued an almighty squawk, and not a squawk of delight at your splendid selection of comfiture, but the kind of squawk that portends total and imminent failure.

"Several months ago a young activist took offence at the statue of Bryce the Kohuru standing in this sacred place, and, recklessly - as is the way of youth - he beheaded it. In court, the hapu presented a very reasonable proposal for punishment that involved extensive community work. But the judge, the cantankerous Harold McNeish, deemed the action the type of mindless vandalism that was symptomatic of a misguided generation, and ruled that not only must he pay for the statue's repair, he must visit each week for twelve months to clean and polish it. So in solidarity, members of the hapu accompanied the youth to the park and thus began a celebration of our return to our ancestral land. Sometimes you choose the moment, sometimes the moment chooses you."

"A celebration?" Nick retorted. "Have you even seen what's going on out there? You're dividing New Zealand."

"Dividing it?" Maxwell exclaimed, his face reddening. "Are you blind? There may never have been apartheid in New Zealand, but there has always been a division between Pakeha and Maori. Money vs. poverty; education vs. illiteracy; power vs. impotence. We're not breaking anything that isn't already broke."

"So you want this park?" he said, and leaning forward to press his point, the chair released an anguished, Squaaaawwwk!

"This park is just a symbol of the struggle to reclaim our Tikanga and Rangatiratanga. Did you know the New Zealand government took over a million hectares of land from us by enacting a law allowing them to confiscate land from any Maori tribes considered rebellious. But the tribes were only rebelling because their land was already being snatched by settlers under government protection."

"But that was over a century ago. What's the point in dragging up all these old issues?"

"Because Maori today are still hobbled by these injustices. Our ancestors signed a document that was supposed to secure their protection and continued way of life, but instead they were forced from their land and expected to meekly assimilate into British society. Not as equals, of course, but fit only for thankless menial toil. For generations we have been so shackled by poverty and emasculated by disrespect, we have dared not raise a voice in protest. So I ask you, who is really bearing the cost, just so we can pretend New Zealand is a land of racial harmony?"

"But you're from the suburbs and your Dad's paler than a tub of Tiptop. You grew up as white as I did."

"Growing up among Pakeha never stopped me being Maori. It took me a long time to accept that. You don't know what it's like to be endlessly turned away from jobs on the pretence that you're under-qualified, despite the ample accomplishments in your CV. Or to have a landlord advise you the flat is already rented after he was so keen for you to see it moments earlier on the phone. Or having women flinch as you approach. It's these hurdles you face in everything you do. People like to pretend we're so advanced these days; that everyone gets the same deal. But for everything that's changed, nothing seems to have changed. They might talk of biculturalism, but what they really mean is white culture with a little bit of Maori embellishment on the fringes. No, if Maori are truly to have a future, we must seize control of our own destiny."

"But this is not the way to do it. It's abrasive and unruly, and can lead nowhere good. There are procedures you can take, courts you could petition. There your efforts might have an outcome."

"Don't patronise me, Nick," Maxwell bellowed, the ire that had been simmering away abruptly gushing forth. "I don't know where you think I've been the last six years. I'm sure in your mind's eye I've been kicking back with my bros downing beers and smoking wacky-baccy, but in fact, while you hid under a rock, I went to Victoria to study Law and History, and every free moment I fought for even a single hearing for our grievances, and the outcome of all that effort was somewhat less than nothing. So don't come here and tell me to act more fucking Pakeha!"

Nick stared at him, trying to recognise the boy he had known, who was too shy even to finish his own sentences. He was both Pakeha and Maori, which should have made him quintessentially Kiwi, the fusion of its founding races, but that blood had curdled in his veins and the coagulated muck blundered bullishly about his brain and thumped at his temples. It was clear the young Maxwell he had so fondly known was long gone, but there was something about this new one, this Makai, that instilled a curious respect.

His deliberation was promptly arrested by a spasm in his left leg, unlike his right, which had numbed all the way to his toes. In his attempts to avoid vocal remonstrations from the chair, he had positioned himself with a single buttock supporting all his weight, but the peculiar angle of his leg deprived it of circulation. Fearing a rapid onset of necrosis in his extremities, he carefully eased his backside to the left, growing bolder as the chair silently acquiesced. He was very nearly at a point that might almost be considered comfortable, when it screeched an almighty, Squaaa-kerrack, and at the very same moment, he found his chin resting upon his knees.

Maxwell gazed at him with piteous condolence. "It's from The Warehouse," he said as way of apology.

Easing himself up by his armpits, Nick aligned himself precariously on the remaining structure. He wasn't so much sitting anymore as hovering several millimetres over a gin trap. When he was sufficiently recomposed, he said, "So what will you do now?"

"Ka mate kainga tahi, ka ora kainga rua. Or as you would say, Plan B. We will occupy this park. Like the great Te Whiti o Rongomai, we will use peaceful means to fight for what is rightfully ours. But while he did not succeed in the face of bigoted bureaucrats, we will prevail, because now we have the media, and once the New Zealand public learn of the wrongs that were inflicted upon our tribes and our ancestors they will come to our support. There is no greater weapon than education."

Nick sighed. "I don't think you realise how the media are portraying this. They don't care for the details, because that doesn't sell ads. They're focusing only on the discord and the demands."

Deflating a little, he said, "Look, I'm doing the best here that I can. I have to hope the average Kiwi will see through the bullshit. We don't want anyone kicked off their land; that would make us no better than the tyrants that marginalised us. Where there is land that can be returned, it should be returned, and for everything else there should be compensation."

"So, you mean money?" Nick intoned bitterly.

"Yes, Nick, money."

"Why does it always come down to that?"

Maxwell's eyes drooped. "You think I will see any of it? You think we're going to split it 17,000 ways and I'll take my share and buy a shiny set of golf clubs? This is about our future; the freedom to dictate our own path, to be the first in a new generation of Maori who are not at the whim of Pakeha. We are a strong and proud race. We are rich in creativity and culture, and we are determined. This coming century, it will be our turn to blaze."

Nick tried to smile. Desperately, he wanted to believe that the dreams of people like Maxwell could eventuate, even in this world. Finally, he said sadly, "You know, we need only go back a few thousand generations to find the mother of all Maori and Pakeha. She braved the Red Sea to emerge from Africa. Then some of her descendants headed east, and ended up island hopping their way across Polynesia. Others headed north, and eventually, to what came to be known as England. When we met up again here in Aotearoa, we should have greeted each other like long lost brothers, not scornful enemies."

After considering the statement for a time, Maxwell smirked. "Perhaps, but you of all people should know, Nick, that the most bitter of rivalries is that between brothers."

A face appeared at the tent door. "It's the Blake Street lads again. They're fighting with some guys at the north entrance."

"Paka!" Maxwell growled beneath his breath. "I better go cool some heads."

Nick gave him a look.

"Yes, I know. Most are here for the cause, but others only came for the confrontation." He leapt from his chair. "I'll take care of this, then we'll talk some more, OK?"

"Actually, I need to go. I have a funeral tomorrow."

"A funeral?"

"My father's..."

"Oh Jesus, I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'll be fine."

Maxwell vacillated momentarily, then, gesturing toward the north, he said, "Look, I've got to deal with this. Give me fifteen minutes..."

But as he exited, Nick called out, "Good Luck," and then headed back to his car.

41

Wednesday, Late Afternoon

From the park, Nick crossed the Wanganui River in the direction of Durie Hill. He briefly considered taking the lift at its core to the summit, if for no other reason than a morbid curiosity to discover how decrepit the machinery, and indeed the operator, had become, but it was getting dark and so, engaging second gear, he glided up the circuitous hill road and parked at the base of the sandstone lookout. With prodigious effort, he clambered up the 218 steps; 100% of which he achieved without incident, courtesy of a clever statistical trick he'd learnt from Briece, termed a rounding error. There, he gazed out at the world through the ironwork, but with the weather closed in, he could view neither Mount Taranaki nor Ruapehu, only the churning tempest in the city below.

Cautiously, he descended again to his car, eased into the seat and gripped the wooden steering wheel, which had taken on an appearance of such soft and welcome embrace that he was very nearly drawn into its snare. He shook of his stupor and headed for the highway, but before he could think better of it, he'd deviated south. He kept eyeing prospective laybys as they approached intending to correct his route; after all, he needed be back in Tikorua for the funeral the next day, and there was nothing for him in Palmerston. And yet, he could feel that there was something. It was something that pressed heavily on his chest every time he tried to conjure it, and laboured his breathing enough for his head to loll. He'd slowed again too, because a truck blew past him, roiling the cabin with a violent shudder. He must turn immediately, he decided. By God, he was almost stationery anyway, but an irksome voice came to him then. "You must drive on," it instructed.

Nick regarded the intrusion with bewilderment for a time. Its American intonation was somehow familiar, and yet, more pitched and nasal than anyone he had ever known. He should have paid it no mind; he was rarely one to entertain the sort of meddling voices that whispered in your ear and were so markedly lacking in politeness and physical manifestation. But this unjustified route improvisation was making him queasy, so he conceded, it might be refreshing to hear from someone who actually knew what was going on.

"I expect you want to know why I am helping."

"Yes, very much," Nick confirmed.

"Good. It is right that you should want to know."

"So why are we going this way?"

"You know why."

"Then where are we going?"

"You know where."

"You're not helping!"

"Oh, I wasn't trying to help."

Nick rubbed his temple, which thrummed violently beneath his trembling fingers. He had a sudden flash that this all seemed oddly familiar, but he couldn't trace the source. "But I have a funeral tomorrow," he pouted.

"You'll be back in time."

"How can you be sure? You don't even know where I live."

"Oh, I know."

"But I'll need a hotel. It's getting late."

"A hotel? Christ, if you're just going to lie awake anyway, you may as well do that in your car and save yourself a hundred bucks."

"That's not funny."

"None of this is."

Nick was already so tired of the voice that he turned up the radio until it was drowned out by a pop diva crooning of the longevity of love, which was equally nasal but only two thirds as irksome.

It soon occurred to him - or at least, came up in conversation - that he had not eaten all day. This concerned him greatly; he was always a stickler for having three regular meals. Of course, the first was invariably coffee, and one of the others, in large part alcohol, but surely, it was the routine that was important? Duly, he happened upon an eatery of sorts, an old van that had been sliced open along its length with what one could only imagine was a giant can opener. From the exposed gash, a dim light illumed the rising steam of a deep fryer.

Nick eased in beside it, and then surveyed the crudely painted images on a menu placard, which were more reminiscent of geometry than food. Finally, he paused to salivate over the fish burger, which appeared as a tan ellipse straddling a yellow parallelogram.

"I'll have a fish burger, thanks," he advised the chef-come-waiter, who had stripped down to a singlet and pair of daisy dukes, but still looked to have spent too long over a deep fryer.

"What?"

"A fish burger, please."

Quite agitated, he replied, "Look I don't speak Finnish, can you point it out on the sign?"

"I'm sorry about that," Nick apologised profusely. "I'm just really tired."

"Nope, dude, still didn't catch that," and he gestured again to the sign.

Wearily, Nick pointed to the desired item, and as the man nodded, a program kicked off in his brain and in a seemingly robotic state, he darted about his wee van simultaneously frying, searing, cutting and sautéing. When his creation arrived before Nick, the smell of the fish immediately ignited his hunger. "Wow, that smells good," he breathed.

"Oh, you speak English?" the man said with guilty surprise. "Well, that'll be $3.80."

Nick proffered the cash, thanking him effusively.

"No worries." Then he leaned in close to Nick. "So, where are you heading?" There was something unmistakable in the voice, and particularly its nasal intonation.

"Where am I heading?" Nick queried.

"What? No, why are you heading south?"

"Yes, why am I heading South?" he interrogated.

With a flap of his hands, the man turned away. "Look you better go and play; I've got a lot of paperwork to do."

Nick sat on the bonnet of the car, and by the muted glow of the moon, he performed the tricky, but critical operation to extricate the beetroot from the burger with negligible damage to the edible condiments. Then he flicked the offending item between his fingers so it Frisbee'd into a distant field, undoubtedly to the permanent consternation of the livestock. Finally, he dug his teeth into the burger, and although his hunger came and went in waves, leaving nausea in its ebb, he polished it off and even found himself licking the salt and grease from his fingers. He had never been so hungry, nor had so little appetite.

With a grateful wave to the chef, who was now practising dialogue before a mirror, Nick sank into his car and continued on.

* * *

He was hardly conscious of the radio. It had been little more than enigmatic chatter in the rear seat, before the signal weakened and it began to whisper and shout by the undulations of the road. Unable to take the bickering any longer, Nick edged a cassette into the slot.

And the moment of clarity,

Faded like charity does,

Sometimes I open one eye,

And I put out my hand just to touch your soft hair,

To make sure in the darkness that you were still there,

And I have to admit,

I was just a little afraid,

But then...

I had a little bit of luck,

You were awake,

I couldn't take another moment alone...

Christ, he hadn't heard his music in six years, but it was as familiar to his ears as if it'd been yesterday. As if he'd just awoke, and his half decade in Japan had been a long, insufferable dream. Then she would still be his. And everything would be just as it was.

A single tear streamed down his cheek.

God, how he loved to drive with her. How had he forgotten that? They would disappear in the morning and then return home when it was late. Him at the wheel, listening to his music, Tessa slumbering beside him. The end of a magnificent day. He would never want to stop; he felt he could just drive forever. And he would glance over and smile as her chest gently rose with each sleeping breath. And her face, which would never look so relaxed, or peaceful and innocent.

Sometimes too, an idle thought would come to him. That if he were to misjudge a corner or disregard a truck it would end so perfectly. Driving his beloved machine, his beautiful girlfriend at his side, and the infinite starlit sky above them. If it all ended then, the perfection could be eternal, and nothing else would matter. And forever too, would be silenced all the voices that railed against them.

Obviously, he would dismiss the shameful thought as soon as it came, because, much more than a frozen moment of perfection, he was so eager to see where their future would lead, all the places they would go, all the experiences they would share.

Nick rolled into a dark country town, though it was scarcely even that, an archaic hall, an unlit pub and a scattering of houses, which lurked beyond towering fences and imposing hedges. So meagre was its imprint upon the landscape that it declined even to announce itself with a modest sign. Nick paid it not the slightest regard; his mind was in the song. He was trying to recapture a moment of joy that lay just beyond his grasp.

For the first time today,

I held her naked body next to mine.

In this hotel overlooking the Rhine,

I made her mine.

Come with me and... GAAARK... with me.

Please... GAAAAARK... me.

GAAAAAAAARK... me.

"Shit!" He punched the eject button and snatched the cassette, dragging with it an infinite length of brown tape, which he continued to pull until it resembled a curiously furry rodent. He was still staring bitterly at the mass, when he remembered where he was and wrenched his eyes back to the path ahead.

That was when he saw her.

Beside the road, stood a girl in a long white dress. Managing only the quickest glimpse, he could not be sure, but he would swear it was Tessa, in wait beneath a streetlamp.

His foot sunk to the floor and the car sailed to a squealing halt. The sorrowful figure was seared into his mind. Clutching herself in the cold, staring with an endless longing into the night. Nick burst from his car and sprinted back up the road, the chill wind lashing his cheeks and scalding his lungs, his heart thrumming alla marcia prestissimo. But he didn't slacken, even when he spied the streetlamp and realised she was gone. When he finally stood where she had, he gripped the pole, and heaved and gasped, but all the while, his eyes darted about, stretching into the darkness. With pathetic desperation, he cupped his hands and screamed her name into the wind.

Then a gust returned her to him.

It lifted the corner of a tall placard that fanned out toward the road, and billowed and flashed in the moonlight.

He screamed again, this time an obscenity for none but the gods. Then he trudged back to the car, his heart erratic, his face wet with tears and sweat, and his body endlessly convulsing from the chill. He quickly engaged the heating, but his shaking would not abate, and fearing for himself, he edged down a country road and pulled his vehicle onto a verge. There he sat, wrapping himself tightly in his arms and begging the warmth back to his limbs. His head became heavy, but he feared to sleep, knowing it the most perilous place of all, but his eyelids fought so fiercely that he could repel the onslaught no longer.

四十二

Man need only endure another sixty million years of militancy, meteorites and McDonalds to be half as successful as the dinosaurs

Second only to bad cinema was Yukiko's other great passion of hiking, which Nick found quite adorable, right up to the point she suggested they ascend Mt Tsurugi. Of course, he'd been happy to accompany her on the short river walks around Inoshiri, especially if there was the faint chance of enticing her off track to canoodle in the undergrowth, but Tsurugi was another matter entirely. It was a six-thousand foot peak and that would require a daypack, supplies and serious shoes. Also, undoubtedly his chances of canoodling would be significantly slighted once she realised that beneath his brave words and resilient smile were the lungs of a mouse and legs of sponge trifle.

That Sunday, they packed their car and headed south, following a meandering road that traced a mountain stream. It was barely the width of their diminutive car, and frequently the seal was cracked and uneven, and dark too, shrouded by a thick canopy of trees and tangled vines. But the mellifluous croon of the engine soon tranced Nick into a dopey joy.

She twisted the knob on the radio, which had been humming quietly around their ankles. "I love this old song," she enthused.

...Mou sugu soto wa shiroi fuyu,

Aishita no wa tashika ni kimi dake,

Sonomama no kimi dake,

Ai wa kanashii ne,

Boku no kawari ni kimi ga,

Kyou wa dareka no mune ni nemuru kamoshirenai...

Heartily, she sang along, and while she lacked melody, or rhythm or indeed, any of the qualitative factors by which one might normally adjudge a musical performance, not to mention the sizable discrepancy between her lyrics and those rendered by the artist, it warmed him to see her so happy. Today would be a good day, he concluded.

He was still gazing upon her when she recoiled, and he snatched his view to the road as a kei-truck bore down on them. Quickly darting into a layby, he let it bustle past.

After regaining his composure, he set off again with heightened wariness, but the further they drove, the less traffic they encountered, the fewer farmhouses jutted precariously from the hillside, and the rustier became the vending machines.

After an hour, Yukiko directed Nick into an empty car park beyond a sign marking the trailhead. They unpacked their gear, and from an unseen bag, she produced with elaborate pride, a huge watermelon.

Quite astonished, Nick balked, "It's not the season; that must have cost the earth."

"Don't worry my skin-flinted lover," she said deadpan, "I blew the greengrocer and he knocked it back a thousand."

"Oh, excellent work then," he replied with an uneasy laugh as they set off.

Autumn had taken hold, and beneath the canopy, it was cool, and the leaves were deeply hued in red and gold. The fauna, too, lacked the bustle of springtime, the insects did not rise from their repose to pester them, and even the birdsong was half-hearted and lackadaisical.

"This is another habit I picked up from that family I stayed with in Colorado," Yukiko explained. "There was nothing they loved more than trekking all day in the hills. Though, they were naturalists, so I did spend a small fortune on sun cream."

Nick nodded. Yukiko always delivered a punchline with the solemnity of a displeasing weather report, so he was never entirely sure when she was joking. "Not to mention the practical matter of where to hang one's water bottle," he quipped after a time.

"Quite," she replied, betraying a smirk.

Yukiko led the way, striding as if she were, indeed, au naturel and a swarm of thirsty mosquitoes were in hot pursuit. Nick lagged somewhat behind. Although he'd had his suspicions, he hadn't appreciated just how much fitter she was than him. Her gait rarely varied and her pace never slackened, and soon Nick was labouring to match her seemingly effortless steps. They had scarcely made the foothills before his legs were burning and there was an ache in his cavernous chest. He realised, obviously, that he must stop. He would find a sheltering tree, lie beneath it, and care not ever to be found. A thousand times, he promised his begrudging muscles that respite lay around the next bend, but one thought overrode all others; Yukiko could never know just how feeble he was. Onward he trudged, every inch torturous, every leaden footfall requiring monumental effort, yet, from somewhere, he sourced an unknown energy that allowed him to focus only on mimicking her every step. And each time she turned to him, his chest would puff and his shoulders drew, and he marched as if it were nothing.

Soon, the dissenting howls that screeched from his distant reaches melded into the background hum. Every impassioned report was transcribed, signed and stapled, before being immediately filed in the bottom drawer of a small cabinet in a disused office in a dim rear corridor of his brain. And even the voices that constantly needled him with their circuitous hypotheticals and vile insinuations were soon ushered into the background. Robbed his pain and deprived his self-loathing, there remained only a void. But unlike the impenetrable black curtain that descended upon him when he drank, the void was strangely bright and ethereal.

They didn't stop until mid-morning, when they came to a squat wooden shrine with a natural spring. Lustily, they lapped up the fresh water, and refilled their bottles. Yukiko then approached the altar, and with clapped hands, bowed solemnly three times. It was the only spiritual thing he had ever seen her do. "Are you Buddhist?" he asked.

"Only at a shrine," she replied with a wink. Then she made again for the track before the circulation had even returned to his extremities, calling out, "Come on, we'll be there soon." Nick smarted. He'd long observed a notable flaw in her English whenever it came to temporal adverbs.

They reached the summit an hour later, by which point, Nick's awareness of his agony had become so remote that he continued to pace about, waxing lyrical about the fine views over distant hills and valleys.

"We better eat," she called to him, "it looks like rain's coming."

He squatted beside her on a jutting rock and received a sandwich, which he ate while eyeing the blackening sky. By the time she requested the watermelon, they were enveloped in a grimy mist, and lugging it to her, it slipped from his weary hands and shattered on the dry ground. He stared at the rent flesh and the gush of incarnadine fluid, and he suddenly felt the bite of the wind and shivered reflexively. Yukiko began to laugh at his ineptitude, but seeing the bloodless pallor of his face, she stopped. "Don't worry," she said, "It'll save us cutting it."

The descent was relatively easy, but the machinations of his mind, having been re-ignited so abruptly, were now working overtime. Every step would remind him of one from his earlier life, how he'd walked until the early morning after an embittered dispute with Tessa about her parents, how he would pace outside her door trying to find the words to bridge their divide, and how she would tell him everything was fine, then disappear into her room and play such a mournful refrain that he must escape into the night.

The rain began to fall, and though the individual drops were shielded by the canopy, they would thus coalesce and arrive as enormous sodden spheres. It brought with it a dark, chilling gloom. He'd seen the storm approaching, even watched as it swirled overhead and gathered force, but all the while, he had thought he could outpace it.

When their marathon was over and they climbed, utterly drenched, into the car, he thanked her for a wonderful day with effusive, faltering gratitude, but after that, not a meaningful word was spoken as they cut through the downpour. All that time, his mind ruminated upon an insoluble conundrum: He could not bear another night alone, but if she moved in with him, it would only make it so much harder when she finally left.

He pulled to a stop outside his apartment, and inspecting Yukiko's pensive features, he asked, "Will you stay with me?"

"Do you mean stay the night, or stay?"

"I mean... stay."

Her face drew in surprise, before she finally accepted with a smile and a kiss. But there seemed little happiness to it. If anything, he saw only resignation. Perhaps she too, knew it must end, but this was the final step before it could be reached.

* * *

After school the next day, she arrived at his door with all her belongings stuffed into an old hiking pack and two rubbish bags. "I guess this makes us officially roommates," she beamed.

"Unofficial roommates," he corrected. "If the school finds out, we're history." He leaned out the door, and enquired, "Where's the rest of your gear?"

"This is everything," she confessed with a shrug.

He grabbed one of the bags and led her through to the bedroom. "You can have the left side of the wardrobe," he offered. "I'll clear out some of these drawers too." He busied himself in rearrangement of his belongings, and likewise, tried to reconcile a myriad of conflicting anxieties. On both tasks, he had not well progressed, when he was arrested by the ripping of fabric.

"Oh, Nick, I'm so sorry," Yukiko wailed as she produced a tie patterned in burgundy and tan, but torn across the front. "It caught on the hook."

Nick's face paled. "This was a gift from an old friend back home."

She examined it for a moment, and then in perplexity, said, "I think you must be mistaken. This is a Sogo tie and they only have them here in Japan."

He snatched it from her. "No, this is the tie."

"Well, let me repair it for you. My mother insisted once on teaching me sewing. I'm pretty sure I remember the basics," she advised without conviction.

"No, it's OK," he replied, gently stroking the silk, pondering its portentous message. Then he carefully folded the tie and placed it in a drawer, and with a broad smile that faltered at the extremities, he assisted her unpack.

That night, he didn't dare sleep for fear of the retribution awaiting him. So he closed his eyes and faked a low wheeze, and when he was convinced she was snoozing, he slipped from the bed and crouched at the window, losing himself in the thrum of the rain.

It was well after two when she sensed his absence and woke. She peered at him through weary eyes, and as sleep subsided, concern took its place. Climbing from the bed, she knelt beside him and placed a hand on his knee. There was no reaction. He seemed aware of her only in the periphery of his consciousness, like she were the howl of the wind, or the rumble of distant thunder. Unsure whether to speak, as if suspecting he were in some strange night-trance of which waking might pose some direful risk, she merely stroked his limbs with an indecisive caress.

Finally, to her relief, he said, "Have you ever listened to the rain? If you really concentrate, you can hear almost anything you wish. Of course, once you hear it, you can never make it shut up."

Her relief instantly dissipated, and her earlier concern ratcheted all the way up to eleven. She didn't reply immediately, as she wasn't entirely sure she was supposed to. The remark wasn't specifically directed at her, and quite clearly was rhetorical, and yet the inflexion seemed to invite some sort of feedback. "I'm more of a fair weather girl, myself," she said softly.

"As bound to the swing of seasons, are we to the march of time," he replied, quoting another line from the James K Baxter poem he could never quite recall.

Undoubtedly, Yukiko did not know the work of Baxter, or any New Zealand poet. She had been party to Nick's rambling impersonation of Sam Hunt and found it endlessly amusing without ever knowing to whom it related, and even the antipodean origin of Katherine Mansfield had never been sufficiently elucidated to her. But even if she had all this knowledge and been apprised of all the written work of all the New Zealand literary greats, living and dead, even that would not have made his comment appear any less ludicrous. And so she stared at him wordlessly for a time, before it occurred that if she did not speak, he might continue in this odd fashion to the point where she'd be compelled to strike him to recover his sanity, and also, because she had insufficiently dealt with an earlier remark he'd made with regard to the overly muscular form of her thighs.

"Nick!" she said strongly enough for him to turn to her. "Whatever it is, you can tell me," she urged. "I can help."

He smiled at the boundless empathy in her eyes and the delightful way her lips had curved around the word, help. Perhaps he could tell her, he reasoned, she loved him enough. He could let it all go; he could finally shed his bandages and be free. And slowly his mouth opened, and breathlessly the words fell from his lips without anything to push them any further. "This is not something that talking can fix."

As he heard his words, his face collapsed and he hated himself for them, but he immediately adjudged a little more self-loathing was infinitely better than the truth.

Her hand released its grip. "Your problem is that your atama ga katai," she growled, rapping his head with her knuckles to indicate its hardness, "You can change; you just need to choose to."

And with a lamentable sigh, she returned to bed.

* * *

Before long, though, their relationship fell into a comfortable groove and their cohabitation became routine and uneventful, which Nick gratefully absorbed, having long learnt the benefits of an existence devoid of all spontaneity.

They would begin each day with a shared breakfast over the Daily Yomiuri, before departing separately for school. There, they would greet fraternally, then work together in cordial diligence until the close of day. Arriving home, there would be a round or three of Jan-Ken-Pon to establish cooking duties, and after successfully stomaching the output, they generally engaged their own entertainment. Nick would enjoy a book, while Yukiko loved to flick through the channels remarking on the dire quality of Japanese television. "How many shows can they have with a presenter dressed in drag," she would groan, before finding the next channel offered another. Finally, one of them would suggest it was getting late, often when it was not late at all...

And they rarely argued; Yukiko was quite outspoken about what she felt most passionate, Nick was too, and thus never saw fit to complain about anything at all. In fact, all things considered, their relationship seemed almost stable, and though he was wary to dwell on such matters, he would sometimes find his life oddly bearable and occasionally resembling something akin to contentment. It was at these times he would dare to dream that it didn't have to end.

Though, obviously such provocation could not go unchallenged, which is the only explanation for the appearance of the briefcase.

Nick had completely forgotten about it. It had been pushed further and further beneath the bed, and might well have lain there forever were it not for the need to accommodate her new hiking pole.

"Why don't you ever use this briefcase?" she asked, which was rather impertinent given that Nick quite adequately conveyed his classwork in a loose bundle, which he occasionally bound with an old shoelace.

Regarding her with ill-ease, he stammered, "I don't remember the password..."

"Perhaps I can guess it."

"Don't worry..." he began to say, approaching to grab it, but before he could, there was a double click and two latches flicked up. "How did you..."

"Oh please! Your birth month and year; you're not nearly as clever as you imagine," she quipped.

He thought to snatch it from her then. It's personal, he would say and that would have to be enough, because to open it could well mean the end of them. But he did nothing, just turned and walked toward the window. Perhaps it was best this way, he decided, gazing into the distance where a murky wisp of cloud had crested the valley wall and was snaking its way toward Inoshiri.

Breathlessly, he waited for what was to come, but to his shock, her first words were mellow. "I don't remember you taking this photo of me," he heard her say, but even before the sentence concluded, her voice had begun to waver. "Who is she?" Yukiko demanded.

Through a heavy exhalation, he said, "It's my girlfriend from back home."

She was silent for a time and Nick still did not dare face her, but then she asked, "Why does she look so much like me?"

Staggered with disbelief, he turned to glare. How absurd, Nick considered quite analytically. Tessa was short and cute. She wore her hair long to lengthen her round face, and had the wide, oval eyes of Han Chinese. She was serious and studious, and incredibly smart. But Yukiko was beautiful. She was tall and leggy. Her hair was always cropped short and like most North Asians, her eyes were single-lidded, making them narrow and alluring. She was passionate and strong, and endlessly funny.

Nick wordlessly snatched the photo, and studied it.

Tessa lay in the long grass of the park opposite their flat; the sun shone brightly upon her dimpled cheek, glimmering her porcelain skin and illuminating the strands of hair that hung across her face. Her eyes were distant, but her mouth was poised as if to whisper.

"She doesn't look anything like you," he assured her without trace of doubt. Then he grabbed a handful of photos and flicked through each in turn. Tessa reclining on the bonnet of his car on a remote country road; lying in bed, reaching bashfully for a sheet; sitting quietly at her desk staring out the window, oblivious to the intrusion. But Nick took no regard of the content, he was searching for a photo that framed her face. When he found one, he reiterated softly, "You're so different." But as he spoke, he was masking portions of the photo with his thumbs to examine each feature in isolation, the eyes, the nose, the curvature of the face, the shape of the jaw... "You have her smile," he eventually conceded.

"Why didn't you tell me she was Asian?" she asked, her anger now only simmering.

"She's New Zealand Chinese; why would I mention that?"

"I don't know," she replied, "but she's not how I pictured her."

A curious thought then came to Yukiko, but Nick, still lost in the photo, missed the revelation. "Yu-Jie," she uttered speculatively.

His eyes shot up to meet hers. "How do you know that?"

Yukiko recoiled, and with her mouth agape, she heaved, "I've heard you say it... when you sleep." The colour drained from her face and her lips quivered.

"It's her Chinese name," he explained.

Revulsion and anger embroiled, and suddenly she could no longer contain the brew. "Am I her to you?" she spat. "A clone of the girl who broke your heart?"

"No, that's not it at all. You don't get it," he said delicately, sitting beside her on the bed. "You are nothing like her, regardless of how you look, because what I love most about you can't be photographed."

"So what is it then? What am I not giving you that you still need to cling to her?"

"I don't cling to her, she clings to me. I can't explain it, but she won't let go."

"Well you need her out of your life," she barked, dropping the briefcase into his lap, "because I want more than the scraps of your affection."

He immediately gripped the briefcase, jumped up, and marched to the window. The murky clouds had arrived to encircle the building and the wind beat mercilessly at the panes, but he swung open the window, and inverted the briefcase, expelling the photos into the melee. Briefly, they suspended on the wave before him, before they were struck by a sudden torrent and dashed in every direction. He waited for a moment, thinking he might catch another sight of them, but all trace of her was gone.

* * *

The following evening he was enticed out by his whiskey-quaffing colleagues. Since Yukiko had moved in, he'd effortlessly rebuffed their every request, but that day, all his excuses eluded him.

Briece had once circulated an advisory that indexed the three levels of gaijin drunkenness:

1. Can speak simple phrases and exchange pleasantries in Japanese.

2. Frequent intermixing of Japanese and English within a sentence, as in, "Check out that girl, kawaii ne! I'll ask her back to my apaato to see if she can play the shakuhachi."

3. Complete Japanese fluency.

Perhaps it was that Nick's launchpad was already at level 3. Perhaps, it was the unbearable karaoke. Either way, late into the evening Nick found himself ejected from a taxi as he hummed the refrain of Shima Uta. He made his way to the apartment, lamenting quite loudly the surprise addendum of several flights of stairs, and then flopped in the door. In the process of removing his footwear, he propelled into the shoe rack, and for several minutes struggled to extricate himself until he flayed his arms in a Hulk-like impersonation and with an almighty crack, footwear and shards of plastic rained down around him. In jubilation at his freedom, he issued a resounding burp.

"So what are we celebrating tonight?" Yukiko enquired darkly as he entered the bedroom, adroitly deducing that he was pissed beyond all reasonable parameters of sensibility.

"Eigo o shaberu na!" he spat back.

"Why can't I speak English?"

"Wasuretai na!"

"Why would you want to forget it?"

He issued a delicious grin. "Then all my bad memories would be incomprehensible to me."

"But wouldn't they just add subtitles?" she teased.

He tried hard to concentrate on the thought for a moment. "Oh shit, can they do that?"

"Technology," she advised with a wry smile.

"Techno - fucking - lo-logy," he groaned, before collapsing on the bed beside her.

As his eyes glazed, she probed, "So what bad memories need you forget?"

"All of them!" he said, trying to lift his head before immediately giving up on the idea. "They're all bad. They either start out good and then go bad, or start out bad and then get worse. You too, my dear, one day you'll discover how much it hurts to love me, and then you'll be another a bad memory I must flush from my brain with warm beer and cold sake."

XLIII

15.307: Principles of Chinese Negotiation

That final month before he fled to Japan everything seemed to happen at once. You could have hurled at him a meteorite that blackened the sky and he would have censured you for bothering him with such trivialities. Tessa, university, his family... There wasn't a part of his life that wasn't teetering, but it was only then that it dawned just how precarious it all was.

The first salvo arrived by way of the front door and announced itself with a bombardment of thumping. Nick attended to it immediately, because he was curious as to what was so damn urgent. As he swung open the door, a young Asian blew past.

"Yes?" Nick asked of his shadow, but the shadow didn't acknowledge, just wheeled about in confusion, as if the house layout was different than he'd imagined and thus required a radical reconstruction of the model he held in his mind's eye. He was short - no more than 5' 6" - and of such slight build that he would struggle to mount a defence against a decent puff of wind. He wore dirty jeans that were rolled up at the leg cuff and a top emblazoned with a marginally English phrase, like "Eat Life" or "Sport Robot" or some such nonsense that made Nick's brain reflexively gag.

"Can I help you?" he asked again, his voice tainted with agitation.

The scrawny man ignored him still, but at least he had resolved his mental roadblock. "Yu-Jie?" he screamed.

Nick faltered. He knew Tessa's Chinese name. Immediately it was obvious who he was, the lovesick twit from the ball, and rapidly Nick's restricted agitation morphed into a fury of uncertain containment. Every one of his nightmares flooded back to him, and the worst bubbled quickly to the top. Had they been carrying behind his back on this whole time? Was their affection now so heated he could not hide it?

"Why do you want Tessa?" Nick demanded, seizing him by the shoulder.

Jerking himself from the grip, he commenced a blundering self-guided tour, throwing open doors, and endlessly bellowing her name, with Nick trailing his every step, clarifying his intentions with pointed enquiries, "What the fuck do you want?" and the age-immemorial, "Who do you think you are?"

Finally, they burst into the bedroom, where Nick expected to find Tessa. Only the room proved empty. He was casting a suspicious eye toward the open window, when she appeared, seemingly from behind the door.

"Evan?" she said with an expression that was neither horror nor surprise, but contained a sizable dollop of both.

Nick was instantly silent, and his face contorted in confusion. Evan? Her brother? Nick examined him anew, and promptly decided that he fell considerably short of his expectations, most notably in magnitude. How could Tessa be so frightened of someone scarcely bigger than her?

Thereupon they erupted in argument, or rather, Evan screamed and she squeaked in defence. Unfortunately, it was such a rabid torrent of Cantonese that all detail was lost on Nick, though he did recognise himself as a topic as the disparaging reference, bak-gwei, made frequent appearance.

It would seem from her brother's gesticulation, he expected her to depart with him forthwith. Though she was equally adamant she would not, and so they jostled in verbal combat for several minutes, with Nick hovering on the fringes injecting random barbs that were ignored by everyone involved.

Then Evan grabbed her by the wrist, so tightly she could not disengage, and edged her toward the door. Nick's rage finally wrestled control, and he thrust his palms hard enough at Evan's chest that he was suddenly lying upon the floor, staring up at them in shock. Finally, then, Nick was acknowledged, or more specifically his mother. "Diu lei lou mou!" Evan bellowed. Then he clambered to his feet and stormed out.

"What was that all about?" Nick demanded.

Her face grew pale, and slowly she replied, "He says, I can't stay with you."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know!" she screamed, and then collapsed on the bed and was overcome with tears and lamentation.

Nick knelt beside her and laid an arm over her shoulder. "Perhaps it is time to tell your parents about us."

"No, it can't be now," she blubbered.

* * *

Several days later came the phone call. Obviously, Nick was never supposed to answer the telephone, but he did on occasion when he was confident it was a call he was expecting, or if he anticipated it might impede a very pressing nap. But this time, it was because he was heading out and it rang precisely at the moment he passed, which Nick assumed to be a sign that it was for him, as, coincidentally, it was.

"Nicholas Fairfield?" a curiously familiar voice enquired. It was an older lady with an accent that betrayed English was not her first language, and possibly, not even her second.

"Yes?" he replied tentatively, strongly suspecting the negative might be a safer bet.

"This is Tessa's mother."

"Tessa's mother?" he clarified slowly, steadying his quaking frame against the wall.

"Yes, Mrs Chou." Mrs Chou? It seemed such a peculiar way to refer to oneself, he considered. Did she expect everybody to address her in this manner, or just those who violate her daughter and assault her son?

"Mrs Chou?" he stammered. "I'm afraid Tessa is not in."

"Actually I was hoping to talk with you..."

"Well, I'm just heading out to varsity..."

"Then, perhaps, you could come by our restaurant. Mr Chou and I would very much like to meet with you."

Nick slid down the wall until he was squatting on the floor. He could not decide if he should be terrified or excited, and this emotional dichotomy was wreaking havoc on his countenance. He held his hand to his mouth, which was simultaneously smiling and frowning, and struggled for response. She did not sound angry; cold and officious, certainly, but there appeared little threat of actual physical harm. Perhaps it would all be much simpler than he had been led to believe. "I guess I could come by this afternoon. Around three?"

"Three would be excellent. I expect you know where we are?"

"Oh, yes, I've been to your restaurant before. It's very good!"

She regarded his comment wordlessly for a moment, and then thanked him tersely.

"Should I bring Tessa?" he added, a little too keenly.

"No, I would ask you not to tell Tessa at this stage." Stage? There were stages? He had only assumed there was not knowing and then knowing, he'd never considered that this might be a process, like getting a driver's license, or marrying a catholic.

"OK, I'll see you then."

Nick hung up the phone, then sat himself on the couch and replayed the whole conversation in his head. He considered it quite cryptic, in fact, it was always the conversations like this, where so little had been said, that he found the most vexing. On the one hand, it seemed rather trifling, and yet there was an obvious urgency. She had been curt, but had delivered it most politely. Her intentions were vague, but her will was clear. It was all very unsettling. And she knew his name, and for some reason, that was the most unsettling thing of all.

This was why, twenty-three minutes later, Nick made his way to an accountancy lecture, having reasonably ascertained that David would be there. Unfortunately, having mistimed his entrance, he was forced to wave an apology to the lecturer as he made his way up the stairs to sit beside his old roommate.

"Nick?" David said with muted surprise.

"We need to talk..."

"Now?"

"Tessa's mum called me," he whispered.

"Oh..."

"I can't understand how they found out..."

"Nick..."

"It can't have been her brother, he doesn't even know my name..."

"Nick..." David repeated more forcibly.

"And nobody else knows about us, only..."

"Nick!" This time his teeth were clenched enough that the word hissed from his mouth. "It was me."

Nick turned to him, his faced painted with betrayal. "You told them about us?" he shouted, loud enough for the rows in front to crane their heads. "Our relationship is supposed to be secret. Why would you ever tell them?"

David cowered with reddened cheeks. "Christ, Nick, keep it down!"

But it was too late. The lecturer had halted and was examining the two of them over the top of his glasses. "Mr Kwan," he beseeched, "perhaps you and your... acquaintance would prefer to have this conversation outside?"

They proceeded quickly to the exit, Nick quite oblivious to the burning glare of a hundred eyes, while David shielded his face with a bag. As soon as the doors closed behind them, Nick resumed his interrogation. "You told them about us? What kind of a friend are you?"

"What kind of a friend am I? That's rich, considering you haven't returned a call from me in a year..."

"So that's what this is about? You're getting even because I've been snubbing you?"

"Oh, grow up for fuck's sake, Nick, it's not you versus the whole fucking world. My mother had heard some rumours about Tessa, and she asked if I knew anything about them."

"You could have lied."

"I did!" David scoffed. "I said you were a great guy who would treat her well."

"You said that?"

"Yes, Nick, I said that. For you, I lied through my teeth to my own mother."

"Thanks, Dave."

"Don't mention it. Really, don't mention it," he quipped.

Nick tried to smile, but with his conflict yet to abate, the ensuing expression was equivocal at best. "I'm not sure if I should tell Tessa."

David paused to gaze at his old friend, then gave a long sigh. "Well you need to. Chinese hate surprises, not least from their parents."

"But they asked me not to."

"Christ, is that where your loyalty lies now?"

"Of course not, but it's hardly the time to be getting on their bad side, is it?"

"I suppose not."

"So what do you think will happen?"

With a shrug, David said, "Best case scenario, they don't like you and ask you to stay away from their daughter."

"That's the best case? What's the worst?"

"They love you and you spend every other night helping out at the restaurant."

"I could do that," Nick enthused.

"Would you want to? Effectively, you'd be a son-in-law then. How could you ever leave Tessa after that?"

"Why would I want to leave her?"

"I don't know, but when I see you guys together around campus, you never look happy anymore."

"We're happy!" he pouted, before sighing, "Mostly, I guess." He sat down on the edge of a planter containing a large fern, which was either plastic and surprisingly realistic, or real and incredibly sickly. "I used to believe that when you fell for someone it was because they were perfect for you in every way, but now I suspect your heart and loins collude and your brain doesn't even get a say."

"Well you better act soon, because once you meet her parents, it's too late. You can't just wing it like you do everything else."

"You're saying I should break it off? I could never do that to her."

"Are you sure that it's her you're afraid of hurting, Nick? Sometimes you have to embrace the pain. Kia mate ururoa, kei mate wheke, my old rugby coach would say, Be the shark, not the cowardly octopus."

"You've got us wrong," Nick protested weakly. "We're coming right again. I'm sure of it."

Dave didn't reply, just observed Nick fight an unspoken battle. Eventually, he said, "Look, I better get back to class..."

As he departed, Nick called, "Hey, we should get together for a beer sometime soon..."

"Sure. Shall we say the Fitz' for the millennium?"

* * *

Nick raced back from university. For the second time that day, he showered and shaved, and then spent a significant period brushing back his hair to make its excessive length less conspicuous. Finally, he selected his newest jeans and dressiest shirt, and after donning them, chased out the wrinkles with a palm infused with frictional swelter. When he was completely satisfied that the impression he imparted was closer to stable and studious, than rash and randy, he drove to the restaurant, parked suitably distant, and sat in the car. He had allowed an extra twenty minutes, which he hoped would be sufficient to calm himself, but, in fact, proved precisely enough time to send him into a flinchful, twitching terror.

With his keys rattling interminably in his fist, he proceeded to the restaurant. Despite a sign announcing it as closed, the door was unlocked, so he cautiously edged it open and was immediately flanked by Tessa's parents.

"You must be Nicholas?" Mrs Chou said. She was taller than he remembered, and thin, but in a way that implied wiry strength rather than frailty. Her face too, looked to have weathered many long days under a searing sun. She wore a thin dusting of make-up, though he expected this was an occupational necessity, rather than a misguided quest for beauty. She must have been pretty once, Nick considered, but that day had long passed, and he doubted it was something she ever dwelt on.

"Yes, yes, I am," he confessed, awkwardly offering his hand to Tessa's father, who managed just as much ill-ease as he shook it.

Their introduction morphed into small-talk on the matter of parking spaces of inadequate length and the propensity for the Square to swallow restaurant bound traffic. Nick conceded little knowledge on either point, before fretting that such ignorance might well count against him. Mr Chou, while lacking the fluency of his wife, spoke politely without nearly as much reserve as Nick had expected. As the conversation faltered, she gestured to a table. "Have you eaten?"

He wasn't entirely sure whether lunch or dinner was being referred to, but cautious of seeming impolite, he advised, he had not. Tessa had once joked that if he ever found himself in a Chinese home torn between slapping the hostess or refusing her food, only the latter would guarantee he was never invited back.

Nick sat at the table, which struck him as conspicuously large for three diners, and nervously touched at the fork and spoon that had been laid out for him. They then took their seats opposite and gazed at him over the Lazy-Susan. The intensity of their glare and the subsequent physiological effects upon his stomach and sweat glands suddenly reminded him of his interview for a summer job with the Tikorua Dairy Company. As a point of history, he was not offered the position, quite possibly due to his suggestion that cattle might benefit from some kind of quadruple-cupped brassiere, which apparently is not a point greeted with much humour by the industry.

A waiter subsequently arrived to serve them rice and lay out their dishes. There were six huge plates, Nick enumerated with alarm. They certainly looked quite appetising, but the prodigious quantity was enough for him to secretly wish for the miraculous appearance of his ravenous friend, David. He was silently cursing himself for having opted for the tighter notch on his belt, when the waiter reappeared with two further dishes. 'Oh please, please stop,' Nick silently begged, and mercifully, he did; after a final round where he impressively balanced two plates on one arm and held another atop three fingers. Nick slowly surveyed the elaborate feast before him: a whole boiled chicken, a lengthy grilled fish, and mountains of prawns, beef, duck and vegetables. It was, quite obviously, more food than he could eat in a month.

Reacting to his concern, Mr Chou asked, "Do you like Chinese food?"

"Oh yes, I love it," Nick quickly replied, and there was nothing he would not readily devour to prove the fact. Except, of course, for Phoenix Claws.

"Please help yourself."

He pointedly stretched out for a pair of chopsticks that had been positioned just beyond his reach, and then deftly wrestled a prawn to his bowl before consuming it with elaborate gusto.

"Won't you tell us a little about yourself," Mrs Chou asked as she placed some duck into her husband's dish.

The prawn tail abruptly lodged itself in Nick's throat, but after significant effort, he was able to dislodge it, and thus reflate his lungs. "What would you like to know?" he croaked, trying to recall his answer to the same question during his job interview, and making a mental note to avoid any humour on the subject of bovine underwear.

"Whatever you think's important."

So he told them of his family in Tikorua, without mentioning they were the type of folk who would sneer at anyone who so needlessly contracted a verb form, and of his father, the judge, avoiding all reference to their mutual ignominy. Following that, he delved into his studies at Massey, completely glossing over the fact that if he'd buried his head in his books as often as he had between their daughters legs then he'd be faring considerably better.

They would nod politely to each of his points and occasionally, at some invisible cue, Mrs Chou would translate for her husband. Surprisingly Nick found he could understand almost every word, and once, even delicately corrected her when she misreported that he had an older sister. In fact, after twenty minutes he appraised he was faring exceedingly well, though, he hastily conceded, it was much like the dairy job interview, he was fine when talking about himself, but at some point the conversation would inevitably lead to the cow.

When he finally ran out of things to say, he was entreated to more food, whereupon he gripped a succulent slice of boiled chicken and dipped it in ginger sauce.

"So," Mrs Chou said as he bit into it, "how did you meet Tessa?"

It would seem Nick had been unexpectedly generous with the condiment as it burned all the way down, and he was forced to clear his throat before he could continue. "Well that's a funny story," he replied, before concluding they were unlikely to find as much humour in it as he did, "I met her here. When I came with my friend, David Kwan."

"Oh, David brought you here?" And she promptly translated the detail to her husband. It was the first time Nick had ever heard David's Chinese name, Lueng. "When was that?"

"Last June."

They nodded soberly. "That's much longer than we realised."

"So you knew?"

"We suspected, yes, but we weren't sure until recently."

Nick leaned back in his chair and examined them each in turn. He could sense the imminent arrival of outrage, and so he inhaled slowly through his nose to forestall it, as he had once been taught. "So why didn't you say anything to Tessa?"

"We hoped it would pass..."

"It would pass?" he replied, sneering at the comparison of their relationship to a kidney stone. "Do you know how much she's worried what would happen when you found out?"

"Well, we hoped it wouldn't come to this. I'm afraid, our preference is for her to date someone Chinese. We understand how Chinese people think, so naturally, we want someone of a similar mind-set for our daughter. Western thinking, I often struggle to comprehend. There doesn't seem the same priorities..."

"You would prefer she date a Chinese?" he clarified.

"Yes, most definitely."

"But you would not disown her for doing otherwise?"

"No, of course not, that would be ridiculous."

"So you've never told her that would happen?"

"Not in so many words, though it's possible she was led to believe it."

"Why?"

"As I already explained, our preference is for her to date someone Chinese."

"Well, I'm not Chinese, I'm sorry to be the one to inform you," he pouted, his descent into petty sarcasm marking the point where he'd given up all attempts to control his temper. "But Tessa and I are not breaking up simply because you have a preference."

Mr and Mrs Chou stopped eating and engaged in silent conversation. She was deferential to him, as any good Chinese wife would be, though there was little question who truly wielded the power. Finally, she said, "Look, you seem a fine boy, and obviously you care for Tessa a lot..."

"I do. More than you can imagine."

"Our concern is for Tessa's future. She has the potential to do exceedingly well if she's not derailed by the petty trivialities of young love."

Nick squinted at her. "You're saying our love is trivial?"

"Oh no, most certainly not, I too, know how it feels to be head over heels," she explained, but in such an isolated and emotionless way that Nick wondered if it involved her husband at all, then, as if to clear up any ambiguity, she delivered him a cursory glance. "The problem is that relationships tend to be all-encompassing and if she were to lose focus now, she might rue it the rest of her life."

"How could she possibly lose focus when you have her fretting every waking moment about her performance?"

Mrs Chou regarded Nick's attack with palpable disquiet, then she gripped her tea cup and took an imperceptible sip. "Do you think I do this for me, Nicholas? Do you think I enjoy having to constantly harass and hound her? You don't think I know what she thinks of me? I do this for her, so she will be as successful as she can be, even if she hates me for it. That is my sacrifice. One day she will understand."

"But what is the value of success without happiness?"

A hint of derision washed across her face, but her voice was measured. "You are fortunate to have been born in New Zealand, so you have no comprehension of poverty, but let me impress upon you just how little happiness there is in knowing you cannot afford your next meal, or heating oil, or shoes for your children. When you have lived that, then you can judge me."

Nick rallied for a counter-attack, but his anger escaped him, and suddenly he was lost and sullen. For as long as he'd known Tessa, he'd always considered her mother the cause of most harm, but now he wondered if he'd overlooked the true culprit. "Mr and Mrs Chou, Tessa is amazing. I expect she was smarter in nappies than me on the sharpest day of my life. As long as I give her enough space and support, she will always excel. She knows nothing else."

"And you give her this? Because she so rarely tells us how she is doing anymore."

"I try to, but I can do much better."

Mrs Chou smiled for the first time. It wasn't an effusive smile, or even a discernibly happy one, but it was well removed from her earlier frown, and for that alone, Nick was cheered significantly. "So will you accept Tessa and me dating?"

She looked to her husband, and then back to Nick. "We would like to hear this from Tessa." And Mr Chou concurred with a brief nod.

"Perhaps I could bring her to the restaurant on Friday?" Nick offered brightly.

"Yes, but we should talk with her first. We'll ask her to come by at five, then you can arrive half an hour later and we'll have dinner together," she advised and made a second attempt at a smile.

"Excellent," Nick blurted, struggling to restrict his excitement. "But what shall I tell her?"

"Can I suggest you don't say anything yet? I fear if she gets wind of our discussion, she may not come."

"Yes, I suspect that's true."

XLIV

38.302: Extreme Weather and its Influence on Golf Swing

That was the day, the longest of his life.

Nick dragged himself from bed a little after nine, having seriously considered the untold psychological benefits of napping the rest of the morning. He had better reason to avoid that day than most. His mother had called earlier in the week to advise she'd be in the city and suggested they meet for lunch. It had all sounded quite casual and innocent, which, of course, made him immediately suspect it was extensively planned and nefarious.

He made his way to the kitchen. Tessa had already left, which was hardly unusual, though she had forgotten her bag, which was unheard of. Also, Nick realised with vocal disappointment, the fridge contained neither milk nor butter. Officially, shopping for the daily essentials was under his purview, but having rapidly proved himself woefully ill-equipped for such responsibility, Tessa had wordlessly assumed the role. Thus, her flagrant disregard of it was both neglectful and unexpected.

Torn between dry cereal or unadorned toast, Nick muttered, "Can today get any worse?"

Which, apparently, was accepted by one of the more malevolent gods as some sort of challenge.

* * *

The extra mastication meant he was late for his Japanese lecture. He attempted to slip in unnoticed, but his entrance was greeted loudly by Professor Cauldwell, who solemnly returned his last test. Nick observed his grade marked in red, "D," and, more calamitous, it was underlined in triplicate, and beneath that was the notation, "Please come by my office." Alas, at the conclusion of the lecture, Nick could not comply, as he had the much more pressing matter of meeting his mater.

He'd suggested she wait for him at the concourse entrance, because he wasn't sure she knew her way around campus given that she'd eschewed the higher echelons of education in favour of a better class of husband. As he approached, he spied her leaning her thin frame into the wind. She was wearing a tasteful blue dress that lacked any trace of extravagance or crease, and she clutched a small purse to herself, as if it were a holy book. Her expression was one of composed dignity, though it did on occasion, decompose into a sneer as she was passed by students of a more unsettling choice of style or vernacular. However, as she caught glimpse of Nick, she warmed and sustained a smile until they greeted.

"Nicholas, it is good to see you," she declared, gripping his shoulders to deliver a peck to his cheek.

"Yes, you too. How was your drive?"

"Oh, quite horrible, as you would expect," she replied with delight, and accompanying Nick to the cafeteria, she related several accounts of how her driving skill - and indeed, her right to even be on the road - had been unfairly called into question by impatient and thoughtless commuters.

Brashly leaping into the gap between the end of one anecdote and the impending arrival of another, Nick asked, "So, what do you want to eat?"

"Oh, whatever is good," she said in a manner that seemed quite accommodating, but would undoubtedly end with murmurs of dissension and a half-eaten meal.

He led her to "G's Bison and Hog" Cafe and ordered for himself, as always, a pork roll with apple sauce, comprising, as it did, all three of the principal food groups. His mother studied the menu board exhaustively, pondering each item with the sort of deliberation one normally reserves for the purchase of a new car, while Nick issued apologetic glances to the growing queue behind them. At length, she decided on "Gerald's Special Beef on Rye," though requested the substitution of white bread in place of rye. Also, ideally, if chutney could be applied rather than horseradish and, if at all possible, ham would do much better than roast beef. This was greeted by the server with the kind of good humour that indicated he'd not been listening at all, and plainly had no intention of honouring even one of her requests. "That'll be $9.80," he announced as way of acknowledgement. Naturally, his mother insisted on paying, though it really wasn't necessary; if there was one place Nick was happy to shout, it was the university campus, where a close relative on the evolutionary tree would happily give its life for a meal costing less than a fiver.

The food duly arrived and they sought a place to sit. As a university cafeteria, all the tables were thirty foot long with two dozen chairs, leaving his mother in the awkward situation of having to share her table with others, albeit at a distance of some ten feet. Having overcome this, she tore at the sandwich wrapping, and then, with a series of harrumphs, noted that they had not substituted the rye or the roast beef, but as way of compromise, had left out the horseradish all together. Nick offered to raise a fuss, so that at the very least they might squirt it with something flavoursome, but his mother said that it would be fine and then proceeded to nibble at it with small delicate bites, as if expecting at any moment to be overwhelmed by her repugnance.

Inevitably, there was little chance of his mother proceeding directly to the point of her visit, there were maternal formalities that must be adhered to, and so she proceeded to tell him of all the sudden illnesses and unexpected accidents that had afflicted his distant relatives and scarcely known acquaintances. She always had a great many of these reports and invariably they required an extensive back-story to explain how he knew such a person or in what convoluted way they were related. Sometimes they featured individuals of such unexpected names - most memorably, Douglas McDougall - that Nick would secretly wonder if they actually existed at all, or were simply concocted to highlight such dangers as the insufficient application of sunscreen or usage of power tools in the bath.

"So how is Mr McDougall fairing?" Nick asked with fleeting interest in the conversation.

"Who?" she asked, cocking her head.

"Douglas McDougall. As you will recall he was struck by lightning while playing golf in the rain..."

"Oh, much better. Obviously, he will never swing a club again, but he is at least smiling out both sides of his mouth."

Nick nodded solemnly, before edging the last three inches of roll into his gape. Consternation flickered across his mother's face, but she suppressed an innate need to verbalise it. She then took another nibble from her sandwich, advised she was quite full and returned the remainder to its bag.

"Right," she said with abrupt authority, as she always did before announcing something that unnerved her greatly. It was an affectation she had learnt many years ago from the self-help column in a women's magazine and now she could not shake it. "We - that is your father and I - have been discussing your situation."

"Situation?"

"Hmmm? Yes," she said, trying not to be derailed from her script. "We feel, quite strongly, that..." and her voice faltered, which she attempted to arrest with a punctuating cough, "that this is not the right time for you to be... Living with... Someone."

"Oh you both think that, do you?"

"Yes, we do. It seems to be... Troubling you."

"Well, do you know what I think? I think that your problem is not my living with a girl, just my living with this girl."

She hiked the bridge of her nose and squinted at Nick. "Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean, mother, because Tessa is Chinese."

"Oh, gosh no, that's not it at all," she stammered. "She seems lovely. It's just that you're not quite yourself lately, and your studies..."

"Spare me your empty words. I know what he thinks. I just can't believe you'd be the one to deliver the dagger," he spat, and then ejected himself from his chair and stormed toward the nearest exit.

"Nicholas, please, you've got it wrong," she appealed to his departing figure.

* * *

After his final lecture, Nick proceeded to Professor Cauldwell's office, hoping he'd be absent, but after a short rap on his door, he was summoned with a gravelly, "Enter." Inside, he found the professor standing before an open window, attempting to usher out an unruly smoke cloud.

"I'm sorry about the test, Professor. This month has been the worst..."

He abandoned his activity and raised a hand of silence. "Please have a seat," he requested, before plonking himself opposite in one much grander. "I had a call the other day from an old Japanese friend who teaches in Shikoku. He advised that there's a school nearby in such desperate need of a junior English teacher that they're quite prepared to take a non-graduate."

Skewing his head, Nick examined his professor. The conversation was so very remote from anything he'd expected that he wrestled with the possibility that illicit substances had indeed made their way into his pipe.

"The only requirement is that the applicant has completed one year of Japanese studies and intends to continue their education upon their return..."

Seeing little hope for resolution without some prodding from him, Nick interrupted, "I'm not sure what this has to do with me."

Professor Cauldwell sighed loudly, which deformed upon its exit into a rasping hack. "Nick, when I brought you in here last time I thought you were at rock bottom, but apparently I didn't realise just how deep this rabbit hole goes. I was hoping to steer you onto the right track but obviously that ship has already sailed. So when I heard of this opportunity, I immediately thought of you." He gripped his pipe, stabbed at its chamber with a blunt pencil, and then rapped its ashen content into a dish. "It would really suit you well. You take a year off to earn some yen. You study Japanese and get your head right, then come back here and finish strongly."

Nick stared at him for a time, examining the prodigious sideburns that stretched across his cheeks, yellowed after an eon bathed in smoke. "Are you suggesting I give up university?"

"I'm not saying to give up, of course, you should never give up, but there are times when you must re-orient your path. Look at your situation, Nicholas. Japanese is your core paper and if you get another D in your on-going assessments then you'll fail the whole course; that will mean an extra year before you'd graduate."

"But if I quit now, I don't know if I could start over again."

The professor held the pipe in his palm as if it were a young bird, and commenced feeding it from a small tin. "Every time I smoke this pipe, Nicholas, I fill it with fresh tobacco, and yet it never tastes like a new pipe anymore; the flavour is more full and sweet. You see, it is richer for all the times I've smoked it before."

"So, what you are saying is that you never really start all over again?"

"Yes, probably I am," he said thoughtfully.

Nick watched him slide the pipe into his mouth and then think better of lighting it. It seemed such a simple pleasure, and he wondered whether the professor would ever get to coddle the lithe Japanese assistant on his long leather couch. Then he thought of Tessa who wanted little more than to exceed her mother's expectations. And from there he came to think of his own parents who seemed to have little expectation that he would succeed at all, and he wondered if that was better or worse. Perhaps he needn't fail to spite them, he suddenly considered, perhaps he could excel in spite of them. But when he realised what it would entail, he wavered.

The professor had removed a worn zippo from his breast pocket and was stroking it longingly with his fingers. "So we must let them know by the end of the month if you're interested."

After a period of silence, whereupon Nick gnawed away all vestiges of his thumbnail, he said brightly, "That won't be necessary. I think I can turn this around."

"Oh?" uttered the professor, without successfully feigning confidence.

"Yes. Firstly, I will drop Japanese Literature as it has the most significant reading requirements, but it's an elective so I can pick it up again next year without affecting my course."

He nodded slowly. "Well that would be a start, but..."

"I know, but there is something much more important I must do. I can't give you the details, but it will make all the difference."

The professor sucked his pipe lustily, then smarted as it failed to deliver any gratification. "Well, if you think you can do it..." He appeared quite torn between pressing the issue further and igniting his tobacco.

"I can, just give me a week."

"OK," he replied, managing a more convincing performance. "You're surprisingly upbeat for someone who just failed a subject."

"Yes, but I can't explain why," Nick said, vaulting from his seat.

45

Thursday

He can hear a distant sobbing, but as he advances quickly toward it, his path is intercepted by a door. It is wider than a mile and stretches infinitely into the night sky. It is hewn from rock and stiffened with steel. It is weighted by chains, and secured by padlocks. It opens for neither god nor man.

In desperate anger, he grips a rock and draws back his fist, but overcome by his impotence, he staggers, then drops to his knees. The rock tumbles from his hand and nudges up against the door. A minute crack appears, and slowly, it sprawls across the structure. Then with a piteous groan, the great door crumbles before him.

Drawing a sharp breath, he enters. The room is dark save for the feeble glow of the black sun, and while quite unknown, it's callously decorated with details so intimate, and on walls that loom high, there's lurid familiarity in the fading pattern.

He trudges forth, shuddering at the howl of each floorboard beneath his feet, and clutching his naked body in his arms. The cold is like none he's ever known, not a sharp, icy bite, but a creeping chill that worms into your bones.

With every desperate step, an hour slips by, but after a brief eternity, he can make out a scene. Afloat a sea of murk is an unmade double bed. Silken sheets hang motionless in a frigid wind that emanates from a small, broken window. Black clouds menace in the distance and a sparrow hovers in a frozen flutter as it escapes the coming rain, its beak open, as if to scream. The bleak light falls upon an old wooden chair. She sits there, her head drooped, her face cowering, her pale skin clinging to an emaciated body. Rent with despair, a single tear has rolled down her cheek and suspends from her face. Upon a page in her hand, she has written, "Dear Nick."

As soon as he woke, Nick was aware of a malevolent presence in his brain. He recognised the same horrid imp he'd encountered at the airport, only it had grown so gargantuan that as it blundered about, it senselessly crushed any thought in its path. Frantically, he scratched at his scalp as if to rend a fissure from which it might be ejected, but evading all his attempts, it continued to grow until all cogitation was obscured and there was only one thought that remained. That he should drive, away from here. Flee as fast as his car could manage, until the imp could no longer keep up.

He fumbled with the ignition, and once it coughed into life, he jerked the steering wheel and sped back to the highway. At the intersection, he stopped. While his eyes stretched up the empty road north, something within begged him south.

"Why?" he pleaded. "Why must I?"

But the irksome voice of the previous evening, so glib with vexatious advice, had departed.

Pulling out onto the highway, he didn't speed and he didn't flee; he focused only on the road ahead, quite aware it would lead him to Palmerston.

* * *

As he entered the city, the sun was rising beyond his left shoulder, unlike the populace, which was still deep in slumber. Dourly, he examined the characterless urban sprawl. Having been his home for two years, he'd presumed some familiarity, but it may as well have been the Catholic Quarter of Tehran.

He soon made the city square and encircled it several times seeking any sight or sign that he could recognise, before choosing - seemingly at random - a side street. He kept expecting to find himself on the right road, but he ended up on a dizzying, circuitous route of the city that took him back through the square more than a dozen times and over the river no less than seven. Finally, when he found himself at the gates of Massey for the third time, he issued a long sigh. Even if the flat he'd shared with Tessa was here, there was no way he would ever find it, he conceded.

He headed back over the bridge toward the city centre, but at the first set of lights, not intending to turn, he was gripped by a curious compulsion to make a left. He then followed a long straight, took a gentle bend and found himself at another intersection. Without pausing to think, he took a left again. If he could just disconnect his brain, he reasoned, his muscle memory might just guide him back.

Finally, he darted down a narrow avenue, and with a sensation that tickled him the length of his spine, he realised he was home. First, their park loomed on his left, and to the right, the dairy at the foot of a grand old brick house, then the white villa, and the elm. He stabbed the brake and then leapt from his car as soon as it was stationery, but his face had contorted into some ghastly mask. Number 48, he confirmed, but not by the pentagonal tin letterbox he'd expected, but from a painted number upon a sign, that also read, "Dickey's Tyres." And there was no wooden flat with a ramshackle porch and poorly fastened roofing iron, but a gaudy purple store weathered by its years.

He strained his eyes, fearing for a moment that in his dreary state, they might be failing him, but it only made the building loom ever more purple and decidedly gaudier. Clearly, the store had existed here for decades. He clutched at his chin and dragged it to his chest, struggling to understand what this meant, but knowing exactly what it did. Feverishly, he searched for the veracity of his memories. He tried to picture their flat, the cracked stucco walls, the broken concrete step, the overgrown garden, but there was nothing. And then, with desperation, he tried to picture Tessa's face, straining to paint her in his mind, but she too was absent. And feeling as though he might vomit, he stumbled back toward his car.

He slumped to the ground, steadied himself on the gutter until he was squatting, and then buried his face in his hands. His cruel brain, so content with its lark, was now quiet.

There would be no coming back from this.

* * *

Through the space between his fingers, he inspected the park opposite. Something had appealed to him, and though he was instantly aware of its significance, he could not understand what. His eyes urged him to see, but his brain merely sputtered with incomprehension. Finally, with unexpected vigour, he jumped to his feet, marched over the road and stood before a sprawling tree. He regarded its exotic form with an unnerving curiosity. It stood over eight foot, with gangling branches of verdant leafage, from which hung clumps of red, elliptical fruit. He stretched out to grasp one in his palm, and then snapped it from the stalk with a quick twist. Slowly, he examined its lumpy, prickled surface, and then, with his thumbnail, split the leathery skin and drew it to his face. Its sweet floral aroma filled his nostrils, and holding the white flesh to his tongue, his eyes grew wet with tears. It was Tessa's lychee.

He staggered back to his car and collapsed into the seat, but immediately, was troubled again by the malevolent imp thrashing about his skull. He peered around him for a clue to its displeasure, but there seemed nothing amiss, and yet the imp became so very frenzied that Nick threw himself out the door, and then, from his recumbent vantage, glared at his car with an unfathomable loathing.

At length, he lifted himself up and commenced pacing about the vehicle, tugging his unshaven chin with unease. Tentatively, he approached from the rear, opened the boot, and after retreating to a safe distance, gazed in examination. It was empty. He ventured a trembling hand, gripped the floor vinyl, and with a jerk, threw it behind him. This was followed by the hessian lining, the spare tire, and then all the tools. Once he was content that nothing remained, he knelt on the road and checked each item in turn.

Next, he eased open the passenger door, leaned inside to unlatch the glove-box and then ejected its contents onto the footpath. This was followed by the floor mats and all his cassettes. Then he eased the seat forward, yanked the rear seat bottom until it came loose, and manhandled it from the car. When he was satisfied that everything that could be removed had been removed, he checked them all, frantically opening each cassette box, flicking through the pages of the owner's manual, tearing into the padding of the seat cushion. Still there was nothing.

He paced around the car again, took a deep breath to steel himself, and climbed inside to scratch beneath the front seats and reach up behind the dashboard, and though he could sense its dark presence, his search remained fruitless. With frustration, he punched the door and noted with delight, that it rattled. After digging his fingers beneath the discoloured panel, he drew until it snapped away, and then peered at the hollow void with suspicion. It was empty, and so he proceeded to the driver's door and vainly repeated the process.

Stepping back, he squinted contemptuously at his vehicle. There was not a single place left to hide and yet still, it eluded him. As he was considering the very real merits of setting the whole bucket of rust alight, his eye happened upon the carpets. They weren't actually joined where the separate panels converged - apparently, such advanced weaving technology was beyond the grasp of the British motor industry - rather they overlapped with a hemmed edge. A glaring oversight he should not have missed.

He climbed into the backseat, grabbed the carpet and wrenched until the glue gave up its fight and the metal floor was exposed. Then he retreated, caught his breath, and stripped the carpet from the driver's side. Cursing, he rounded the car, grabbed the passenger carpet and yanked, but it gave way with such ease that he flew back and found himself sitting upon the debris, staring up at the hollow shell that remained. Finally, in resignation, he climbed back to his feet.

He couldn't make sense of it at first, a white rectangle upon the bare metal floor. Loathe to approach, he squinted from all angles without actually moving. It was an envelope and upon it, in the prettiest little script, it read simply, "Nicholas."
XLVI

28.360: Design Flaws of the Internal Combustion Engine

An hour earlier, he was seething from the conversation with his mother, and if history is an accurate predictor of future events, which by all accounts it is, then Nick should still have been recounting her every word and formulating spiteful comebacks that would inevitably remain unspoken. But he wasn't, he was strangely aglow; he'd had something of a epiphany. While sitting in the professor's office, it had occurred to him that nothing mattered, not his parents disapproval of his choices, not his revulsion for his father, nor the distance he'd grown from his friends, not his middling efforts at study and not even his many failings with Tessa. None of it mattered. It was all distraction, smoke and mirrors obscuring what was truly important. And there was only one thing, one single thing that counted, and that was Now. Everything else, everything he wanted, came down to this; only the choices he made right now could guide him to where he wanted to be. He couldn't change anything in his past, but every choice he made from here on would shape his future.

He unlocked his car and was tempted to curse when it wouldn't ignite, but he didn't, he just shrugged at the paltry attempts of the universe to derail him. Then he popped the bonnet, unclipped the distributor cap and carefully scraped the grime from each of the points. To anyone looking on, there would have been an assumption he knew his way around an engine, but he did not, he didn't even know why what he was doing should work. He'd never heard an explanation about ignition coils and breaker points, and was oblivious even to the simple fact that its rotation initiated the firing of spark plugs, which in turn triggered a series of controlled explosions in each of the cylinders, thus impelling the pistons, turning the crankshaft and spinning the wheels. He had no appreciable knowledge of any of this. He had simply been advised by a mechanic, whose name he'd never known, that his car had a tendency to fail in this respect, and shown precisely what to do when it occurred.

Jumping back into the vehicle, he noted with delight that it started flawlessly, and he backed onto the road. Though, as he exited the gates of Massey, he realised he'd left late enough to be caught in the evening traffic and he very nearly groaned; it had welled in his throat and rose to his lips, but he swallowed it, and then grabbed one of his cassettes and slid it into the player. Quickly oblivious to his ponderous advance, he mouthed the words of the song.

When they all want to turn you down,

Like the sound on their TV set,

There's one place that you're welcome to,

Where everything you say,

Well, it's all up to you.

He was well onto the third track by the time he'd covered the few hundred yards to the bridge, and could discern the queued traffic extending to the square. It was the kind of sight that might dent one's enthusiasm, and so he gazed up the river, observing a waka piloted by a group - presumably, the Massey Maori club - in traditional flaxen cloaks with their heads crowned in feathers. Some paddled gently, while the others stood and sang. Nick was impeded long enough to watch them traverse the current until they were lost in the late afternoon mist.

His good humour, though, was slipping; he felt a strange unease wash over him, draining the warmth, suffocating his smile. Suddenly he swore at the car in front of him, and cursed the one ahead of that, and this continued until he arrived at the unseen vehicle at the very front, for whom, he unleashed a particularly venomous tirade. In agitation, he bounced on the pedal, revving and advancing until he was inches from the car in front, and then extending the gap and repeating it. Finally, he was off the bridge and he accelerated down the turning lane until he made the intersection, and ignoring the orange light and angry glares, he took a left and darted down the side road. Soon he was zipping down his street, alongside the park, past the dairy and hanging a hard right at the old elm.

Nick stormed up to his flat, burst through the door, and paced about anxiously, but there was nothing odd. Everything was in its place, just as it was left. Nothing at all seemed amiss. Yet, at the base of his brain, it twitched and trembled, and his hands were damp, and the hairs prickled all the way up his neck, and his heart beat three to the second.

Cautiously, he stepped across the living room and approached their bedroom door, urgently calling out for her - knowing she wouldn't be home and yet chilled by her silence. He twisted the handle, but it rattled impotently in his grip, and so he struck the door with a tentative blow from his fist, and rather queerly, it flew open like a barn door defying a hurricane.

And there she was, reposed on the bed, napping in the afternoon sun, utterly serene. The red satin sheet clutched to her crimson bracelets and flowed out beneath her, draped neatly over the side of the bed and lay in a flawless circular pool on the wooden floor. Her face, devoid of rouge, tilted toward him and her painted lips struggled to smile. And there was a smell, an acrid malodour that burned at his nostrils, crawled into his throat, and tugged at his insides, all the way down until it churned his stomach.

Nothing moved, not the thousand dust flecks afloat the stream of sunlight, not the glint in her diamond earrings, not the breeze that snuck in the window and tugged at her favourite dress and tussled her perfect hair. And there was not a sound, not a bird, not a person, not a car for a hundred miles, just a heinous drone that arose within and then was lost in the distant scream of a youth.

He howled until it stole all the rigidity from his bones and drained the last gasp of air from his lungs, and then he staggered for a moment, before collapsing on the floor beside the bed.

Climbing up to her, he touched her cold cheek. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he begged, willing her to hear, wherever she now existed, and thus return to him. Then he dropped his head upon her chest, hoping somehow, that a faint drum might beat within. But his eyes flooded with tears, and his features drew until they were unrecognisable in grief.

* * *

He could feel the darkness grow within the capacious void of his chest. It seeped out the wounds in his rent skin and snaked across his body, encasing his arms until they were heavy and immobile, stretching out to his feet, making them feel dull and distant, and up, twisting tightly around his neck and over his face, such that his breath became laboured, and through his eyes everything was stained black. The pain was beyond his capacity to bear, beyond the most horrific of the worst of his dreams, and heaving and panting, he staggered from the house, collapsed on the steps, and listened to the distant howl of sirens.

It all became a dream then. Some kind of awful nightmare from which you begged yourself awake, but for all his remonstrations such respite eluded him, and so he stared vacantly at the blur of colours that danced about, cars, flashing lights, men in white rushing hither and thither, men in blue pacing thoughtfully, a stretcher. But now and then his mind would snap into perfect clarity and he could focus on the most minute detail in the distance or overhear something that he could not possibly have heard, the breathless gasp of a medic, the flex of an unopened envelope in his back pocket, the discussion of two officers amidst it all, glancing askance at him, quite oblivious to his acute perception.

The older one had just arrived. He was a bulbous man with round, ruddy cheeks and looked the sort of person who'd be employed as a department store Santa, and then promptly fired for lewd behaviour.

"Good evening, Sir," the young officer addressed him, elevating his posture to deliver a crisp salute.

"Evening, Detective," replied the older one gruffly. After resting his hands on the back of his hips to better support his booming utterances, he barked, "Is that the boyfriend?"

"Yes." And to cement the confirmation, he then nodded.

"Why is he not in cuffs?"

The detective shuffled uncomfortably, ruffling his perfectly ironed uniform. "We don't think it suspicious..."

He examined Nick from across the lawn with weary eyes, and then bellowed, "By Christ, he's covered in blood!"

"A post-mortem embrace, I would surmise, sir. Also the door..."

"The door?"

"Yes, it would appear he beat his fists raw opening it."

The old officer considered this evidence with palpable disquiet. "So you found a note?"

"Yes, addressed to her parents. It's all quite indecipherable, so we're getting someone in to translate it."

"No note for the boyfriend? That's cold."

"Yes, but we did find this hidden behind a bathroom cabinet." He produced a clear, labelled bag containing a wand-shaped object. "It reads positive."

The revelation afflicted the old officer with a curious eye twitch. "So who was she?"

Gripping an impeccably polished button, the detective lifted the lapel of his breast pocket and withdrew a notebook. "Tessa Chou," he advised after a brief scan. "Daughter of a local immigrant family. Apparently, they own the Jade Dragon on Canessa St. Have you been there?"

"Oh yes, I eat there often," he said suddenly downcast. "They have the best orange beef in the Manawatu. What about the lad?"

"The name's... Nicholas Fairfield. Apparently his father's some judge up in Tikorua..."

"Really?"

"You know the judge?"

"Most definitely; he's a hard son-of-a-bitch," he said, stroking his non-existent white beard. "None-the-less, follow procedures; take the boy in for a full questioning."

"Yes, sir."

"And get some fucking cuffs on him!"

"Yes, sir."

Nick had an urgent desire to be home. To curl up in bed and then wake to find his mother telling him everything would be all right. "It was just a dream, a bad dream." But how could he ever face her now, after how she'd betrayed him?

Yet, he knew, he must get away from there. He could not tolerate this nightmare another moment. It was time he awoke.

He feigned a strong desire to vomit and staggered to a tree, ostensibly to lean against it for support. Loathe to give a half-hearted performance, he doubled over and retched several times, choking on the bitter contents of his long forgotten lunch, and while the officers turned away in disgust, he dashed into the hedging and reappeared at the road. He found his car relocated a short distance away, the keys still hanging from the ignition, and without hesitation, he clambered inside and sped off.

He wished only to drive. To drive forever and leave this horror far behind. So he headed north, gobbling up the miles, flitting through sleepy country towns and a blur of forestry and fields. And as he sped, he could feel the darkness loosen its grip until it was little more than a grimy smudge in his rear view mirror. On he went, through the night, slowed briefly by an uninspiring inland city, and then, as the dawn drew, slicing through the city of sales, but still he did not pause, not even when he was skipping over sun-baked hummocks and poor northern towns, and could breathe again and smile weakly at his miraculous escape.

But this was New Zealand; a lanky two foot nothing from head to toe, and soon he was butting up against a lighthouse, sending tourists diving into the rapa. The road had come to an end, and there was nothing before him but an empty ocean. So he crawled from his steel cocoon and fell into the sun, but as he peered over his shoulder, the darkness caught up, and once again, he was enveloped by its dank embrace. He couldn't outrun this thing, it dawned on him, not with four wheels and a combustion engine. Clearly, he realised with a flash of insight, he would need to fly...

* * *

Nick deposited four coins into the phone, and dialled. It connected to the distant exchange with an audible click, whirred for several seconds as it bounced its way between buildings, and then was answered by a rasping cough.

"Professor Cauldwell?"

"Yes?"

"It's Nicholas Fairfield."

"Oh, Nicholas. You missed your classes today. Is everything OK?"

"Frankly, they've been better. So I've been thinking about that teaching position you mentioned..."

"Yes? Would you like to come in and discuss it some more?"

"Do you think you could just set it up for me?"

"I expect so. They were most desperate when we last spoke. When would you be ready to go?"

"Actually, I'm at the airport now and the gate's about to close..."

"The airport? What's happened? Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Well, I sure could use some directions."

"Direction? I don't know that I'm the best person to deliver a life lesson..."

"Uh no, directions. From the airport in Osaka."

47

Thursday, a little Later

Nick had curled in a ball amongst the detritus of his car, and his life. He writhed and howled as his memories ran roughshod through his brain. If anyone had been about at this early hour, they would undoubtedly assume he was the victim of a vehicular explosion, the kind of blast that ejects the entire content of the car without damage to the chassis, while simultaneously mortally wounding the occupant without trauma to his body.

Finally, when the tears had flushed the worst of his toxins, he righted himself to gaze upon the unopened letter in his grip. Gingerly, he tore at its edge, and withdrew a single page of pink.

Dear Nick,

This is a letter I have written a thousand times in my mind, but it is the first time I have dared commit it to paper. For I knew that once I did, I would already be on the path from where I would not return.

I cannot hope to make you understand why I must do this, because I lack the words to convey my pain. I tried so hard to be the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, and - for you - the perfect girlfriend, but at all three, I have failed.

I know you will want to shoulder blame for this, but you must not. This was broken long before I met you, and while you shone a bright light that would often lift the darkness, you could never fix this. This is irreparable. I have lasted this long by believing it would get better, that one day I would wake and be free of my demons, but I know now that it will only get worse.

Please do not torture yourself with questions of what more you could have done. This was an inevitability; were it not today, it would be a week, a month, or a year from now.

So I am sorry. I know how badly this will hurt you, because you care for me greatly, and dream only of a world that is beautiful. I wish there were another way and I wish you were not caught up in it. I can only hope you get over this quickly and the beauty returns to your life.

Think of me sometimes, but only as someone who loved you too deeply to stay with you forever.

With love unto eternity,

Tessa xoxo

When he finished, he leapt to his feet. He wasn't melancholy anymore, in fact, he was livid. "You bitch," he suddenly shouted. "You fucking bitch! You fucking self-indulgent, cowardly bitch! Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Fuck the whole fucking world!" And he tore the letter into a hundred pieces and cast it about. Then he collapsed again to his knees.

Eventually the anger faded, as did the sadness, but in its void, there was no relief or elation. Actually, there did not appear to be any emotion at all.

This was not how it was supposed to be. When he'd dared imagine this moment, when she would finally loose her grip and he could shed himself of his bandages, he envisioned he'd be whole again, and it would feel just as it was before he ever met her.

But it dawned on him then, a wretched, unavoidable conclusion. The bandages weren't to shelter him from the world; they served only to shield the world from him. To save them seeing his true self, a hollow shell of a man, that was devoid of emotion, or compassion, or desire, or love.

So he just sat there. What was the point? What was the fucking point of any of it? It was bullshit, all of it. Every single struggling moment counted for nothing. And instantly he wished that he too were rotting in the ground beside Tessa. Not because he cared to lay with her eternally, nor because he wished no longer to live, but simply because he was done. Inside, he was already dead. He was nothing more than an animated corpse whose heart failed to beat and whose soul had vapoured long ago.

* * *

The sun, thence, was blocked from the sky, and Nick hesitantly lifted his gaze toward the heavens, squinting to examine the kindly features of he who would deliver him to salvation. It was a man, a rather smarmy one at that, and he was leaning from a van, which was curiously purple. "What the fuck happened to you?"

A dozen convincing excuses appeared immediately in Nick's head, all with intricate back-stories and indisputable character references, but instead, he said simply, "I lost my keys."

The man considered him for a time, and then the pile of car innards, and finally the denuded vehicle. "Oh," he finally said, unwilling to risk anything more brash. "Well you probably better clean it up; we're opening soon."

"OK," Nick offered. "Hey, how long has your tyre shop been here?"

"Nearly six years," he replied with something approaching pride.

"Really? So why does it look so old?"

The smarmy face recoiled in offence. "Do you look as good as you did six years ago?"

Nick gathered the remnants of his car and stuffed them into the back seat, then he collected each of the tiny specks of letter and deposited them in the glove-box, and once he was satisfied, he drove to the dairy and purchased a pie for his breakfast. Then he leaned against the bonnet and wolfed it down in the energising glow of the morning sun.

When he finished, he checked his watch and noted it was a quarter after nine. Plenty of time to make it back for the funeral, he considered, climbing into his car. But as he made the highway, it occurred just how poor a state he was in. His head thumped as though a brick were rattling about inside and he was so exhausted that he frequently directed a stinging slap to his cheek to enliven himself.

In desperation, he wound down his window, hoping the cool air might revive him, but all that was delivered was a muggy summer gust. His eyelids soon grew so swollen and heavy that it appeared he were staring at the world through a bottle of rosé. Then his view would shutter and as much as he wanted to relinquish, he would force the light back in, grip tightly at the wheel and steel his concentration on the road ahead. You just need to make it home, he promised himself.

In this way, he limped north, through Bulls, past Wanganui and into Taranaki. Another hour and I'll be home, he announced to himself, and his audience greeted the news with relief. The road curved inland and he crested a hill, sped down the slope, and rounded a bend. Instantly his eyes were drawn to his left shoulder where a reflective figure reclining in the long grass suddenly jumped up, yanking a long wooden pole emblazoned with a single word, Stop.

Nick took a moment too long to comprehend the scene, and as his gaze returned forward, it fell upon a massive yellow monster devouring the road. A jerk of the wheel and he evaded it, but then was immediately aware he was aloft with nothing around him but sky. His car seemed to hover for an eternity, long enough for a million thoughts to skip through his mind, but only a single profane syllable to pass his lips. Then with a might woomph that expelled every molecule of oxygen from his lungs, the sky was replaced by an expanse of field, and as his body lurched wildly, flecks of green confetti flittered before him and hefty white balls of fluff bounced from his path.

As he was struggling to make sense of this, a great murky dam filled his view, and his sole thought was that all the controls at hand and foot were utterly useless, and that nothing - nothing at all - could save him.

And then everything went black.

* * *

His next sensation was the cold water biting at his skin like the gnawing embrace of a thousand piranha. As his eyes came into focus, he squinted into the impenetrable gloom. He could not even guess how deep he was, indeed, he was scarcely even aware which way was up. The brown deluge rose to his waist in an instant, and he thrashed about, wrenching at the door, which wouldn't budge, and snatching at the seat belt, which wouldn't free. Then the water was up to his chin and he lifted his head to gulp the last of the air, and struggling to find the belt clasp, he swallowed a foul mouthful. The air was gone, he was trapped, and his body begged release. Soon the darkness became pitch, and his mind grew dull. This was his final moment.

But in the black, he saw a face. A face of sublime beauty, and he longed for her so very much that his chest ached. She gave a little smile and entreated him to choose. To choose her, to choose happiness, to choose life. And with the murky water swirling about him, he sat leaden with his pain and his grief, and realised he could shed it all.

He followed the belt strap down his chest till he found the clasp, clicked it with his thumb and felt it slide away, then he jerked at the window handle until it wound no more. He probed for the gap, pulled himself through, and kicked until it was light again.

In his addled mind, everything was still in slow motion, and he watched with detachment, as an old cocky loped down the hillside like it were the hurdles event of the Eketahuna Olympics. It was only as the figure hovered overhead that Nick recognised him as anything more than a peculiar phantasm.

"Are you OK?"

Nick felt about himself, before reporting, "I think so."

"I thought you were a goner," the cocky observed with a slow deliberation, as if he were weighing each word on his tongue to ensure it delivered precisely what was expected and not an ounce less.

"No, I thought better of it."

He reached into his dirty shorts and pulled out a cell phone. "I'll call you an ambulance."

"Don't bother, I've got to go," Nick replied, and he pulled himself up and started back toward the road.

The cocky shrank with concern, his wrinkled brow unfurling. "I reckon you're in shock!"

"Nope, I'm quite sure that's worn off now." And he kept walking.

"Where are you going?"

"I have a funeral to attend."

"A funeral? When?"

"2pm in Tikorua."

"2pm? Well come inside and dry off. I can drive you to Tikorua."

It seemed such an odd and generous offer that Nick's gait was arrested, and he twisted toward the cocky to protest. "Tikorua's an hour from here."

He just shrugged. "I need some supplies. And I'd kill for a Subway."

Nick smiled weakly, and then followed him to the house.

"I'll call someone and have your car towed out too."

Through a grimace, Nick said, "It's time for a change. Do you want it?"

"I already have a Ute, what would I ever do with a car?"

"Cruise along Kai-Iwi beach waving at the girls, take a road-trip to Hokitika, melt it into a paper weight, I don't care."

"My son's a wrecker in Stratford; he'll probably give you some cash for it."

"OK, but you better keep the cash to fix your fence."

Nick dried himself with a pair of old towels and politely rejected an offer of replacement clothing, but as he approached the dusty Ford, he paused to examine his dishevelment.

The cocky observed this and gave a hollow laugh, "Don't worry, since my wife passed, you're about the cleanest thing that's been in this old truck."

They talked as they drove, narrowing their degrees of separation until they discovered their common connections, including a former classmate now living with his grandson. But soon the cocky said, "You look pretty beat; I better let you kip."

"I never sleep much," Nick scoffed as he turned away and gazed at the verdant, undulating hills stretching into the distance, but within moments, he was dozing and didn't stir again until prodded to confirm which house was his.

Nick directed him to the top of the street and the cocky basked in the opulence of their grandiose manor, but declined a cup of tea. "Starbucks and a twelve-inch sub await," he beamed.

After an effusive outpouring of gratitude, Nick waved him goodbye, walked through the empty house, and then out again onto the back porch. He sat and observed the clouds shift, bathing him in warm sun. Then he stretched out on his back and soon was asleep again.

四十八

When the world religions have been forgot, and all the races commixed, and the last national border falls, then we will rail against the cleft-chinned

In a particularly inspired example of supernatural chicanery, the bright morning sunlight entered the apartment by way of the kitchen window, reflected from the polished blade of a knife drying on the bench, angled through a thick glass resting on the table, rebounded from the shiny belly of a porcelain sumo wrestler posturing on the bedroom shelf and thereby administered a painful glare to Nick's sleeping face. He pawed at it recklessly for several moments, until the realisation of his utter impotence against one so powerful finally took hold and he issued a hollow groan. From beneath a sluggish eyelid, he gazed in the direction of the clock, and then, half a millisecond later, he was bolt upright. It was 9:03; he had slept in.

He denuded and cast himself into the shower, pondering how this might have happened. The events of the previous evening were unsurprisingly murky and while he could not recall any of the conversation he'd shared with Yukiko upon his return, he had the most vivid image of her face bright red and contorted, for which, barring an outbreak of dengue fever, he could only assume he was to blame.

Undoubtedly then, as way of retribution, she'd disabled his alarm. Although he could not discount the possibility he'd drowned out its chime with his own snore, which after an evening of significant throat lubrication was often clamorous to the point of neighbourly intervention.

Having scarcely towelled himself, ineffectually shaved, brushed only the teeth visible when he grinned, and completely skipped breakfast, he was thus able to slip into the staff room a whisker before 9:30, whereupon he was strongly reproved by the judgemental glower of several staff.

He skulked to his desk and sat, and for the first time that morning, could finally take pause and appreciate the magnificent, deserving hangover that defended its corner of the attic like an ill-tempered possum.

Of course, he most desperately desired some pain-relief tablets, but lacking the willpower to complete the necessary requisition forms, he sought the very closest substitute, coffee. Unfortunately, it was there he encountered his citric nemesis, Morita, and as they reached simultaneously for the pot, there engaged an impromptu bout of fencing sans weaponry.

"Nani shi-on?" Morita crudely enquired as Nick performed a deft inside lunge to grip the pot handle.

"Sorry, did you think that was yours, Morita-sensei? It does seem I have a habit of doing that to you."

"Wakaran, Niku," he replied, quite oblivious to Nick's jibe, but enunciating his name like the Japanese word for an off-cut of meat.

Nick poured himself a cup and left to sit opposite Yukiko, who greeted him with restricted emotion. In a profuse, but necessarily vague manner, he apologised for his last night's behaviour, which he assumed to be quite reprehensible. A point that was immediately confirmed when she accepted with weary forgiveness.

Their interaction was being watched with interest by Morita, Nick observed, and so he briefly caressed her thigh, which she acknowledged with a smile, restrained, but quite obviously of the type reserved for lovers. At that, he noted with delight, Morita's thin lips pursed and his impeccably trimmed eyebrows converged.

Naturally, it was all rather foolish, Nick conceded, but he did relish the sweet savour of the last word.

* * *

Despite being stricken by such a monstrous hangover that he could not bring his eyeballs into alignment, there were a number of classes Nick was quite willing to face; there was the quiet, studious 6A, there was also the rambunctious, yet empathetic 4B, but, of course, his first lesson that morning was 5C, who even God could not countenance until late in the afternoon when his tranquilisers had fully taken effect.

The C suffix designated it the lowest stream in its year, and it was marred by a few hellion students that spoilt the underperformance of the entire class. Generally, Nick could appease them with English language games or structured conversation, but that day, the full extent of his preparation was to wing it.

He began by having each student give a short dissertation on their weekend, which he hoped would consume a sizable portion of the lesson with minimal input from him, but one of the regular thugs, Baba - whose grasp of English extended only to profanity - was regularly interjecting with unwanted feedback and Nick was much too enfeebled to adequately contain him.

It finally arrived at Tamami, who, as the quietest student, always required some gentle coaxing, but, at length, he enticed her to stand and she silently spoke of how she had played tennis, or quite possibly made pancakes, judging by the gesticulation, but then Baba interrupted with the only English sentence Nick had ever heard him compose, "Your breasts, like mountains!" And to ensure the humour had not been lost on his ignorant friends, he illustrated their magnitude by stretching forth his shirt and jostling the artificial appendages. Tamami flushed, and immediately shrunk back into her chair to hide her face in her hands.

Then something broke. Something in Nick's head. A small stick that propped up a log, that jarred a gate, that held in the beasts. And he suddenly found himself with the boy's scruff in his fists, and his face suspended inches from his own, twisted in horror. "Nani itte iron, omae?" Nick screamed, as he shook him until his jaw worked loose.

Nick became aware of himself then, and releasing his grip, he watched Baba fall back to his seat, snatch his bag, and dash quickly for the door. Dazed and heaving, he righted the overturned desk, collected the chair, and positioned them with utmost deliberation. His hand came to his forehead and slowly, he dragged it to his chin. This was the end. His job here was over. He would be fired and without a reference, he would never work in Japan again.

Without word, he returned to the front of the class, collected his items, and departed with thirty stunned faces in his wake.

* * *

Nick had scarcely slumped into his chair when he spied the deputy principal crossing the staff room toward him. He cursed silently. How does it take a week for a deposit to appear in his bank account, yet reproval can negotiate Japanese bureaucracy at the speed of light?

Despite his never receiving anything resembling a compliment, Nick had little doubt that the deputy principal approved of his efforts, and their relationship had always been congenial. But there was no trace of that today, and if his expression hinted at anything, it was betrayal. Tersely, he ordered, "You must accompany me to the principal's office."

"Hai, wakarimashita," Nick replied deferentially as he lurched from his seat and followed him to the door. But his path was intercepted by Morita, grinning maniacally, and he leaned in to Nick's ear and whispered, "Do you know why we say kubi when someone is booted from their job? Because when you offended your superiors in traditional Japan, the back of the neck was where you were cleaved."

Nick brushed past him without response; he was much too flustered to bother with Morita. Then he chased the deputy into the hall and down the stairs, and he didn't dare speak or even walk at his shoulder. They arrived at the principal's office, and after an officious double-knock, entered.

The principal was standing at his desk wildly castigating Ueno-sensei for the slipshod supervision of his charge. In bowed contrition, Ueno was almost doubled over. Beyond him was Yukiko, who was likewise hanging her head and more sullen than he'd ever known. Why should she be here?

Nick positioned himself between Ueno and Yukiko, and lowered his face, while the principal gestured toward him with a stilted flap of his hand. "Kono hito no shita koto wa..." he barked, before pausing to inhale loudly through his nostrils, "Omae no sekinin darou?"

"Moshiwake gozaimasen," Ueno apologised hoarsely, bowing even lower.

"Darou!" the principal spat.

"Moshiwake gozaimasen!" he repeated, prostrating himself until he was horizontal.

Nick's mind was still aflurry; he couldn't tolerate Ueno bearing the weight of his blunder, nor could he comprehend why Yukiko should be party to it. Desperately, he concocted a response, but before it was polished, the attack redirected to Yukiko. "Kamihara, do you know how this looks?" the principal demanded. "As a sensei you are required to model the behaviour we expect of our youth."

Finally, then, Nick understood. This wasn't about Baba at all. Somehow, their cohabitation had been revealed.

"Wakarimashita," Yukiko uttered contritely.

"If the students see us behaving inappropriately then we will lose their respect, and if that happens how can we hope to teach them? Why would they ever listen?"

"Wakarimashita."

Nick was frantic to release the anger swelling within. If only they directed their enquiry at him, he could explain, but he knew they never would. He was a gaijin, so his behaviour, by nature, could never attain the moral rectitude of a Japanese. Clearly the failing here was with Yukiko and Ueno.

But as he watched Yukiko's beratement, he could take it no more. He opened his mouth to decry the interrogation, when he caught her eye beneath her bowed head, and turning ever so slightly toward him, half a wink flashed across her face.

What did that mean? Was she trying to protect him? To protect his job? He heaved a guilt-stricken sigh. That was it. She could always move to a more progressively-minded school in one of the cities, but he was at their mercy. Without this job, he would be on the first plane home.

But he didn't want that. He didn't need her to sacrifice herself for him. This wasn't his life; this wasn't even reality.

The bellowing and posturing were clearly taking their toll, and the principal leaned upon his desk to draw several gulps of air. "So naturally, Kamihara, until we have decided your fate, you must move out of your colleague's apartment."

"Dekimasen," she replied.

Every face in the room reflexively twisted toward her, uniformly flushed with incredulity, and Nick gagged for breath. Dekimasen? It cannot be done. Why would she say that?

"Nani itte?" the principal screamed once he recovered the capacity to speak. "You are unwilling to move out?" And his face grew so very crimson that his wild eyebrows appeared to smoulder.

Nick gagged in fear of the next words to emerge from the principal's mouth. But the fear was not for himself; he only cared now for what would happen to Yukiko.

"Koucho-sensei," Nick blurted, bowing deeply to the principal. The incredulous faces now turned to him, and in their glare, he was lost for a moment. "Kamihara and I have been dating for more than a year, and our relationship is very serious. While we haven't yet discussed the specifics, we are planning to marry. It is only because we're afraid to jeopardise our roles that we haven't revealed our engagement to the school."

He lifted his gaze and observed the principal was not looking at him at all, and possibly, not even listening, as he seemed utterly preoccupied with his glowering and the significant weight of his furrowed brow. For several minutes, he remained frozen in this state, then he summoned his deputy and they congregated in a corner to engage in protracted discussion.

When they finished, Nick was ushered from the room. He began to protest, but seeing Yukiko stifle a satisfied grin, he complied. Outside the door, the deputy advised in a low voice, "If this is to continue, you must formalise your relationship. Do you understand?"

Nick gave a solemn nod, and then returned alone to the staff room.

Spying Morita, the realisation finally came to him. Nick approached and into Morita's ear, he growled, "You say kubi, but in the West, we say fired. When we shot a man we weren't afraid to look him in the eye."

Then he sat at his desk, and awaited the return of Yukiko, ruminating about how she would react to what he'd said. Surely, she would see it for what it was. She couldn't expect him to go through with it, could she? When she appeared, she offered a warm smile, but without privacy, they could discuss the matter in nothing more than meaningful glances.

Ueno soon arrived too, and Nick apologised profusely, but he was no longer his supervisor. That task would be passed to Watari-sensei, who was every bit as old as he was humourless. He wasn't even an English teacher, he taught Japanese History, no doubt very well, having lived through so much of it. They were immediately introduced, as they needed that very evening to meet with the family of the brat, Baba, to request their forgiveness and urge them not to press the matter any further.

When he finally made it home, Yukiko met him at the door to embrace. It should have been the start of a great evening. They should have been celebrating their deliverance with intense copulation or complete inebriation. Instead, it initiated the most bitter dispute of their relationship.

49

Thursday Afternoon

The slam of a car door woke Nick, and still rather muddled, he sat up to observe a figure rounding the house. The tall gent was dressed impeccably, his suit dapper yet appropriately sombre, his hair extensively coiffured without being brash, and even his wide grin was perfectly imbecilic.

"Jimbo!" Nick declared as he leapt up in greeting, and also to better position himself in case of physical retaliation. But his brother halted in his path and stared, his face drawn in disconcerted retreat, before he quickly corrected himself, approached and wrapped Nick in both arms.

Nick tensed instinctively. He'd only ever been this close to his brother when a chokehold was involved, and he didn't quite know how to react. But despite the conspicuous lack of reciprocity, James continued to grip tightly. "It's good to have you home," he whispered as he finally withdrew.

"You know," Nick announced with something approaching a smile, "it's good to be home." He peered past James. "Where's Mum?"

"She's at the church getting everything ready; she sent me back to check on you. Do you have a suit?"

"I have nothing but suits," Nick reported dourly.

"Well you better get ready. It starts in an hour."

Nick shuffled toward the door, but then James spoke his name. "I owe you an apology..." He was no longer smiling and his face contorted with conflict. "Six years ago you asked me to fetch some belongings for a trip to Asia, which you said was only a short language excursion..." James settled on the edge of the porch and gazed into the distance. "From the very start I knew you were lying, but I pretended anyway. I wanted to stop you, but not nearly as much as I wanted to see your fall from grace. I swear though, it wasn't until after that I found out about... you know..."

Those few days before he fled were almost completely lost to Nick. Much had been forgotten because it needed to be, but the rest simply because it didn't warrant remembering. This was the first time he'd even recalled soliciting the assistance of James, but clearly, it was something that had taxed his brother prodigiously.

"You reached out to me for assistance," James continued, "but everything I did was for my own ends."

Nick examined him for a time, searching for any hint of malice to contradict his words, but when he found nothing, he sat beside him and tentatively touched a hand upon his knee. "The whole reason I chose you, James, is because I knew you wouldn't try to stop me."

"Oh," James responded, as if the thought had never occurred to him in all his years of self-torment.

He was admiring the velvet blossoming of the pohutokawa when James eventually spoke again. "You know, I realise I wasn't the best of brothers, but the funny thing is, when I look back I can only recall the good times we had."

Nick faked a nod.

"Like when we stayed with Auntie Carol at Takapuna Beach, and we caught crabs on the rocks and I taught you how to dive off the pier. Do you remember that?"

After some deliberation, he replied, "I wish I did. I do remember how you pinched a tin of biscuits from her pantry. When she found out you hid them under my bed and I copped the blame..."

James stroked his chin pensively. "Well that certainly sounds like something I'd do, but it's not like Mum would ever have believed it. You were always her favourite," he said with a wry smile.

Surprised at the frank confession, Nick turned to face him. "No. You can't really believe that?"

"Are you kidding me?" he said with a smirk. "Why do you think I always hated you so much? You could do no wrong. It was always that way, even when you were a young bugger." He peered at the garden forlornly. "You were probably too small to remember, but you once had a birthday party out here under the gazebo. Mum had baked you a gorgeous cake, but one of her cats devoured it. She was beside herself. Any other kid would have been upset, but you only thought to comfort her. 'Don't worry, Batman cakes are just for babies,' you said and sent her off for one from the supermarket. You can have only been about six. Christ, who could ever compete with that?"

"The way I remember," Nick pouted, "you competed more than admirably; always top of your class and in the best sports teams, graduating with honours and even joining Dad's law firm; you were his prodigy."

"Perhaps," he confessed with a shrug, "but that's all behind me. Now I only ever practise law when I can't pay my bills."

Nick recoiled. "What happened? Being a lawyer is what you always wanted..."

"No, it really wasn't. Actually, all I wanted was to make them proud. For most my life, I thought that was more important than anything. But, on my thirtieth birthday, Linda bought me a new set of golf clubs. It was such a delightful gift that I hadn't the heart to tell her just how much I detest golf. Of course, I played every Saturday with my colleagues, but only because it was expected of me. It got me thinking, though... about all the other things in my life I'd done simply because it was expected of me: becoming a lawyer, working for Dad, getting married... And the more I thought about those things, the more I resented them. I tried to suppress how I felt, but that only made me more discontent. Then I would dare to wonder what if, and I'd be overcome with shame for not being satisfied with everything I had... For wanting more. I'd lived a false life for thirty years; why give up now when it would only hurt the people I cared about? But something kept coming back to me. Something that I once read. You see, there this annoying little brat I used to know who was always right." James rolled his eyes melodramatically. "And all about the place he would scrawl his idealistic bon mots. The one I found in my calculus homework, I've never forgot, 'If you don't like what you see in the mirror, either change the mirror or change the view.'"

"So you threw in your job?"

"Not right away. It was a process."

"How did Dad react?"

James smarted. "He said I was making the biggest mistake of my life, though he did concede some time later that he'd been a little short-sighted. That was on the occasion of my second announcement, which he decried as an even graver error."

"Linda?"

He gave a long sigh of somebody that has much to say, but then he was silent for a time. "Look, I'm trying not to unload too much onto you at once. Suffice to say, Linda was a casualty of that process too. She's my very best friend and I care for her deeply, but our marriage was a big part of the lie. Telling her that was the hardest thing I've ever done, but even then she supported me. Now we both have someone new in our lives, and we're happy. We still talk to each other every day too, especially now we've opened a restaurant together..."

"A restaurant?" Nick intoned in disbelief.

"Yes," he confirmed with a laugh. "We're trying to add a little chic to Tikorua. You should come by tomorrow for dinner."

Nick gazed at him without reply. For as long as he could remember, he'd despised a brother who was boastful, conniving and ruthlessly competitive. Anyone else would not nearly have been as deserving of such emotion, but James was family and so Nick held in his heart, a special place for his acrimony and clung to it tenderly. To relinquish that now would mean starting all over again. He wasn't even sure he had that much energy for someone he'd hated so long, but oddly buoyant, he finally said, "I'd like that."

James greeted this with a smile and jumped up. "Look I better go help Mum. You should get ready..."

Nick had become quite comfortable sitting there in the warm sun, and he now felt rather disinclined to move. "Why are we even going to this thing? Who are we kidding? Our dear dad was a complete prick."

"No, Nick, no, he wasn't," James retorted strongly. "Not a complete prick. Mostly a prick." He stood before Nick. "You know, he'd ask about you sometimes. He wanted me to try and find you. 'For Mum,' he would say. I did try, but I swear, you must be the last man on earth without a digital footprint. If it weren't so improbable I'd suggest you'd never touched anything electronic, ever."

With a shrug, Nick lifted himself from the porch and headed back to the house.

"So shall I swing by and pick you up in half an hour?"

"No, it's all right; I feel like walking," Nick replied.

"Are you sure? Hey, you know your car's still in the garage. Though I'm not sure it starts..."

"Oh, I very much doubt that bucket of bolts will ever run again," he conceded uncomfortably.

"OK, call my cell if you need me." Departing, he abruptly turned and proffered something to Nick. "I almost forgot. I picked this up from the restaurant this morning. Someone found it in the mall and must have figured I knew you."

Nick caught the object in his hands and examined it. It was his wallet.

Then he entered the house, selected a suit, and climbed into the shower. Once he was dressed, he sat briefly on the bed. It was so very soft that he couldn't help resting his head on the pillow for a moment.

* * *

Nick was jarred awake by the high-pitched yelp of a dog, or possibly a distressed toddler. In Japan, there was a constant white noise of distant vehicles, but here every sound was infinitely more audible. Wearily, he peered at his watch.

Shit!

He launched from the bed and stumbled down the stairs. His first thought was to grab the phone, but he never did get James' number, so he pawed at the yellow pages until he found the details for a taxi. Then he proceeded to the cul-de-sac and fretted every moment of its non-appearance. His cursing had grown exceedingly vocal by the time an orange vehicle rolled into view and advanced ponderously toward him. Nick appealed with frantic gesticulation, but to no apparent effect, and finally, in its own time, it pulled up at the sidewalk.

"Arvo'," the driver said as Nick clambered in. "Where are we off to then?"

"St Mary's Church. Please hurry."

"Right you are." And he eased his foot onto the accelerator like he were sliding into a comfortable slipper and commenced his tottering journey down the road at the same idling pace with which he'd arrived, leaving Nick little else to do than plot their progression by the second hand of his watch.

As they eventually pulled away from the first intersection, having spent several interminable minutes awaiting the passage of each and every vehicle, including one that was parked in a driveway and quite discernibly absent all its wheels, Nick leaned forward and requested cordially, "Is it possible to go any faster. I must be there by two."

"Roger that," he confirmed, and then promptly changed to a lower gear which served only to heighten the pitch of the engine, without delivering any appreciable increase in speed. Nick slumped back into his seat, and issued a quiet sigh.

After an infinitesimal moment of silence, the driver said, "You know, you should actually count yourself lucky to have got me."

"Oh?"

"Yes, you happened upon the last English speaking taxi in town." Then he peered into his mirror from beneath a crevassed brow to observe Nick nodding solemnly. "You're hurrying to get to St Mary's, and they would have been, 'San Marley Cho-itch. Where dat?'" he said, squinting his eyes and aping an accent that Nick could not ascribe to any particular ethnicity and yet somehow managed to simultaneously mock several. His skin pricked and it bubbled caustically in his gut, but Nick offered a polite titter to the driver, whose grave visage continued to inspect him.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm no racist," he announced, clearly slipping into a well-worn patter, "but if these immigrants were so successful in their own country why would they need to come here?"

Propping himself up in his seat, Nick remarked, "I expect they believe that they can work hard and achieve a better life for their family than they ever could in the country they left."

"Perhaps," the driver said in a tone that confirmed just how little interest he had in counter arguments, "but why must they come here? Tikorua used to be white with a few Maori that knew their place, now it's like the United-bloody-Nations. No doubt, we can thank our Jew mayor for that."

Nick's face was scorching. "I believe the diversity of cultures makes New Zealand a richer place."

"A richer place?" he scoffed. "You're welcome to it. You know, I've been driving cabs in Tikorua for thirty years. We used to all drink tea and play cards in the yard between call-outs, but now these guys just squat about, jabbering to each other like crazed chimpanzees, and I'm the one that feels like the outsider. How messed up is that? Christ, I'll tell you one thing, you won't be seeing any of those darkies round my house, that's for sure."

His fists reflexively clenched and Nick suddenly barked, "Stop the car!" In the mirror, he observed the driver reel.

"But what about the church..."

"I'd rather fucking walk."

The vehicle immediately drew to a halt, and clicking a button on the meter, he announced the fare as $6.60.

"If you think I would pay to listen to your drivel then you are three kinds of stupid." Nick barked as he clambered out, but his path was immediately impeded.

"You'll bloody well pay, or I'll call the cops."

"You go right ahead," Nick replied as he leaned in close. "And I'll call the taxi company and advise them what a despicable individual they have in their employ."

Despite his face adopting a deep hue of beetroot, he feigned a contemptible shake of his head, and hissed, "You're no better than they are."

"That's right," Nick snapped back, "I'm no better and no worse, whereas you're just cat shit on clean carpet. No, you're not even that, because at least with cat shit you can wash out the stink." Then he pushed past him and marched down the road.

* * *

Swallowing a heaving breath, Nick entered the church to find everyone seated, but still engaged in subdued chatter, and the priest, who was young and gangling, frantically reviewing notes in an overstuffed folder. It was clear the service was yet to begin, and for that alone, Nick was grateful.

He proceeded down the aisle, pausing frequently to address a greeting or inquiry from those he passed. With surprise, he encountered Maxwell, dressed much as he was on the makeshift marae, though with a jacket drawn over his extensively inked skin. He was seated with Vince, who had apparently combed his hair for the occasion. Enthusiastically, Nick thanked them for coming.

"I wanted to be here," Maxwell explained.

"Me too," Vince said, and then with a wink, added, "In lieu of rent." Reacting to Nick's hiked eyebrow, he shrugged. "You know what they say, better a borrower than a lender be."

Sneakers was there too, clasping the hand of a girl Nick instantly recognised as Vanessa Simmons, whom he had once written a particularly fruity, but utterly unrequited love letter. Egged on by his friends, Nick had even suggested they meet behind the southern bike sheds, a notorious destination for young couples to snatch a quick kiss. Steadfast in his memory, she had quipped that she'd sooner plant her lips on Stephen's backside, which as was now obvious, was quite true. Beside them were three children, arranged seemingly by height, who fortunately had their mother's genes, save each for a ridiculous set of ears that were clear evidence of Sneakers' lineage.

"You have a gorgeous family," Nick enthused as they shook hands.

Sneakers gave the satisfied smile of a man proud of his wife and progeny. "Perhaps you might come round for dinner sometime?"

Nick assented with a nod, and then made his way forward, fixating momentarily on the coffin, which, quite mercifully, was closed. The last thing he needed was his father glowering at him from beyond.

As he advanced, his mother became aware, and rose to look upon him. In all the time Nick had been away, he'd held a picture of her in his mind and seeing how much she diverged from it now, struck him hard enough to arrest his gait. She had aged well beyond six years. Her face had wrinkled more than her thick layer of make-up could hide, her eyes, that used to twinkle as she spoke, were now recessed in dark sockets, and her ever-slender frame just seemed frail and emaciated. He burst forth, until he gripped her tightly in his arms, and her eyes brightened, then flushed with tears, which soon became a torrent that gouged great valleys in the thick artificial surface of her face.

With a polite cough, the priest soon announced himself, and then promptly recoiled from the fearful echo. Nick followed his mother to their pew and clasped her frigid hand in his.

The young priest issued a fretful welcome, and as he spoke of his God who was ready, and indeed, willing to take his father into his almighty embrace, Nick's eyes dawdled over the beautiful building about him. It was the church of his youth, where he had been dragged to so many Easter services and midnight Christmas masses. If he'd been asked to picture it a day earlier, he would swear he never could, but now every inch of it he recognised, and could confirm it was as it always had been: the elaborate golden metal work of the pulpit, the agony and betrayal in the stained glass face of Jesus, and the exquisite woodwork whose every tiny detail were like the imperfections of his own body.

With this remembrance arrived an unexpected flicker of the fear and awe that would grip him sitting there as a child, and this tickled and goaded him until he saw the truth. This moment was real. This flesh was his. No longer was he looking on through second-hand eyes at all.

Soon his mother rose to express her agony, and then family, and friends, and a mass fomented in his chest, crawled up his throat and clung to it thickly. Naturally, it wasn't within him to shed a tear for his father, he didn't care for him enough to mourn, nor hate him enough to celebrate, and yet, quite inexplicably, tears welled up large in his eyes and ran down his face in an endless stream. There was something about being home, about his mother who was a hairsbreadth from wailing, about his brother sitting with his ex-wife, but clutching inexorably to an acquaintance, about seeing his old friends and so many other faces that breezed in and out of his memories, and, most of all, for all those who had exited his life without adequate adieu; his Grandmother, Great Uncle Shan, and Tessa, most especially Tessa, and the magnificent waste of a glorious life that it was.

* * *

After the reception, Nick returned home with his mother. She made him tea, and they sat at the table nibbling on afghans.

He didn't know how to explain the last six years of his life, and it was equally obvious she could not find a way to ask. Instead, she informed him of a world that had stubbornly refused all pleas for constancy, and he spoke of a wide range of topics on the periphery of his experience. Though occasionally he would forget himself and mention Briece's orphanage, or Isaac's garden, or Hoka-Hoka bento boxes, or Yukiko, which was a subject that once broached, he found it difficult to extricate himself.

"She sounds lovely," his mother finally said in a voice that was neither pitched, nor staccato, nor melodic in any unexpected way.

But he didn't reply, he had drifted some 5,642 miles away and when his mother's words brought him back, he jumped up with the realisation that he could not delay a moment longer.

* * *

"Moshi-moshi?" the voice whispered over the line. It seemed so very remote that Nick's eyes grew damp again.

"Yukiko, it's me."

"Nick?" she said, audibly tempering her emotion.

"I needed to call. I'm sorry it's taken me so long." He wiped a tear from his cheek. "I'm sorry for how we parted too, and I'm sorry... for everything."

"What does that mean? Are you coming back?"

"No, my time in Japan is over."

"So what of us?"

"Yukiko, I want you to join me here."

"Over there?" she chimed incredulously.

"Yes, we can start again. A new country, a new life, a new me."

"But what about the school, my students..."

"They'll cope without you, but I cannot. Not for another moment." The line fell so quiet that he could hear the heaving thrum of his chest. "Please come," he pleaded, "I still owe you an engagement ring."

"You call that a proposal?"

"Come, and you'll get a real proposal." He was suddenly excited. More excited than he'd been for as long as he could recall. "Remember how we talked of starting a language school in the Marlborough Sounds? We could do that. Together."

"Nicky," she said warmly, "what's come over you?"

"It's you. You saved me."

"How so?"

"You dragged me from a car wreck in the depths of a lake."

"What? Was this some kind of dream?"

"Yes, a nightmare for the most part, but it's looking much better now."

"So you want me to give up everything and join you there on nothing more than a promise."

"Yes, I do. More than anything."

She was silent for a time, then, speculatively, she asked, "Will you still take me to monumentally bad art-house movies?"

"You bet, only the very worst for you, my darling."

"And will we go to the beach to fetch Tuatua?" she lilted.

"Every day of summer, my sweet."

"But what of my hiking stick? It will never fit in a suitcase..."

"Then of Tane Mahuta, I shall whittle you a new one."

EPILOGUE

Libby Slorn was from Des Moines, Iowa. She was an African-American who grew up in a middle-class, predominantly white suburb of a small predominantly white city, centred in a flat, predominantly white state. In her 23 years she had never experienced blatant racism, but there were many occasions when she'd wondered if her race was a factor. Sometimes it hurt - being the only of her four friends not to get a summer job in a local department store, sometimes it helped - receiving an unprecedented two-week extension for a university assignment on the flimsy pretext of trouble at home, but often it was just awkward - as when she was appointed captain of the school debating team despite sleeping-in the morning of the try-outs.

Until she was 17¼, she had never spoken to an Asian. Her first encounter was with a barista at Starbucks. Libby found her churlish, but it did not colour her opinion of Asians in general. As it happened, she owned every movie in which Jackie Chan had ever starred, including the insufferable Cannonball Run 2. Her friends thought her a Kung Fu nut, but in actuality, she was simply a Jackie nut, having had a crush on him since watching a poorly dubbed copy of Police Story when she was 13. To her, Jackie embodied every quality that a man should: tough, funny, compassionate and boyishly handsome, the very same qualities she struggled to find in her suitors.

As a university sophomore, she once embarked on a relationship with an Asian male who reminded her of "a young Jackie." While she didn't reveal this to him, she did ask if he knew any martial arts. He did not, and their relationship suffered much for the deficiency.

William J Tate-Oakley was a trim white American who idolised Bruce Lee. At the age of ten, he hung Lee's "Enter the Dragon" poster above his bed and nagged his parents to let him study Kung Fu. They thought it a phase. It was not.

At twenty-one, William encountered Libby queueing for popcorn at an Asian film festival. A beautiful black girl glimmering in a burgundy Chinese gown, he would forever describe the moment. They chatted at some length about the unpalatable expense and salinity of cinema snacks, before he worked up the courage to ask her to coffee after the movie.

There, they talked long into the night. He told her of his idol, and how unjust was the life of Bruce Lee. How he was ostracised as a youth in Hong Kong because he was part European, then shunned by Hollywood because he was part Asian, and even when he married an American girl, her parents refused to attend the wedding. The story made Libby cry. It also made her fall most irretrievably for William.

They began to date, which at first, was rocky, as Libby disliked Bruce Lee - she thought him too serious - and William disliked Jackie Chan - he thought him too showy. But despite these differences, they were drawn together by a love of martial arts and fried noodles, and a mutual distaste for churlish baristas. After just seven months, they knew they must wed.

Appreciating how traditional was Libby's father, William approached him for his blessing, but Reginald Slorn had already seen it coming and his response was succinct. He had always imagined his daughter would marry the kind of upstanding, educated black gentleman he'd aspired to be, but giving his ascent, he never spoke of this as Libby was the happiest he'd ever known.

William and Libby then announced the news to his parents. They were unabashed liberals who always recycled and voted well left of centre, but privately they fretted their future mixed-race grandchildren might encounter bigotry. Yet they kept this to themselves because they found Libby so delightful.

The church was packed for their wedding, and some who surveyed the attendance might well have remarked that it resembled a chessboard, but there was no hint of combat or standoff, just the mating of a white king to a black queen, which brought two sets of parents to tears.

Soon after graduation, they learned of an urgent opening for a pair of English teachers in a small town in rural Japan. Apparently, a difficult role had been split into two positions, one permanently based at Inoshiri High School, the other servicing the surrounding middle schools. They applied immediately. It seemed a perfect way for a young married couple to see more of the world and build their nest egg.

And so it proved to be.

1. It is fair to say, Nick was not a great student, and unsurprisingly, was rarely held in high regard by the teaching staff. In fact, there was only ever one teacher that truly adored him and that was Mr Harswhite. He was a towering, antiquated man with icy, imposing features and a polished conular skull that emerged from his downy white hair like a lofty mountain peak from tempestuous clouds. The very reason that Mr Harswhite so liked Nick was because he found him obstreperous. He had little interest in obedient and studious pupils, because there was no skill in describing someone as compliant or exemplary, but to refer to a girl whose attentions were easily deflected by her male classmates as congenitally lubricious, or to one of middling intelligence as having impenetrable opacity was, in his estimation, the highest form of art.

Initially, Mr Harswhite had been quite indifferent to Nick, finding him both intelligent and capable, but this soon blossomed into affection when he discovered how unruly he could be. He was obstreperous, he realised one morning with such blinding insight that he over-dunked his Gingernut and was forced to fish it from his tea cup with the tips of his skeletal fingers.

Having recognised that Nick was obstreperous, he saw fit to pronounce it at every given opportunity. "Nicholas, your obstreperousness is exceedingly trying," he would announce loudly to the class with a furrowed brow, converging eyebrows and a warm inner glow. "Continues to be obstreperous," Nick's school reports would invariably note, and in an endless stream of memos that he circulated around the faculty, he would ask pointedly, "Is anybody else struggling with the obstreperous nature of Nicholas Fairfield?"

Though, as it happened, his memos were never read or acknowledged because everyone knew Mr Harswhite to be execrable and magniloquent.

2. That evening he was escorted to a welcome party at a local restaurant, where he sat in a privileged position at the principal's table and watched as enough food to impress a Caesar arrived on a flotilla of miniature galleons. As apparently was the custom for an esteemed guest, his colleagues would present themselves in turn and exchange tiny bowls of sake with him. Consequently, Nick soon got so rip-roaringly drunk that halfway through his staid thank you speech, he paused to consider why everyone was finding it so humorous. His gaze then fell to his feet, and it occurred to him that his slippers were not the sombre brown he had expected, but were bright orange and featured the motif of a young boy urinating into a chamber pot. He pondered this incongruence for a moment, before it dawned on him that he'd failed to change out of his toilet slippers on his last visit to the facilities. Naturally, everyone took this cultural blunder surprisingly well, quite aware that it was just one of those wacky things gaijin were liable to do.

3. It was the worst kept secret in school, however, and soon words of disapproval were being whispered throughout the staff room. Nick was not surprised then, when his class was attended one afternoon by the deputy principal. No comment was made after his visit, and nothing filtered down by way of his colleagues, but the disapproving whispers halted immediately and the status quo endured.

But it came to a head several months later, with the unexpected arrival of three officials from the Prefectural Education Board. It was one thing for a school to go their own way, but for the Board to allow unfettered contravention of its own rules, was another matter entirely. The trio, who were humourless by nature and pedantic by training, were led by a squat, thin-lipped man, with a bare cranium of such extensive cratering and unexpected undulation that it would have sent a phrenologist into orgiastic spasms. In a misguided attempt to diminish this, he combed the last of his hair across the top of his skull, in what the Japanese refer to as "Barcode Style."

He had taught English for thirty years himself; a career which presumably only came to an end when his unemployed facial muscles atrophied to the point he could no longer enunciate vowels. His instructions were to investigate, craft a detailed report, and censure everyone responsible. The conclusion was foregone and he could be out by lunchtime, but he was the type of man who never parked in a ten-minute zone for an eleven minute stay, never claimed his petrol allowance if he detoured for personal business, and never ever penned a word he could not obstinately defend, and so he sat in on one of Nick's classes.

Nick was every bit as nervous as he'd been on his first day, but the students of Ueno's class could sense the gravity of his plight and lifted themselves immeasurably. At the completion of the lesson, several were then selected by the officials and interviewed in turn. From his vantage in the hall, Nick could not hear what was being said, but observed that the questioning was both in Japanese and English, and necessitated a good deal of awkward bowing. When this was done, the trio sequestered a meeting room, while the entire English faculty stomached their anxiety and attempted to go about their business.

Having had his remaining classes cancelled for the day, Nick felt every one of the ninety-four minutes that elapsed before they reappeared in the staff room. They spoke at length with the head teacher, and then, finally, Nick was called over. The thin-lipped man extended a hand and said in English, "Thank you, Nicholas-sensei. I enjoyed your class today." And without further word, they left.

Their report could have said many things. It could have highlighted that this mid-level school had some of the best speakers of English, and that most of the students were highly enthusiastic and clearly benefited from this alternative style of teaching. It could have advised that the constraints and focus of English teaching in Japan actually diminished fluency and student participation. It could even have recommended greater flexibility in the rules pertaining to foreign teachers. But it did not say any of these things, because it was never written and the visit, officially, never took place. Obviously, such a report, were it made public, would only cause embarrassment to the Education Board.

But emboldened by the tacit approval, Nick continued to teach his own classes.

4. Sara Spark was born in Brisbane. Her parents both worked within the byzantine ranks of the Queensland Road and Traffic Department. Her father was a high-performer in the lower echelons of middle management and her mother was a lowly paid assistant to a middling executive in upper management.

They were loving parents, but always busy. In fact, Sara's oldest memory was of telling an old woman she'd just met in the park how her parents couldn't come because they were busy, and the woman nodding sagely and saying that was sad. It was sad, she thought. She understood that she had carers because her parents were busy; she realised they often could not take her places because they were busy; and she knew that sometimes they would not return home until after she was tucked in bed because they were busy.

Unfortunately, due to a frightful misinterpretation of a conversation Sara once shared with another young girl with an absent mother, she did not actually understand what busy meant. She had been led to believe it was some kind of illness that made you weary and gave you a constantly furrowed brow, and she imagined their long hours away were spent at the doctor, who was formulating a treatment that never quite seemed to work because they would always come home even more weary, their brow ever more furrowed, and often with other unexpected symptoms like a lazy eye, dishevelled hair and extreme crankiness.

This belief persisted until she was five and accompanied her mother on a take-your-daughter-to-work day. The reality, that they actually spent their days shuffling reams of paper from one side of their desk to the other, proved no less alarming.

In spite of this, Brisbane proved a wonderful city in which to grow up; it was loud and bustling, and you never need see the same person twice. Sara's carers, whose names in reverse chronological order were Jean-Louise, Kelly, Paula, Diana, Yossi', Naira, Jackie and Popo, would often take her to Roma Park, where she could meet a wonderful new friend every day. The next day that person would be gone, just a ghost in her mind, but then there would be someone new to play with. She never bothered to learn any of her friends' names because in the blink of an eye they would be replaced. She never bothered to do anything daring or interesting either, because why impress someone you would never see again?

So when she arrived in Kawamata, a sleepy little farming town at the base of Mt Tsurugi, the townspeople did not hold high hopes for her longevity. They'd experienced a stream of foreign teachers who all struggled to survive the twelve months until they qualified for a return ticket, and so they figured that a young city girl wouldn't last a month. Indeed, the most daring of bets in the local pool had her absconding after precisely twenty-three days.

But then Sara arrived, and she did last a month, if only out of stunned curiosity. Everywhere she went, people greeted her by name - people she had never even met - and everyone knew her business. Once she rebuked a noisy student in her class and was fretting nervously about it on her walk home, but as she entered her building, she was immediately intercepted by her landlady who comforted her with insipid green tea and rice crackers of the size and flavour of dinner plates. When she gave a speech to a women's group, it made the local paper. When it was her birthday, the town mayor himself sent a kimono. It all seemed exceptionally odd and creepy.

She also found the atmosphere so incredibly relaxed that she often joked to her colleagues that they should sneak home for a midday nap just for the excitement, or book an induced coma for their long holiday, before she grew so tired of explaining the humour that she desisted. Of course, they were incredibly prompt and efficient as the Japanese invariably are, but in the staff room between classes, the chairs would be wheeled into small huddles, and they would sip coffee and chat. Others would lay their heads on their desks to doze, or stand at the window and stare interminably into the lush green valley.

In Sara's first week, she had watched someone lost, like this, in the view of the verdure, and had tried to copy him. She hoped she could empty her mind and sustain her gaze for as long as he did, but after what seemed an eternity - though chronologically was closer to seven minutes - she was more bored than she'd ever been in all her existence, and so she slunk back to her desk and re-read her English newspaper. When she was finished with it, she realised he was still staring out that window.

Time really did seem slower in that town; her headmaster would come in each morning and make the coffee in a clunky old percolator that seemed to boil water by catching the occasional ray of sunshine, then would fill the coffee pot a single drip at a time. If you listened to its lackadaisical plip, you would assume it was powered by the workings torn from an old grandfather clock that was well overdue for winding. The whole process could not have taken less than twenty minutes, yet the headmaster would quite happily stand there, watching as it went through its circuitous process, every bit as enthralled as he had been the day before.

If you forced Sara onto a scale then empirically, you would say that the needle edged past curvaceous, but in a tight pair of jeans, her arse rarely escaped attention, and she favoured the sort of low cut tops that immediately brought to mind two Volkswagens squeezed into a narrow garage. She was not quite beautiful, but of an indeterminable allure, and with this package, she never struggled to attract suitors.

Certainly, Australian girls had a reputation for being somewhat wanton, but Sara was infrequently easy. If she met someone interesting and attractive she had no qualms about bedding him, but when she came into the city, she was just as happy to wile away the hours in the pub, chatting with the other gaijin. In Kawamata, a pleasurable romp - or its digital approximation - could be easily acquired, but engaging English conversation was a much rarer thing.

An interesting point of fact was that Sara was one-sixteenth aboriginal, but she did not know this. Her mother, who was one-eighth aboriginal, was similarly oblivious.

5. Caroline Atwood was a good girl. As good as you would ever meet. Everyone who met her knew this.

She was cultured, well educated, and highly moral, because as everyone knew, good girls were cultured, well educated, and highly moral. She cared passionately about starving children in Africa, the fragile state of the environment, and illiteracy in underfunded schools, because all the good girls she met seemed to care about that sort of thing. She was devoutly religious and implicitly followed God's word, though to be specific, only the words that God had addressed directly to her. That He had never done so only confirmed to her His acquiescence of her behaviour. She liked to dress modestly, but conceded that if her creator had seen fit to endow her such bountiful gifts, it would be disrespectful not to accentuate them. Naturally she was equally discrete with her make-up, because only slutty girls would wear too much. Of course, sometimes it does take a lot of make-up to look as if you are hardly wearing any at all.

She was always demure, and suitably embarrassed around smutty talk, and she never, ever fooled around on the first date. Well not never, but she always managed a tear when describing her regret for the few times she'd been betrayed by her delicate capacity for alcohol. She was endlessly supportive as a friend and unquestionably loyal as a girlfriend, though, she would confess with a heavy heart, she was but one person and so it only made sense that she limit her support to those friends who would fully appreciate her selflessness. Equally, if she were blindly faithful to every man she dated, how could she adequately compare the qualities of her suitors, so it was only reasonable for there to be a certain level of overlap.

Though, as it happened, there had been very little overlap of late, as all the men with whom she had been acquainted had all failed to live up to her expectations, most commonly by refusing to return any of her phone calls. But this suited her just fine. Why waste her energy on minnows? she reasoned, when someone of her calibre deserved a big fish.

Obviously, she realised she couldn't just land in the lap of the right man. She'd immediately dismissed such cheap melodramatics as unbecoming. There was also the risk that in the tumult of such an altercation, he might fail to comprehend just how perfect for him she was, and that might needlessly delay their inevitable coupling. Thus, it was in the interests of all parties that she actively encourage her destined beau to behold of her endless virtues.

She was but a maiden awaiting her prince. Of course, as with all princes, he would be handsome, and rich, and powerful, and she would take him to her hometown, and they would walk arm in arm so everyone could see how very much they were in love, and hear of their perfectly idyllic life until they were green with envy.

Caroline Atwood was a good girl. As good as you would ever meet. Everyone who met her knew this. They must, they simply must.

6. Though of all his days, that was not the one Stephen Randall wished most to erase, rather it was the day his mother had left.

On the face of it, it should not have been a day that was easy to recall, because it was so very ordinary. Their mother had dropped them off with a neighbour, they had watched TV, and several hours later their father came to take them home. That was it, their last day as a family.

There were certainly none of the things that Stephen imagined would occur when a marriage disintegrated; no screaming or cuss words, or wrestling or broken crockery or overturned furniture. In fact, what he remembered most of that day was his fear. The fear that grips you when something is amiss, but you can't understand what it is: his mother's closed door, the punctuating slam of drawers, the lingering kiss on his forehead, the curious intensity in her request he keep an eye on his little sister, the panic in his father's eyes and the hug that never seemed to end. Each of these images decorated a grubby wall in a dark corner of Stephen's mind, and every time he stumbled upon them, he was gripped by the same fear of that day, which as it eased, would metabolise into a seething rage.

It happened a fortnight before his seventh birthday. Of course, he secretly knew she would reappear for his party, if only to sneak him a kiss and deliver his gift. But she didn't. Actually, he didn't see her again until he was 8½, and by then she wasn't a mother any more, she'd become something like a half-sister. She wore billowing, gaily-coloured dresses and spoke in an overly effusive manner like she was in love with everything. Indeed, when Stephen recounted his visit, he estimated her love for him fell somewhere between the herbal tea and the wild flowers.

She lived in a converted bus on a beach, with other people who had a penchant for billowing, gaily-coloured clothing and vehicular residences. Stephen even met the man who had replaced his father, and the funny thing was, he understood why she would prefer him. He was tall with long hair, and he strummed a guitar and wrote stuff in notebooks that made no sense, but sure had a lot of pretty words. He seemed the very opposite of his father who was always brooding in his squat grey suit and was devoid of interests, save for his silly little shop.

Stephen spent the whole weekend with her at the beach, and they collected shells and he answered her many questions about school and friends, but she never, ever apologised for that horrid day, and he never got the chance to tell her how angry he was. He didn't care to see her much after that. There didn't seem any point.

7. For most of his time in Tokushima, the maximum speed limit on any road was 50kph. In fact, being the last prefecture in all of Japan not to have a high-speed route caused such embarrassment to the locals that they endlessly lobbied the government until they were gifted their own highway.

It was duly built, forever linking the citizens of two unexpected cities who had hitherto never seen any reason to visit each other, but was hobbled with such an almighty toll that Nick would never use it, even if it had gone somewhere where he wanted to go, which it did not. Sometimes, when he was feeling frightfully rash he would tear along the service roads of the Yoshino-gawa in excess of 56kph, though he could never sustain this for long before breaking into a nervous sweat.
