Robot Mode (a novel)

Robot Mode by Quentin Poulsen


Jake was this amazingly fat, ugly bikie with a bushy red beard and moustache and scars all over the rest of his face. His flabby arms were adorned with tattoos of stupid-looking creatures and there was even one on his throat of a spider creeping up a web.

The guys bought weed off Jake and I chipped in even though I didn't like to smoke it much. The guys would look at you a bit strange if you didn't smoke weed with them.

The thing about Jake was you couldn't just go to his place and buy weed off him. You had to sit there on his lumpy old couch that always smelt like his mangy Staffordshire terrier General Lee had urinated all over it (to say nothing of the nauseating reek of weed, tobacco, stale beer and body odour that pervaded the entire apartment), and him sitting there with his hairy white belly protruding from between his black T-shirt and the studded belt he wore in his jeans.

And you had to sample all the weed with him, like weed connoisseurs or something, while he ranted on about the quality of the weed, the fertile valleys where the weed was grown, and how much more than him other less honest dealers were charging for weed of vastly inferior quality.

Next he'd start on about his Triumph motorbike, how fast it could go in a variety of highly unusual situations, and what ingenious maintenance he had performed upon it to make it go so amazing.

Then he'd get onto the fights he'd won lately, and these were invariably many, always against guys who were such utter bastards it would have been impossible to imagine had Jake not taken the trouble to describe them in such meticulous detail for you. Boy, did he teach them a lesson they wouldn't forget in a hurry!

Jake would often glance across at me while he was bragging away like this, and by the way he held onto my gaze for a moment, smiling toothlessly, I could tell he was under the impression I was sitting there thinking, 'Man, this Jake is a hell of a guy!'

But, in reality, I would be sitting there bored out of my skull, looking at his ugly scarred face and wondering how on earth anyone as fat as him could get on a motorbike to start with, let alone go around pulverising people as though he were Bruce Lee or something.

What would fascinate me even more was the way the guys appeared so interested, all of them chipping in now and again with exclamations of awe, or else laughing raucously at his jokes.

Some of Jake's jokes were pretty funny. I had to give him that much. I sometimes thought he would make a better stand-up comedian than a weed-dealing bragging bikie.

Regardless, I was intensely relieved when the guys finally wrapped up their deal and we were able to get the hell out of Jake's smelly little pad.

Next stop Antonio's. I was near giddy with anxiety as we drove into the car-park. The place was all lit up and there were the silhouettes of people milling around in front. The energetic hum of music became a harsh metallic din when we opened the car doors to climb out.

I'd been there a million times but I was still nervous. You were expected to make an effort to pick up at Antonio's, or the boys would look at you a bit strange, like you were an impostor or something. I only ever wound up making a fool of myself though, one way or the other. I might not have come at all except it was what we did on weekends. The alternative was hanging out by myself like some friendless loner. How would I ever meet someone that way?

The customary types were on parade; slim guys with shirts half-unbuttoned, exposing bare chests and silky chains, collars turned up, hair spiked up, tilting their heads to peer sort of downward at us as we plodded by in our rugby blazers and jeans. Further along a couple of brawny types with faces even more battered-in than Bruce's were muscling their way to the bar, and inviting anyone who objected to join them outside. Up on the dance-floor guys in trendy outfits were doing their thing right in the centre, where everyone could see what terrific dancers they were. We had a good chuckle about those posers.

We got bottles of Lion beer and prowled across to an unoccupied table. It was in a good spot; right behind the discoteque with a prime view of everyone on it. Bruce soon located a trio of girls dancing in a corner by themselves. He himself had a girl but there were three of us without girls and he sort of functioned in a coaching role for us.

Pigsy and Bloodnut headed up onto the stage and started dancing near the girls, catching their eye and smiling ecstatically at them. They had a strange way of dancing too; Pigsy shuffling about and pumping his arms up and down; Bloodnut doing a thing like a combined duck walk-pogo that made him look like some bizarre rooster trying to take off, what with his red hair and pimples and all. My dancing was no less weird, simply because of my beanpole figure and lack of coordination. I'd been sniggered at by too many people to be under any illusions about my prowess on the dance floor. So it was no surprise that when I joined in the trio of girls turned their backs on us and moved away.

Bloodnut elbowed me and gestured at the pair behind us. They were tall girls in their high-heels, heavily made-up, their hair looking like they had just stepped out of a salon. I frowned skeptically back at him. We had no chance with those girls. But he went ahead and approached them anyway. The two girls turned their heads, eyed us up and down, and stared back at each other with weary expressions, as though pestered by some species of vermin. I fled the dance floor without waiting for a break in the music.

Barely was I back in my seat when Bruce leaned over and growled in my ear: "Checkum out, mate!" He nodded toward two girls sitting at a small table by themselves. "They're just begging to get picked up."

I peered through the drifting haze of cigarette smoke at them. They weren't bad, admittedly, but my confidence was in tatters.

Bruce leaned away from me, his dense eyebrows forming a 'V.' "Not chickening out, are ya, mate? You do like girls, don't ya?"

"Course I do!"

He grinned through the gaps in his teeth. "Then you 'are' chickening out."

So what else could I do but reluctantly get out of my seat and go and approach the two girls? The giddiness was back inside me, and it actually came as a relief to find they were not as attractive as they had appeared from a distance. That made my chances a little more realistic. The blonde was plump with a double-chin; the dark one had a twisted nose and sort of bitter-looking mouth.

"Hi," I said to the blonde. "Would you like to have a dance?"

She leaned forward and said something to her friend, but I couldn't make out the words above the din of the music.

I spread my arms and grinned at them. "Sorry, was that a 'yes' or a 'no?'

The dark one raised herself up and almost stabbed me with her corkscrew nose. "Fuck off!"

I was back beside Bruce before my mind started functioning again, my cheeks frying like bacon. And it didn't help that he guffawed his toothless head off at me when I told him what had happened.

His mirth was intruded upon by a skinny kid, who stalked up to our table with a sulky-looking girl trailing along behind him. What, with his blow-waved hair, blue feather earring and gold chain necklace, he was more dolled up than she was. He stopped and stared at us, horrified, like we were all throwing up in front of him or something. It was another minute before he could bring himself to speak.

"This is our table! We left our drinks here."

Bruce peered around the table as if to make sure he hadn't missed them. "No drinks here but ours, mate."

"The bar staff must've taken them away. Yull hafta move."

There came a peculiar, high-pitched, fat guy's chuckle from behind him. "Own the place, do ya, mate?" Pigsy asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes." It was just the sort of thing a kid in a white suit would say. "My family does," he added, which sounded more like it.

Pigsy chuckled again. "So go 'n tell your mum 'n dad on us."

The kid glowered feircely. "Move, or I'll have the bouncers throw you out!"

Bruce got up and stood over him. "'No more out a you or I'll knock your teef in for ya!"

"Knock me 'teef' in for me?" the kid laughed. "Is that a threat, pal?"

Next thing the kid was on the floor with blood in his mouth and Bruce hovering menacingly over him. The sulky-looking girlfriend began shrieking like an actress in a horror movie. A fainting scene was surely on the way.

Bruce wanted to stay and kick the kid's teeth in for him but I managed to drag him away toward the exit, through which Bloodnut and Pigsy had already progressed.

One of the bouncers came bounding up the stairs as we went scrambling down them. He scowled suspiciously at us, and we did our best to appear very innocent, flashing him friendly smiles as we passed him by. We could still hear the ridiculous shrieking.

"Oi! You two! Come back 'ere!" the bouncers shouted from the top of the stairs as we burst out into the carpark.

By the time Bruce unlocked his car door and we all clambered inside, there was a gang of burly silhouettes charging out of Antonio's toward us. Bruce, naturally, fumbled his keys and lost them in the dark interior.

When I saw that my knees and shoulders began to vibrate uncontrollably, because I knew we were going to have to get out and fight. The other guys locked their doors and yelled at Bruce to get us the hell out of there.

It wasn't that I especially wanted to have my head pummeled in by the bouncers, but I felt absurdly wimpy sitting there beside Bloodnut while the mob surrounded the car. They started thumping on the doors and shouting muffled demands through the tightly wound-up windows that we get out and 'fight like men.'

Bruce sat up from searching the floor and slapped his hands on the steering wheel. "Can't find me keys and deez guys are gunna wreck me car 'less we get out."

We stared silently at him as we considered this. It must have been a very big dilemma for Bruce; whether to have his head beaten in or the panels of his new car.

The mob backed up a little when we got out. Probably it looked like we were pretty confident in ourselves, since they weren't to have known Bruce had lost his keys. I only hoped no one would notice my wildly vibrating knees and shoulders.

"Look, we don't want any trouble, alright?" said Bruce to the bouncers. There were four in all, backed up by a group from the club, including the kid in the white suit, who was now holding a handkerchief to his mouth.

It was the wrong thing to say to them. You could see their eyes change as they realised there was no threat and they got their courage up again.

"That's the bast'd!" the kid squawked, pointing at Bruce with his free hand. "Hit me when I wasn't expecting it!"

The bouncers moved toward Bruce, warning the rest of us to stay out of it as they did. "It's a fair fight," they insisted.

So we stood there and watched them beat up Bruce. They dragged him onto the ground and sat on him, pinning his limbs with their knees and hands. Thus, ensuring no possibility of resistance, they invited the kid in the white suit to take his best shot.

The kid stalked around Bruce's prone body, like some scavenger bird inspecting a carcass.

"Make sure he can't get his arms free."

"Yeh, yeh. No danger to you, bro'," they assured him. "He's just a girl."

The kid took another moment to gather his courage. There was hatred in his eyes and a sort of gurgling noise came to his throat. Then he hopped forward and swung his pointed right boot into the side of Bruce's head. It was an awkward-looking kick, but it got Bruce right on the temple, knocking him senseless. And the kid wasn't finished either. He now squatted over Bruce's limp form and began hitting him in the face with short, frenzied punches, making the weirdo gurgling noise the whole time.

"That'll teach you to mess with me, you toothless coward!" He straightened up again and returned the handkerchief to his mouth.

A pair of headlights swung into the carpark, causing the bouncers to back off Bruce as the orange beams exposed them.

"Hey!" cried Pigsy behind me. "It's Niko an' 'em."

The car screeched to a halt, its doors flying open, and a gang of giants came charging toward us. I recognised them from the rugby club; senior division players. Niko was clearly distinguishable by his hulking frame and round silhouette of an afro. He was not only a senior, he was a boxer and a black belt too. Word was he'd kicked some bastard in the head so hard once he'd crushed the eye socket, leaving the guy half-blind. So it came as no surprise to see Niko storm right into the midst of the retreating crowd, felling two or three of them instantly and causing the rest to hastily disperse.

Suddenly everyone was running in different directions, with Niko's guys chasing the bouncers all over the carpark. There was lots of yelling and wailing as people got caught and beaten up. One of the bouncers scrambled over a car and came scampering back in my direction. My initial apprehension subsided when I saw the fear in his eyes. The only danger was getting in his way. In fact, he went straight past me and leapt onto the hood of Bruce's car, landing with a crashing thud that stirred Bruce to his senses. Next he was on the roof and sort of crouching there, turning from side to side, like a possum up a tree seeking an escape route. But there was a fence behind him and he had nowhere to go.

Everyone began chanting "Gettum! Gettum!" and the bouncer could only prance about on the roof, shuffling his feet and staring at us with big startled eyes.

"He's gotta come down some time," some genius observed, but no one was willing to go up and get him.

Eventually he leapt from the car onto the wire-mesh fence, hanging there by his arms and kicking away with his boots as he attempted to gain a footing. He was still dangling there when the guys got to him and dragged him down behind the car. By the time I got around to see what was happening they had pinned him to the ground.

"Come on, Bruce, take your best shot! He's just a girl!"

And Bruce duly obliged.

Pigsy marched up beside me. "Where's that bast'd in the white suit?" he growled, like he were chief warrior now Niko's guys had arrived.

But the kid and the rest of the Antonio's crowd were nowhere to be seen, having evidently fled back inside the club.

I became conscious of a faint high-pitched whir, and with a jolt of apprehension realised it was coming toward us. No one else appeared to have heard it.

"Pigs!" I yelled, loud as I could, and instantly everyone was running around the carpark again.

Bloodnut found Bruce's keys, right there on the floor where Bruce's feet had been, and the four of us scrambled back into the car. Bruce pushed the accelerator straight to the floor, sending us squealing out onto the road.

A pair of spinning blue lights raced through the darkness toward us. They were vans, the type the cops used when they needed to haul criminals back and lock them up in the cells. I held my breath as they screamed by, half-expecting them to swerve around and chase us, but Bruce had slowed down by then and there was nothing to identify us as the troublemakers.

All the talk on the way back was about the fighting. Pigsy bragged the most, going on about him and Niko, like they'd been the generals and the rest of us had just been insignificant foot soldiers. Bloodnut was absolutely one hundred per cent convinced we'd killed that bouncer - and wouldn't hear otherwise - but I had personally seen him leap up and run away after I'd sounded the pigs alarm. Bruce, meanwhile, expressed particular satisfaction with his work on the kid in the suit.

"See all da blood on his face!" he kept saying. "I taught da spoilt brat a lesson."

As for me, I had nothing to brag about, and after a while I got tired of listening to their increasingly imaginative tales of bravado. All I could think about was how we had stood around and watched the kid in the suit kick Bruce senseless.

Back at the flat we smoked the weed and drank more beer. The weed proved to be the usual garbage we got from Jake. It's effects were purely sleep-inducing.

I woke up without knowing I had fallen asleep, and probably within just a few hours of doing so, judging by the predawn gloom. I could never sleep during the day. The first glimmer of light through the windows and I came awake, no matter how late I'd gone to bed the previous night. It would've been nice to sleep longer sometimes, like the others. They could sleep til it was time to go out again. I guess I was just the nervous type.

It took me a moment to figure out where I was, because I didn't usually sleep on the living room floor. There was a noise like a clotted sinkhole behind me, and the first thing I saw when I rolled over was Pigsy's open-mouthed face hanging off the couch, an empty flagon of beer cradled in his right arm.

But there was more than one snoring, like a pair of sinkholes trying to drain, one after the other and sometimes in tandem. The other belonged to Bruce. He was lying on the lumpy beanbag in the corner, a swarm of empty beer bottles around him. He'd sprouted a shadow of growth across his jowls and his right eye was purple with blood that had drained there from his swollen temple.

Bloodnut, naturally, was nowhere to be seen. When we all got wasted he tended to slip off and sleep in Bruce's bed, since Bruce seldom made it on nights like these.

I stood up and immediately sat down again as the headache slugged me; a sharp pain emanating from the base of my neck and shooting through my head like an electric current. I was all queasy inside, though just sitting there made it worse and there was no chance of sleeping it off. So I got slowly back up and crept through to the kitchen to make coffee.

Standing there drinking my coffee in the open doorway, I gazed around the living room, at the unshaved, open-mouthed faces of Bruce and Pigsy, the sticky, disheveled hair on the back of their heads, the swelling on Bruce's temple, the empty beer bottles and the flagon in Pigsy's arms. I listened to them snoring, and I smelt the odours of stale beer, tobacco and marijuana, and of somebody's feet. And all of a sudden I felt intensely depressed. It was like I'd been condemned to spend the rest of my life at Jake's.

*

This thin, bald, bespectacled guy answered the door. He was wearing a charcoal grey suit, though it was Sunday. He might have been to church. But who apart from Pacific Islanders went to church? Perhaps he was going to a funeral. But he did not appear sad. Maybe it was a wedding. Would he be interviewing the day he was going to a wedding?

At first I picked him for an old guy; perhaps early forties. Looking closer, however, as his small hand slid through mine, I realised he was probably nearer my own age. The baldness, the serious look in his eyes even when he smiled, and, mostly, the charcoal suit, made him seem older.

Gregory showed me around the place, which took about thirty seconds. The flat was tiny. But it was well-furnished and had all the modern conveniences, even a microwave. I had never been in a place with a microwave before. After a year at Bruce's, where we had not even had a television set, it seemed like more of a luxury than I deserved. I fully expected to be rejected again.

The spare room was next to the lounge and had a sliding door. Obviously that wasn't going to keep out much noise. There was just space to walk between the narrow bed and the two large tallboys against the opposite wall.

So I was none too bothered when Gregory handed me the now familiar 'I'll call you' line. I had received it at every place I'd visited so far, and not one of them had called.

I understood why and tried not to take it too personally. People had always told me I was a strange sort and a bad conversationalist. Too often my opinions conflicted with theirs, and you had to be careful about that sort of thing. I'd lost count of the number of people who had stopped talking to me because I'd disagreed with them on some matter or another. It was one of the flaws in my personality.

I had to ask people to call me at work. We did not have a phone at Bruce's, and I did not want him to know I was looking for another place anyway. It would be pretty embarrassing to tell him I was moving out then not be able to find a place. The boys would have a field day.

And not being able to find a place was beginning to seem like a very real prospect. I had to tell them to call me at the supermarket, where I worked on check-out, and then a subtle change would come into their eyes, like a neon 'vacancy' sign switching off.

Gregory, in fact, asked no questions. Neither did he seem much interested in anything I said. He hardly stopped talking from the moment he opened the door and introduced himself until the moment he told me he would call me and closed it again.

It was Thursday when the assistant manager summonsed me from check-out to take the call. He scowled across at me with his fiery red eyebrows, like an angry lobster, as though I had just broken some sacred ethical code. He could go to hell. It was the first call I'd taken in over two years.

Dougal was in the tea room with some of the high school girls. They were getting ready to take over for the evening shift. Dougal had fuzzy black hair, thick-rimmed glasses and a seemingly permanent idiotic smile. He bounced along when he walked, his arms flapping at his sides, which added to the overall muppet effect of his appearance. At twenty-six he was the oldest guy on check-out after me, and had been telling us for the past three years that this was only a temporary station for him until he gained a place on the polytechnic journalism course. He fell in behind me as I approached the telephone and began scratching himself under the armpits. The girls laughed away and the idiotic grin on Dougal's face grew so wide he looked more like a muppet than ever.

"Keep it down," I remonstrated with the girls. "This could be important."

Dougal's eyes bulged behind the glasses. "Gosh, an important call. Could it be from Jane?"

The girls laughed again and Dougal could not resist continuing his performance.

I suspected the call must be from one of the places I had looked at, difficult as that was to believe. Nobody else would be calling me at work. I tried to imagine which of the places would be polite enough to call me up to reject me .

"Greg-o-ree speaking," said a flat, disinterested voice. "When would you like to move in?"

It took me a moment to comprehend what I was hearing, and another to figure it out. Gregory had waited four days before calling me. No doubt he had been unable to get anyone else for the room, it being so puny and lacking a proper door to keep the noise out. I wasn't too keen myself. But no one else was going to accept me and I was desperate to get out of Bruce's.

Rick moved me in with his new Hilux. He was always prepared to help me out, even if I did have to listen to his big-brother lectures in return. I didn't have many things and might have carried them on the bus except for the mattress. I would have felt ridiculous hauling a mattress around on public transport. Rick, naturally, approved of my departure from Bruce's. He had always considered my friends a bunch of losers. He seemed to hit it off with Gregory too. They stood there in the kitchen talking quietly together while I wrestled my mattress through the house to the bedroom. Then Rick had to get back to inspect the plans for his new house. He and Barb were going to live in Seatoun Heights, overlooking the harbour.

No sooner was I settled in my new room than Gregory called me through to the kitchen. He was seated at the small table in the corner by the fridge, an empty vase and a bowl of plastic fruit beside him. He gestured for me to sit down opposite him. It seemed important.

"It's two weeks' in advance plus two weeks' bond."

"No problem," I said, taking out my wallet and piling the cash on the table.

Gregory swept up the notes and carefully counted them, one by one. "I'll also need thirty dollars for food."

I placed three more notes on the table, and he counted them as well, though anyone could see there were three blue notes there.

"That's for the basics," he said. "If you want things like coffee or biscuits, obviously you buy those yourself."

He twisted around to look up at the calendar on the wall behind him. "Right, wot nights will you be cooking?"

I gazed stupidly back at him. "Cooking?"

He blinked at me through his spectacles. "Yes, you'll be cooking three nights, I'll be cooking three nights, and Saturday's we'll provide for ourselves. I often go out for dinner on Saturday evenings, and no doubt you'll have your own plans."

I had difficulty drawing my next breath. The idea of cooking for this guy every other night held all the appeal of a prison sentence. But I had to tell him something - until I could find a way out of it. "I can cook Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, I s'pose..."

Gregory shook his head slowly. "No, it's got to be alternate nights. Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, for instance."

I stared in disbelief at him, sitting across the table from me in his charcoal grey suit. "I've got rugby practise on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"Then make it Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays."

"I work late on Fridays."

He blinked at me some more. "So give up one of your practise nights."

"But that won't work," I appealed to him, sounding like some desperate leper even in my own ears. "It'll be both practises and I'll lose my place in the team."

His expression did not change, as though all this meant nothing to him and the only thing of consequence in his life was that I cooked on the specific nights he wanted me to cook on. "Well, you'll just have to decide wot's more important to you, won't you? I've never had anyone here who wasn't prepared to cook before."

I wondered in a moment of bitterness just how many people he 'had' had there before, and what the average term of their stays had been. I couldn't see myself lasting very long, and this was only the first day. But I needed the place, at least until I had chance to find somewhere else. I couldn't go crawling back to Bruce's now. The boys would have a field day.

My mind raced. "I s'pose I could put something on before practises, then dish it up as soon as I get back." He was frowning, so I quickly added, "I'll have it on the table by eight or so."

Gregory massaged his narrow jaw a while. "Well, so long as it is on the table by eight. No later."

I took a deep breath and slumped back in my chair. I had meant closer to eight-thirty. Practise didn't finish till eight so I was going to have to leave around twenty minutes early. I would not be able to keep that up for very long. But at least I had gained a temporary reprieve. I hated to think how Rick would have carried on had I been forced to call him the same day he had moved me in to ask him to move me back out again.

Gregory, having settled the life and death issue of cooking nights to his satisfaction, then set about explaining the rules of the house to me. These were numerous and mostly trivial. He was still droning on when a light tap at the door interrupted him. It was an old woman seeking donations for the Crippled Children's Society. I had my wallet open and was approaching the door when Gregory apologised to her and closed it in her face. He had just taken half a month's wages off me and was refusing to make a donation.

That evening I was sprawled out on the leather couch when Gregory entered the living room and asked me to remove my feet from the coffee table. He sat down right next to me and used the remote control to switch on the television. It was all a bit strange, if you asked me, and him wearing his suit and drinking coffee at twenty-to-nine.

I was not a fan of television either. Most of it seemed like it was designed for mentally-handicapped toddlers. But it would have been rude to get up and leave the moment Gregory sat down. So I stayed and watched it with him. He flicked back and forth between the two public stations and the tacky private one, before settling on a movie, 'Last of the Mohicans.' That lasted about twenty minutes, at which point he declared it 'typical American rubbish' and switched channels again. Now we were watching 'COPS' and some old white officer was being congratulated for shooting a black youth as he fled down an alley. There were slow motion replays of the guy being killed, like a football game. Gregory decided that was 'more American rubbish' and switched channels again. So now we had the local version of Candid Camera on and some overweight aerobics instructor was baring his buttocks to a class full of women; a chorus of mechanical, screechy laughter in the background. Gregory chuckled too and put the remote control down.

Then he got talking about his career. He babbled on about that for quite a time, but he might have been speaking Greek for all the sense it made to me. Next he explained how he was dealing in shares for himself nowadays as well as on behalf of his clients. He even tried to talk me into investing some money, and it required a considerable effort on my part to persuade him I was not interested. He then sought to enlighten me on his plans to go into property development. There was a "cool fortune" to be made in that, he reckoned, gazing at me with bulging, bespectacled eyes. It was all I could do to prevent myself yawning into his face.

When Gregory went into the kitchen to make another coffee, I seized the opportunity and escaped to my bedroom. He returned a few minutes later and turned the television up. I could hear it through my sliding door just as clearly as if I had still been sitting on the couch beside him. He flicked through the channels again and finally settled on the movie he had earlier denounced as 'American rubbish.' This presented me with a dilemma. I was actually interested in the movie, but I didn't want to listen to Gregory, and what I discovered was this: If I stood right by the wall with my door open a fraction, I could see all of the television screen apart from the bottom left corner which was obscured by Gregory's head. So after that I watched television from inside my room, peering out through the gap between the wall and the sliding door, and I didn't have to listen to Gregory talking.

*

Coach was not accustomed to me running off twenty minutes before the end of practises, and he roundly abused me every time. But it was mostly warm-downs, and I kept my place in the team regardless. Probably it was too late in the season to disrupt things by changing players.

The boys, naturally, had their fun. They were exceedingly witty, nicknaming me 'The Nanny,' and even presenting me with a frilly pink apron after one match. I suppose I couldn't blame them. I had become a pretty easy target, what, with this business of cooking for Gregory. They never said anything about me moving out of Bruce's though.

It started raining one night so Coach sent us into the gym lest we chew up the field. A game of touch was organised and I scored a couple of easy ones inside Pigsy. He was only suited for scrummaging, with that big beer belly of his. If you beat him once he would feign disinterest in the entire affair and call out ''bring the ball back when you're finished'' each time you glided by him, like you were just being downright childish or something. As tighthead prop he, naturally, regarded himself as the epicentre of the team. So I liked to give him a cheeky wink along the way.

I was going by Pigsy for the third time when an electric current shot through my knee and my leg went out from under me. I gazed up at the timber ceiling as the faces began to gather at the perimeters of my vision. They gawked down at me, saying nothing, like I was at the bottom of a well and they were looking into it. And it seemed to me, in my dazed state, that what I saw in their eyes was not concern but something closer to triumph. Only Coach's face appeared genuinely perturbed when it joined the circle of starers.

"Haven't done your bluddy knee in, have ya?" he asked in his gruffest tone.

"I'll be okay," I assured him through clenched teeth. The pain had hold of my knee like some demon bull terrier.

Coach turned to Wheels. "Go an' fetch Mat. He'll be out on the main ground with the seniors."

It seemed an eternity before Wheels returned with the physio straddling along behind him. Even Pigsy looked like a titan next to Wee Mat. The boys were chuckling into their sleeves at the sight of him, a chubby green elfin in a soaking wet tracksuit.

"Wotcha done to yourself there, son?" he enquired, squatting down beside me.

I pointed to my outstretched leg. "Just wrenched me knee. I'll be right in a jiff."

He made a prolonged examination, entailing much painful prodding and bending of the knee, before agreeing with my assessment. From his bulky sports bag he produced a tube of ointment.
"It'll ease the pain," he told me, massaging a little into my knee. "But you're finished for the season, sorry to tell ya."

It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying. I was out for the last five games! I was so disappointed I neglected to thank him as he straddled back out, an elfin with his bulky sports bag, and the guys pointing at his back and chuckling among themselves.

My despair turned to alarm when I realised it was seven-thirty. It would take me half an hour to get home on this leg. I'd be lucky to have dinner on the table by quarter-past-eight.

I was close with my estimation too. By the time I got back it was already eight, Gregory's dinner deadline. He was seated at the small kitchen table in his charcoal grey suit (perhaps he had a collection of them), the electric light shining on his spectacles and frowning forehead.

"Wrenched me knee," I explained sheepishly. "Got home as quick as I could."

Gregory removed his spectacles and laid them on the table beside the bowl of plastic fruit. A lime-green apple tumbled out and he smartly replaced it. The irritation was in his eyes but failed to prepare me for what was to come.

"Look, this isn't working out," he said flatly. "I don't ask much, but if you can't make an effort to comply with the few simple rules that I do set down, then you'll need to find another place."

In that moment, as I stood there on my aching knee, having hobbled home through the rain at maximum speed just to serve him his dinner, I had a very strong impulse to pummel his narrow bland face in. But stronger than this was my growing sense of desperation. I had not got around to looking for anywhere else yet, and going back to Bruce's held about as much appeal as hauling my mattress out to the city dump and taking up lodgings there. I had to be able to reason with this guy.

"My season's over anyway. It's not gunna happen again."

Gregory replaced his glasses and rose from his chair, shaking his head with finality. "No, it's not just the cooking. There are other issues besides. The way you disappear into your room every night, for instance. It's insulting."

"You should a said something. I'll watch television with you this evening, if you like." It sounded pathetic even in my own ears. But I was desperate.

The head kept shaking, and for an instant I felt the way I had in the gym as my teammates had gazed down at me. Gregory turned away, as though I no longer existed, and went through to the living room.

"My decision is final," he said over his shoulder. "I'll give you a week to find another place."

I hobbled after him. I wasn't about to grovel anymore. He wasn't going to change his mind. Though I still had to contain my anger, for I needed that week. But I was prepared to be a little less pathetic now that it had come to this. "Well, I'll need my bond back before I go."

Gregory sat down on his leather couch and shuffled through a few sheets of paper on the coffee table. "You'll get your money the day you leave. Don't worry yourself too much about that. We'll settle your bills first though."

I took them from him and immediately noticed they were dated the month before I had moved in. It figured. The bills for the current month couldn't have possibly arrived yet.

''Oh!'' He feigned surprise when I pointed this out to him, as though a guy who practically had dollar signs in his eyes didn't know what month's bills he was looking at. "In that case I'll have to hold onto your bond till this month's bills arrive."

Perhaps it was the light on the lenses of his spectacles, but he seemed to be gloating as he looked up at me. The urge to pummel his bland little face in was very strong in me then. I wondered how long it would be before someone actually did, for it could only have been a matter of time. But, as for me, I needed that week. I made up my mind I would have it all out with him the final day, and if he didn't come up with my money then, I'd punch his teeth out, smash his spectacles and take his microwave or something.

Meanwhile, I had to find somewhere else to live.

*

The moment she opened the door I knew I didn't have a chance. It was not that she was so attractive or anything. I mean, only women in movies ever really were. But she was dolled-up like she had just stepped out of a fashion salon, and I'd been rejected by enough of those professional, rich-looking types at Antonio's to realise I was way out of my class. Her hair was bright auburn, with a few errant strands spiking down over her eyes, which were pale blue and circled wıth black liner. She had this irritated, sort of worn-out expression on her face, like she'd had to hike up a thousand stairs to answer the door or something.

"You're early," she complained, then shrugged at my apology. "Well, you mize well come in then."

My gaze fell upon her hands, which were adorned with rings, including the wedding finger.

"Oh, that's just to ward off men," she explained, as if men were mosquitoes or something, and the ring her repellent.

She had on a pink sweat suit and matching fluffy slippers with big white bunny faces on the ends. It seemed odd, that she was so heavily made-up yet wearing kids' clothes.

Anne, as she presented herself, led me around the place, pointing out this and that with the same weary tone of indifference with which she had acknowledged me at the door. It was an older place than Gregory's, and about twenty times the size, what, with its sprawling living room, bay windows and large bedrooms. The bed in my room was a little too short, but I was used to that. She told me there would be three of us, once Bev got back from Europe.

It all sounded too good to be true. I was going to be living with two women in this spacious old house, sharing the same living room, kitchen, shower... even the same toilet seat! I had never lived with women before, and could only imagine it would be a hell of a lot better than living with guys, who were, after all, the scum of the earth. Why had I waited so long to get out of Gregory's claustrophobic little shoe-box?! I should have found a place like this years ago.

Rick moved me in with his Hilux. In exchange I had to endure another of his lectures. I agreed with everything he said, even though I didn't really agree. He told me I ought to try harder to get on with people, because it was very clear to him the problems at Gregory's had been entirely my fault. Rick did not actually know what the problems had been, but he was my elder brother and he was doing me a favour.

"Bluddy Islanders! Should send 'em all back there!" Rick cursed beside me.

I stared ahead at the big, dirty, red trolley-bus which had swerved in front of us. I couldn't see the driver but they were usually Samoan, just like the construction site labourers were usually Maori, dairy owners Indian, fruit shop owners Chinese and fish 'n' chip shop owners Greek or Italian. Every minority seemed to have its own job. The back of the bus was painted in an advertisement for national TV, with the faces of the evening news team beaming out; the middleaged man, the attractive woman and the Polynesian sports presenter. Their smiles said 'We love you,' yet they only made me think of war, crime and disaster.

When the smiling faces finally rumbled away in a cloud of dirty smoke, a small cluster of raincoat-clad figures had been deposited on the footpath. These now made their way into the wind and rain, heads down, two or three of them opening umbrellas as they went. I recognised Anne at the front, walking very briskly as though determined to beat the others. It would have been pointless to offer her a ride, since we were almost there, so I waved politely out the window and gave her a cheerful look. She glanced up without responding, and neither did she acknowledge me when I met her at the gate a couple of minutes later.

"I'll be moving me things in now, if that's alright," I said.

"Good for you," she replied blandly, and continued on up the concrete pathway.

After settling into my bedroom I went to find Anne to sort out the rent. She was on the phone, so I sat down on the old couch and waited. The couch was spongy and didn't get much support at all; just kind of buckled under me as I leant back, until I found myself staring straight up at the ceiling. It took me a few minutes to wrestle myself back up into a sitting position again. Fortunately Anne wasn't noticing. She was too absorbed in her telephone conversation. The couch was the only item of furniture in the room, which was strangely empty, and perhaps not as big as it had first appeared.

I had ample time to survey my surroundings as well, for it was at least another half hour before Anne finally put down the phone. And no sooner had we started talking than it rang again and occupied her for about another half hour. When eventually I got to speak with her, she explained it was two weeks' in advance and two weeks' as security. Unlike Gregory's, we would be buying our food separately, for Anne was an 'independant woman' with an 'independant lifestyle.' As for me, I was just glad to know I wouldn't be required to dash home three nights a week to cook someone else's dinner for them.

What I would have to do, Anne told me, was arrange a direct credit with my bank to pay her the rent each week.

"Direct credit?"

She gave me a look like I'd just pulled a giant worm out of my nostril or something. It was a moment before she could bring herself to respond. "You don't know what a direct credit is?" She shook her head in wonder.

I felt my cheeks begin to fry. I didn't even have a bank account. It all sounded very complicated to me.

"Look, just go down the bank tomorrow and ask for a direct credit form. I'll let you have my account number later, but first I wunna watch LA Law."

"But . . . I'll need to get a bank account first," I said.

She didn't reply. LA Law was starting.

Next day I was home from work before her. It was the first time I'd been alone in the house and I couldn't resist the urge to snoop around a bit. She had a stack of those glossy women's magazines in the cabinet under the TV. The headlines all had to do with fashion and sex.
Her bedroom door was ajar so I had a peek inside there too. The curtains weren't drawn and it was gloomy and full of shadows. All I could make out was the large frame of the double-bed, a wardrobe with a full-length mirror, a couple of dressers, and a big pile of clothes strewn across the carpet. Somehow I was surprised. I'd have expected her to be a little tidier.

The rattling of a key in the front door sent me scrmabling back to the living room. Anne entered a moment later and went directly through to the bathroom. She was wearing a brown suit with flared trousers, a pink blouse, and high-heeled black boots. I looked up from the couch and said 'hello,' but she had that distracted expression on her face and didn't reply.

Barely had the bathroom door closed than it opened again. I was startled to find Anne's face glowering down at me.

"Who left the cap off the toothpaste?"

"I dunnoh."

"Oh, well, it must've been the fairies then!" She pushed the door shut firmly.

I sat there for a while gazing at the TV, which was actually off. Was this going to be Gregory's all over again? Where in hell did normal people live? Right then I felt like jumping on a plane and getting as far away from this country full of weirdoes as I could. Maybe I'd go to Spain, drink sangria on the beach and dance flamenco with the pretty girls.

The shower stopped running and a moment later Anne stepped out of the bathroom, amid a fine cloud of steam, wearing nothing but a skimpy yellow towel. Her clothes were in a bundle in her arms. I looked away instantly, not wanting to seem like a pervert or anything, but she had already caught my eye. An item of clothing fell to the carpet as she walked across the room and she crouched down to retrieve it. She caught my eye again as she stood back up, and there was a distinct flush in her cheek. I almost wondered, as she left the room, if I was not expected to follow.

The whole thing had seemed a little surreal, like I'd seen it on TV or something. But whatever delusions I may have had as a result of the incident were firmly dispelled later that night when I heard the front door open and close, then heavy footsteps advancing up the hall.

I stared across at Anne, now in a pink robe and her fluffy bunny slippers. She showed no sign of alarm; merely removed her gaze from the TV screen and settled it on the doorway to the hall.

"You were supposed to meet me after work," she complained to the doorway.

"Couldn't get away," a deep voice rumbled back. "We were closin' a deal."

'Closin' a deal?' Who was this in the doorway - Al Pacino? I leaned forward from my position on the carpet and met the dark eyes of a large man with curly black hair and a dense moustache. He was wearing a mauve sports jacket and cream slacks. A bulky gold wristwatch glinted just below the cuff of his right sleeve.

"You must be the new kid," he boomed. "Anne told me about ya. Pretty soon yull be runnin' that supermarket, eh!"

He chuckled down at me as he strolled across and joined Anne on the couch. But she had that distracted look on her face again, a beleagured princess perhaps, like she didn't want to acknowledge him.

I went to bed and lay there for a while, my feet hanging over the end, and took in everything that had happened that evening: the glossy magazines; the state of Anne's bedroom; the performance over the toothpaste cap; the parade in the skimpy towel; and now this, the boyfriend turning up. I'd only met him once, and already I'd made up my mind he was an utter moron. Perhaps I was jealous. I had to consider that. Or was I being territorial?

Whatever the case, the feeling intensified next morning when I went to use the shower but found the door locked, then heard the drumming of water and him singing in there. He was singing so loudly and badly out of tune it had to be intentional, and then Anne wandered in with a bowl of cereal and an inward smile that said, 'Isn't he cute?' But there wasn't much affection in my thoughts as time ran out for me to shower before work and he was still in there.

The rest of the week followed a similar pattern. Anne would arrive home about half an hour after me, looking always very distracted, take her shower and parade throught the living room in a skimpy towel. Around ten the front door would rattle open, heavy footsteps would advance up the hall, and the boyfriend's crooked nose would protrude through the doorway. They would argue, he would say something condescending to me, and I would go to bed.

After that I didn't seem him anymore, because I would go to bed before he came, just to avoid him. I had also begun getting up half an hour earlier just to beat him to the shower.

*

There was a problem with the direct debit. The rent did not go through to Anne's account. She got very uptight about it, like I was trying to squirm out of paying or something, and insisted I go in first thing in the morning to sort it out. In fact, I went in during the lunch break; the only opportunity I had.

The queue, naturally, was coming out into the street with only two tellers on. I got the frowning middleaged woman, as opposed to the attractive young woman, and endeavoured to explain the problem to her. She handed me a set of direct debit forms and told me to go over to the desk and fill them in. I wasn't too happy about that, given I'd already done it a week earlier when I'd set up the account, and especially since I was going to have to get back in the queue afterward. But she insisted and the people behind me were tutting impatiently.

My lunch break was practically over by the time I returned to the counter, again getting the middleaged teller. I might have let the person behind me go first, just so I could get the other teller, but that would make it seem like I expressly wanted to be served by the attractive one. Besides which, I really was running out of time. On this occasion the grim-faced teller informed I had filled them out incorrectly, confronted with yet another set of forms, and told to go back and do it properly.

"But what's the problem? How can I correct them when I don't know what's wrong?"

She actually slapped herself on the forehead. "Look, it's very simple. You put your account details here, where it says 'Customer,' and the recipient's details here, where it says 'Payee.'"

"Okay," I said, and started do as she had instructed.

She glared up through her spectacles and gestured at the desk. "You will have to do it over there, I'm afraid. There are other people waiting."

"I don't have time to get back in the queue, okay. I want some proper service here." My voice rose with the second sentence, so that those waiting behind me surely overheard.

The teller's response was to summons the security guard; a stocky Maori in a black uniform with a gun on his hip.

For a moment I was too astounded to speak. She'd called the security guard on 'me,' like I was some dangerous criminal or something?! Hell, all I'd done was complain about the service. My humiliation gave way to anger and I started to walk straight out, loudly declaring along the way that I would be doing my banking elsewhere in future. Some of the people grinned at me. Others tittered among themselves. One woman even looked slightly afraid. And for my trouble I was escorted roughly through the door by the guard.

Arriving home that evening, I encountered the bizarre spectacle of Anne running along the pavement in a cream trouser suit and high-heeled boots. She paused long enough to explain that her friend's cat (which we'd been looking after) had escaped, and to enlist my help in finding it. The light was fading and it was cold and windy, but what could I say - other than agree to try and find the stupid cat?

Fifteen minutes later a black sedan swerved into the street. The driver's window rolled down as it pulled up and Burt's mustachioed face grinned out at me. He was wearing shades against the evening twilight and his gold watched glinted as he rested his arm on the window frame.

"How do you like me new wheels?" he said. "She's fitted with a Bosch Motronic, same as the Volvo turbos. Zero to sixty in six 'n a half seconds. Very torquey."

"That's impressive," I remarked, feigning interest.

He proceeded to rant about his car for several more minutes before Anne came down the road and interrupted him.

"Burt, do you think you could help us look for this cat? Sarah will never forgive us if we lose it."

"It'll come back when it's hungry."

"Burt! This is important!"

He frowned through the window at her. "Got better things to do than chase a stupid cat around. "I'm off for a beer with dad."

Anne watched him drive off, then turned to me. "Why are men such pigs?!"

"Burt, you mean?"

She blinked ahead, as if no longer aware of my presence. "He's such a pig. He never helps with anything."

It was dark when we located the cat; up a tree in the neighbour's back yard. The neighbour was an old woman and didn't want us going on her property. But when Anne suggested we call the fire brigade, she begrudgingly agreed to let us get the cat, rather than have a truck-load of firefighters trampling across her property.

Anne held the ladder steady, issuing instructions the whole time, while I scrambled up into the tree after the cat; the neighbour watching from inside her house, peering out between the curtains.

Ignoring all my efforts at diplomacy, the cat scratched me twice on the hand, bit me savagely as I grabbed her, then scratched me again on the nose as I carried her down the ladder, causing me to lose my footing and tumble down the last few rungs, spraining my right ankle on landing. I nonetheless maintained my grip on her, receiving yet another scratch for my troubles.

"Oh, thank God!" said Anne, taking the cat from me. "Sarah would a been beside herself."

Back in the house, I washed up and put some salve on my scratches. Anne was on the couch when I limped out of the bathroom, the cat lying beside her, and she was watching one of the Oprah tapes her mother recorded for her.

"Did you sort out the direct debit?" she asked.

"No, I've decided to change banks."

She removed her eyes from the screen and blinked up at me. "You've decided to change banks? And what about last week's rent? Did you even think about that?"

"Don't worry. I'll pay you in cash. I can give it to you now."

I went through to my bedroom and got the money out of my wallet. Returning up the hallway I thought I was listening to an argument on the Oprah show, but when I entered the living room it was Anne speaking into the telephone with the TV on mute.

"Look, Burt, I'm sick and tired of... I don't care what she says... It's none of your mother's business... Okay, Burt, but... I understand, but... Yes, yes, Burt... Alright then... Okay, Burt... Well, I'm sorry too then... Yes, yes, Burt... See you tomorrow, sweet-cheeks... Bye."

The inward smile was back on her face as she put the phone down and turned the TV up. I placed the money on the couch beside her, careful not to disturb the cat, and even more fearful of disturbing Anne while she was watching Oprah.

*

Generally Anne didn't talk to me much, and she didn't like it if I interrupted the TV. I couldn't blame her really, since we had little in common. She worked for a law firm and I worked in a supermarket. She had a boyfriend who was an 'entrepreneur' and I didn't even have a girlfriend.
They went to functions and the theatre in the weekends and I had no social life at all. She watched dramas and talk shows and I only ever wanted to see the sports news.

There were occasional exchanges during the ad breaks, but these were hardly conversations.

"God, is that all you make?" she laughed at me one time. "I mean, I make that in a day!"

I was lying face-down on the carpet, counting my wages, and just glanced up at her without replying.

"I make more than most guys I know," she went on. "They can't handle it, you know. It bruises their egos." She picked up one of her glossy magazines and began flicking through the pages.
]
I looked up at her again, saying nothing. The pale eyes blinked back down at me for a moment, then returned to the magazine.

"Why are men such pigs?" She flicked through the pages more rapidly, then flounced across the room to get another, elaborating further on her condemnations of men - as though I wasn't one.
But her mood brightened considerably when she encountered an item in the next magazine. Indeed, she became quite jovial. Some woman in America had hacked off her husband's genitals with a carving knife.

*

I had dared to hope Bev would be some fantastic Brooke Shields-lookalike. Those kinds of dreams never came true, of course. She turned out to be a pallid, frail-looking blonde with about as much flesh on her as a sparrow. Call me a superficial bastard, but she really wasn't my type. Not that it mattered anyway. She had a boyfriend. Steve brought her luggage in for her, and it was quite intimidating at first to see his hulking figure plodding up the hallway behind her, blocking out most of the light from the open front door. Yet when he extended his hand and introduced himself, his manner was so gentle and almost childlike, I actually felt sorry for him, standing there shaking his big soft hand. It was quite amusing too, him so big and Bev this scrawny bird-like creature who barely came up to his chest.

They seemed harmless enough anyway, and I even began to look forward to having them around, rather than just a pair of cold blue eyes that scowled down at me in the evenings from above the cover of some glossy magazine. Bev had known Anne since high school. I was surprised to learn they were both a few years younger than me. I'd thought Anne was a few years older.

We had a dinner together that weekend, the two couples and I. At least, we ordered pizzas. Burt had brought some beer over, I had cola in the fridge, and Anne took a bottle of 'La Rioja' down from the cupboard.

At thge start of the meal Bev handed Anne a gift-wrapped package, which was ceremoniously opened, revealing a ceramic model of a red double-decker bus, the Union Jack displayed proudly on its roof.

"Oh, it's simply marvellous!" cried Anne. "What a darling li'l ornament."

She and Burt proceeded to ask Bev about her travels through Europe. She had been to London and Paris, Barcelona and Rome. Anne chimed in at regular intervals with her own memories of those cities from her visit some years before, recalling The Louvre with particular affection, and St Paul's, the Sagrada Familia and the Sistine Chapel as fondly as if they were personal friends.

"What were the people like?" I asked.

Burt and Anne looked at me a bit strangely when I said that, as though it were a silly thing to ask.

"So friendly," came the cheerful reply. "Especially when they find out you're from New Zealand." She turned to Anne. "I did exactly as you recommended; based myself in London and travelled abroad from there; a weekend in Paris, three days each in Spain and Italy. It was simply marvellous!"

The two of them continued to chat animately, Bev repeating many of Anne's habitual expressions. They were even dressed similarly, both of them in knitted sleeveless tops, though it didn't suit Bev so well with her skinny arms.

Burt soon lost interest in the topic and struck up a separate conversation with Steve. This moved from work to the economy, to politics, and from there to the subject of Burt's new car. Not that I paid much attention. I was considerably more entertained by Bev's tales of Europe.

After the dinner, as Burt picked away at the crumbs in the empty cartons, Bev and Steve made the announcement: They had got engaged. The rest of us gazed up in silence for a moment, then Burt leapt to his feet and toasted the happy couple with his can of beer. Steve raised his own can, I held forth my glass of cola, and the women presented their glasses of wine. Cigars were then produced by Steve for himself, Burt and I. It almost choked me to smoke mine and left me feeling queasy for the rest of the evening, but how could I have refused? I was touched, and slightly amazed, that he had even thought of me.

"Two weddings this year, then," declared Burt, beer in one hand, his cigar in the other. He grinned down at me. "You'll be next, eh! You'll be next..."

In this manner I learnt he and Anne were already engaged. And while they all chuckled at my embarrassment, I could only hope that, if I 'were' next, it would be with someone I could get along with better than they got along together. At least Bev and Steve were happy.

Great was my surprise, therefore, when I returned home one night to hear them arguing in the living room. I was too bewildered to take another step; just stood there in the hallway listening. You would have thought people like them could find happiness in each other. You'd like to think that. I had this tragic premonition about Steve right then, bizarre as it seemed, like he was going to kill himself or something. Hell, it seemed all anyone ever did on this planet was argue.

*

Four trolleys burst out of the aisles at the same time and made a run for the fast lane. The guy in the orange sweater got cut off by the middle-aged woman, who in turn collided with the thin, sour-faced woman, leaving the elderly lady to come through on the outside and nose her trolley in front.

They all of them had more than ten items in their trolleys, but since there was no one else waiting, I served the old woman. She was not in a hurry any more, however. Firstly, she paid by cheque, the most time-consuming method available and practically obsolete in the age of debit cards and eftpos and what have you. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she asked me to bag the groceries for her.

A decade or so back, early in my career as a checkout operator, we'd had assistants do the bagging for us. But they had disappeared during the company's 'streamlining' process, which had been hyped as some revolutionary method of making the supermarket run more efficiently, when all it had done was double our workload so that it took twice as long to serve everybody.

Having done the bagging as requested, I turned next to the middle-aged woman, who had come in second and piled her items onto the conveyor belt. Even as I served her, an overweight fellow of similar vintage rushed hastily up and added an armful of groceries to hers.

The customers behind said nothing, as if it were not happening; as though everyone were behaving in a perfectly civilised manner. But when I scanned the items and hit a snag with the bar codes, they grew increasingly fidgety and took to tutting and huffing and rolling their eyes.

The sour-faced woman was up next, followed by the man in the orange sweater. By this time the queue had lengthened considerably and I went into robot mode. I did not even look at the people's faces; just greeted them as 'Sir' or 'Madam,' scanned their items, accepted their payment and bid them good day.

A pack of cigarettes dropped onto the belt in front of me, as if from the ceiling. Extending my vision I perceived the stiff, grey fibres of a business suit.

"Hello, Sir. How are you today?"

"How do you think I am?! I've spent half the morning waiting in this queue for a pack a bluddy fags!"

I had no reply to offer, just scanned the cigarettes and took the coins he tossed down.

"Aren't you going to put them in a bag for me?" the next customer exclaimed.

I ignored her, already serving the customer after, robot mode.

She snatched up a plastic bag and started filling it herself. "Well I never! You people ought to take some pride in your work."

Suzy, naturally, was late back from lunch. She came out with the usual line about it being only a few minutes and why did I always get so worked up about a few minutes, and I told her it was almost ten minutes out of my break and that was a big deal to me. She laughed and said my watch was fast, then began serving the next customer before I had chance to respond.

I went into the tea room to eat my sandwiches. Dougal was standing behind Tom, sucking on a bottle of cola.

"You gotta get with the times," he was saying. "The Paleolithic age is over."

Tom paused as he brought a triangle of pizza to his mouth. "Know what you are,
Dougal - A fuzzy-haired, four-eyed, bow-legged parrot."

"Well, thank you for that intellectual observation," Dougal giggled, beaming around at the girls.

"It is easy to see how you have risen to the lofty rank of floor supervisor."

"More'n you'll ever be," Tom scoffed over his shoulder, then wolfed down the pizza.

"Oh!" Dougal feigned surprise. "That's odd, Thomas, 'Cuz I'm going on the journalism course next year."

"Said that last year! An' don't start thinking you're better than the rest of us either."

Dougal bounced along to the end of the table, the customary idiotic smile in place. "Feeling a little inadequate, are we?" He beamed at the girls again, as if expecting an applause.

I finished my tea and went out to get a haircut. It took about twenty minutes to find a place where you didn't need an appointment. And then it was one of those trendy hair studios where the people were too cool to talk to you; just charged you about five times as much as you were expecting to pay then sent you out the door with one of their personalised business cards. They gave me such an effeminate haircut I spent the rest of the lunch hour walking around in the rain trying to get rid of it. A short, bearded guy in a queue at a Fast Cash machine saw me go by several times and laughed his stupid-looking head off. I felt a sudden urge to go over and kick his teeth in for him. See how he'd laugh then! But I didn't, of course.

The staff had a field-day over my ridiculous hairdo, which the elements had only made more bizarre. Even the manager emerged from his office to see what all the fuss was about, and he practically laughed himself into tears when he saw, his pallid bald spot visible among the fiery wreath of orange hair as he doubled over in mirth. It seemed an eternity until six o'clock.

The gym was across the other side of town and I had to walk along the main streets, in the middle of rush hour, the gale blowing the rain directly into my face.

Walking those streets was an art-form, if you wanted to stay out of trouble. First of all, it was vitally important not to stray onto the right-hand side of the footpath, or else people would slam right into you for being on the wrong side. If you wanted to get in or out of a store you had to wait for a break and duck across the footpath as quickly as possible, apologising profusely to anyone who might have been forced to check their stride. It paid to be careful about catching anyone's eye as well, because they might take it as a challenge and slam into you. And there were guys who would get all snarly-faced and threaten to smash your face in for you. It was not a good idea to avoid looking at people altogether, however, and especially not to look down into your bag or at a newspaper or anything, because then they might cross the footpath and slam into you just to show you how careless you were being. It was also worth bearing in mind that a lot of people objected to being overtaken, and especially to anyone walking too quickly, so it was safest to stay at the same pace as the general flow.

Those were the basic rules, but when it rained you had little chance even if you'd mastered them, and on the way to the gym I was slammed into by several people and forced to apologise to one of the snarly-faces. I had a mind to slam into one of them back, but I didn't want to end up in a fight or anything.

I got to the gym half an hour before my class and decided to kill time on the punching bag. It was in a corner of the weights room near the cycling and rowing machines. I wasn't much interested in boxing but I enjoyed slamming my fists into the big hard bag sometimes. It gave me a sense of satisfaction or relief or something and made me feel good.

I'd been at it for a few minutes when I was startled by a weird, high-pitched giggling behind me. Glancing around, I came face to face with an obese, heavily-tattooed fellow with bushy hair. He elbowed the guy beside him, a similar specimen in appearance, who wasn't smiling.

"Ooh, wotta ya reckon, Koro?".

"Duzn't know what he's doing, bro,'" the other replied, and the high-pitched giggling startled me again.

So I gave up on the bag and headed for the aerobics studio. As I passed through reception a stocky guy emerged from behind the counter and cut me off. He had a shaved head, dense black moustache and copious tattoos.

"I's watching you on the punching bag, bro,'" he said, shaking his bald head gravely. "You got no technique, eh."

With that he swung up onto the counter and sat there, probably to avoid neck-ache from looking up at me. I figured him for a weights instructor or something, so smiled politely back.

"Well, I'm not planning to take on Tyson just yet."

He blinked seriously, looking slightly down at me now. "Yeah, but your legs were all over the place, bro.' I's watching you."

"Oh." I nodded, like I cared less. "So, you're a boxing coach?"

He broke into a toothless chuckle, seemingly flattered by the idea. "No, no. Not me, cuz. I just wanted to tell you dat. You got no technique."

I kept the smile on and continued through to the aerobics studio, robot mode.

Timmy-Jay took the first class, blitz aerobics, involving a lot of sprinting on the spot, high kicks and suchlike. He was attired in basic black this evening, his skin-tight leotard rolled up around the thighs. His receding dark curls had been bleached ginger since Thursday's class, and there was now a stud in his right eyebrow to go with the ones in his nose and nether lip.

All the regulars had their spots and I had mine next to the wall just a few paces from the door. It wouldn't have been appropriate for a beanpole like me to progress into the middle and block everyone else's view, and neither did I feel inclined to go down the back where it was always so crowded with cool people.

Being sort of a beanpole, I tended to resemble something like a giant stick insect when it came to high knees. Timmy-Jay would be barking, "Getcha knees up! hup! hup! hup!" and mine would be practically hitting me in the chest. I could see in the mirror how ridiculous I looked. And Timmy-Jay liked to mimic me sometimes, with comical exaggeration. It would make everyone grin, so he'd do it again.

He put us through about a million press-ups and by the end of it my arms were trembling violently with the effort. I didn't realise what was going on until I heard the laughter, then looked up to see I was the only one still doing them

"Whoa! He da man!" Timmy-Jay announced, feigning an American accent.

I peered sheepishly around at the grinning faces.

Timmy-Jay rolled his eyes and licked his lips theatrically. "Oh, yeah, folks! He da man!"

Tracy came in toward the end of the class and took her customary spot right in front of me. Her hair was bleached sort of yellow and she was impossibly tanned for winter. She began to prance about, a pear-shaped body in a g-string leotard, her buttocks so prominent I could make out the dimples. Once or twice she glanced over her shoulder and caught my eye. I decided it was time to send her a message and moved across to the other side, not caring that I totally incensed somebody by encroaching on their territory. When Tracy looked over her shoulder again and saw nobody there, her eyes searched around until she found me, then her expression changed instantly to hatred.

Her class was next, low-impact aerobics. I always stuck around for that because blitz got me so pumped up I wanted to keep going another hour, and I wasn't much for doing weights or riding the cycle machines or anything.

This particular evening, however, Tracy threw a lot of changes into the routines, so that those of us who came regularly found ourselves cavorting off in all directions. Some of the others looked fairly irritated about it too.

"So, ladies, how is everything?" Tracy got chatting, addressing all but three of us in the class.

"Some racy outfits out there tonight! No wonder we've got a couple of guys lurking about, eh."

She glanced directly across at me from the stage, looking slightly downward now. "Know what I hate?" she went on, like this would be upper-most in our thoughts at that very moment. "The gawky beanpole type. They look so ridiculous - especially in shorts!"

Everyone grinned, a few of the girls laughed out loud, and Tracy stood up there on the stage with a self-satisfied smirk, a pear-shaped instructor in a g-string leotard, sucking her Gatorade, as if expecting an applause.

Neither Anne nor Bev were home that evening. Probably they were staying over at their boyfriends' places. They tended to do that when they weren't fighting with them. Nonetheless, it gave me a very strange feeling when I woke up next morning to find I was still alone in the house, as though everyone had disappeared over the edge of the world and left me on my own.

The phone had been ringing incessantly, though I had not bothered to answer it because the phone was never for me. But now I was beginning to think there might be some emergency, as it had been ringing non-stop since before dawn.

Next time it rang, about ten seconds after I had this thought, I picked up the receiver.

"I'm calling about the house."

"House?"

"The house for sale, in the paper."

"House for sale?"

He said the telephone number and it was ours.

It occurred to me that, if our house were being sold, they would use the owner's number, not ours, since we were only renting.

There was a pause, then the voice replied, "Sez to ask for Burt."

"Burt? He doesn't live here. Look, give me your number and I'll have him call you."

Before leaving for work I'd filled a page of the message pad with the contact details of people who had called about the house.

And the telephone was still ringing when I returned home that evening. After filling another two pages of the pad, I decided the next call would be the last before I took it off the hook.

"Been any calls about the house?" It was a metallic version of Burt's voice on the line.

"About five million."

"Yeah? Choice! Take any messages?''

"Three pages full. Why didn't you use your own number?"

"Look, I don't have a residential line, okay, and not many people have a mobile. If I advertise with a mobile number the charge might put people off calling."

I wondered what kind of people were in the market to buy a house but weren't prepared to call a mobile phone because of the charge.

"Are you going to be here this evening? If not, I'm taking the phone off the hook. I haven't had any peace since I got home."

I was startled by a metallic version of Anne's voice. "Don't you dare take that phone off the hook. The company will put a buzzer through it and charge us for it."

I doubted they would do that, and what would they charge anyway? Fifty cents?

"Okay, I won't take it off the hook."

As soon as she hung up I took it off the hook.

I watched the evening movie on television. It was a remake of an old classic but turned out to be a disappointment. The actors were poorly casted, I thought. They just went for pretty-boys these days, whereas those old film guys had had a lot more character. They'd made more of an impression on me, those old film actors.

Then it was the ad's break, and some depraved lunatic was screaming at me with a big, greedy-looking grin all over his face, when I heard the front door slam. Rapid footsteps advanced up the hall and Anne flounced into the room, followed a moment later by Burt.

"I thought I told you not to take the phone off the hook," she seethed down at me.

Burt marched across and replaced the receiver. "You might a cost me a sale, mate. A hundred grand we're talkin.'"

I shrugged to show my indifference over a hundred thousand dollars. What did he expect me to do - drop to my knees and grovel for forgiveness?

"There's three pages of numbers for you to call," I said.

That shut him up for a while. He went over and started examining the numbers, as if they would tell him anything before he called them.

"Yuv had it off ever since we rang," Anne went on. "We tried calling every fifteen minutes."

"That was just me busy taking messages," I said halfheartedly. They had seen the receiver lying on the table.

She shook her head slowly and tutted like a schoolteacher when you got the answer wrong. "You might a cost Burt a hundred grand."

I had completely lost interest in the film by then and went to bed. Besides, I was tired from having been woken up so early that morning. But I found I was too angry to sleep. I just lay there in the dark, blinking at the cracks of electric light around the door, wondering how it could be that people treated me like ceiling fungi then made me out to be the villain.

*

Next morning, the red digits on my alarm clock showing 6:52, I heard the phone ringing, a piercing drill in the quiet predawn. Then it stopped. And the next time it rang only a couple of times. Anne must have been home answering it. I sandwiched my head in my pillow and tried to sleep. But there was no way to keep that noise out and half an hour later I climbed out of bed.

Wandering through to the living room, I was surprised to find not Anne, but the bird-like frame of Bev at the phone, holding the receiver with one hand and writing on the message pad with the other.


"That thing's gunna ring all day," I warned her.

It rang before she had chance to answer, and I waited while she took another message.

"Burt's using us as his personal secretaries," I continued. "He should be here to take the calls."

"Look," said Bev, "I've got my own problems, okay. I don't need this right now."

I stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded by her answer. She had spoken as though the whole thing were my fault. The phone rang again and I slumped down on the couch while she answered it, chuckling wryly to myself; a manic chuckle, even in my own ears.


Then Bev disappeared into the shower and I had to take the calls. The first one was a woman and she simply asked for Burt, without a 'hello' or a 'please' or anything.

"Sorry, Burt doesn't live here; just uses the number," I replied a little curtly.

I expected her to leave a message but she just hung up without another word.

That evening I was home alone again. I put the phone right beside me on the couch so I would have time to replace the receiver if Anne and Burt came back. But when I heard the door slam around ten o'clock and their footsteps advancing up the hall, I somehow knew I was in trouble again.

"What's the matter?" I asked, and immediately regretted doing so. It sounded so 'guilty.'

"What's the matter?!" Burt glowered fiercely, coming and standing over me. "My mother called here this morning and you were rude to her. That's what's the matter!"

"And Bev was up before seven answering your calls!" I snapped back. I had no other defence now, other than to get angry.

"We're talking about my mother, mate!"

Such was his show of self-righteous outrage I couldn't suppress a slight chuckle, and for an instant he looked as if he might thump me. I could see the veins in his eyes and the pores in his olivy skin. His cologne smelt like kerosene. He hovered over me, twisting his shoulders from side to side, like he were Tyson limbering up for the fight. Probably he expected me to drop to my knees and grovel for mercy or something.

Anne's head popped out from behind him. "You're a really inconsiderate person, you know that."
It was all I could do to contain my rage. I wanted to shout at the pair of them. 'Inconsiderate?! Me?! Who's been answering your calls for the past two days?!' But I didn't, of course.

"He's a rude bastard," Burt snarled, and stalked back over to the message pad.

When they had gone again, leaving me there with a constantly ringing phone, I took it off the hook and waited for the movie to come on. There were more of the insane adverts but I was too angry to see them anymore.

*

It was a modern house in an affluent suburb. At the end of the driveway was a concrete patio to one side and a flower and vegetable garden to the other. A trail of smoke spiralled out of the chimney and drifted away into the clear blue sky.

The door was answered by a middle-aged man. He was slim and dressed casually. His name was Abraham and he showed me through to the dining room, then poured tea from a silver pot. A boiled egg sat on a plate with its top knocked off, together with a few slices of toast. Breakfast? It was past noon.

We went downstairs to look at the room. It was fully-furnished; equipped even with a writing desk, lamp and electric heater. The windows looked out toward the Ngaio hills.

"Very nice," I said.

"Well, it's yours, if you want it."

I could hardly believe my ears. It was far and away the nicest room I had seen, in the nicest house I had been to, the rent was no more than the others, and it was being offered to me right there and then. Yet I felt a strange urge to decline. It was too perfect.

In the event I had to accept, of course. Were there some hidden trap, I could always look for another place. But right then my priority was to get out of Anne's, and I wasn't going to do any better than this in a hurry.

I moved in the following weekend. It was not Abraham who answered the door, however, but an overweight fellow in a baggy, worn-out tracksuit. He prised it open, after I had rung the bell several times, his hair dishevelled; his jowls a mask of greyish stubble. He would have looked at home among the drunks you saw rolling around in the downtown bus shelters.

He eyed me skeptically before permitting me to bring my things inside. These amounted to a sports-bag full of clothes, a few books and some toiletry, and barely made an impression on the abundant drawer and wardrobe space I had in my new bedroom.

Once settled in, I went upstairs and joined the overweight fellow in the living room. Bob was slumped in an armchair, watching rugby on TV. There was a flagon of beer on the coffee table beside his feet, and a cigarette burning in an ashtray. In the corner a cast iron wood-burner blazed away. The room was oppressively warm and reeked of smoke.

"Where's Abraham?" I asked. "I need to pay him the rent."

Bob belched indifferently. "The Minister of Relaxation is out playing tennis."

"Minister of Relaxation? Is that his job?"

Bob removed his eyes from the screen and turned them slowly toward me; large brown, slightly-bloodshot eyes. "His real job? No, cuz, he doesn't have a real job. He was put out to pasture."

"You mean, he was made redundant?" I gazed around the amply-furnished room, with its paintings on the walls, shelves full of books and copious ornaments among the pot-plants on the window sills. "He must've received a tidy sum."

The eyes blinked at me a few times. "Sharp as a razor, aren't ya, cuz! And what is it you do?"

"I'm a check-out operator at Whopping Shop-"

"Ha! ha! ha! What kind a job is that!"

Bob took a long swig of beer, smacked his lips contentedly and belched again. "I'm in the construction bizniss meself, cuz. Real man's work. None a this sittin' round in a stuffy li'l office. Fresh air and physical exercise. That's the life for me!"

I surveyed the chubby features of the bushy-haired specimen before me and struggled to reconcile the image with his words.

"Course, it's rugged work," he went on. "No job for pansies. Ever been on a scaffolding twelve floors up in a gale-force wind? Nah, course ya haven't. Well, I'll tell ya, cuz, those skirting boards turn to sails in your hands. We had a bloke went over just a few months back."

"You mean he fell? Was he killed?"

The gelatinous eyes grew tragic. "Company passed it off as suicide. Didn't wunna fork out a big compensation package. Ol' Hemi had a wife and six kids, y'know."

"Did anyone hear him scream? A man would scream if he fell, wouldn't he?"

Bob stopped in the middle of lighting another cigarette and fixed his gaze on me. "Don't be an idiot! Hemi wasn't a bluddy pansy."

I sat back on the sofa and let Bob do the talking. And this he was happy to do - for the rest of the evening, and for the next few evenings to come. Mostly he complained about the government and the economy, and how society in general had deteriorated since the 'good ol' days.' It was clear that everyone was to blame for Bob's problems except him.

On occasions he would don his 'All Blacks' tracksuit and do some stretches in the living room, like he was limbering up to go jogging or something. In fact, he couldn't stretch too far in any direction, and these exertions were invariably accompanied by much grunting, face-pulling and cracking of the joints. He'd keep the top zipped up all through the routine, though his great belly threatened to burstthrough the synthetic material at any moment. Bob never did actually go out jogging, however; just limbered up in his tracksuit then collapsed into his armchair again, wheezing and panting like he'd run a marathon.

He, at least, had reasonable taste in television programmes; which was to say, he mostly watched sports, so I tolerated his rants and sat there with him in the evenings.

By and by he got around to the subject of rugby, and I suggested it was all a bit of a sham these days because the national champions were professionals competing in an amateur competition. This Bob dismissed as nonsense. The Frenchies and Saffas might get up to that sort of business, but never New Zealand.

I offered a few more observations, and it was necessary for him to correct me on these points also, interrupting me for the purpose. For Bob had played rugby in his youth, back in the 'good ol' days' when 'Pinetree and the Unsmiling Giants' had ruled the world and rugby had been a game for 'real' men - like him, I supposed he meant. Bob did not like this 'ten-man kicking game' they played nowadays, and he was not so sure he agreed with the notion of a 'Rugby World Cup' either. That all sounded a bit too glitzy for Bob.

Nevertheless, he deigned to put his amazing powers of deduction to work and predict the World Cup would be won by New Zealand. The Aussies were too arrogant, the Poms too soft, the Frenchies too unpredictable, and the Saffas were cheats - so it was a good thing they wouldn't be taking part - and the Welsh, well, they and New Zealand may have contested some of the mightiest clashes in the history of the human race back in Bob's day, but, alas, those golden years were gone and the Welsh too had become soft, like the Poms. No one else could be taken seriously, the way Bob saw it. The Irish were backward, the Latins too hot-blooded, the Islanders all brawn, the Japs too small, and as for the Yanks, they should stick to that sissies' game they played with helmets and padding on.

I got to my feet and began goose-stepping around the room, my right arm thrust out before me. "Heil Kiwis!"

Bob gazed back at me as if I had just plucked an eyeball out or something. He didn't talk to me for a while after that either, which must have taken some considerable effort on his part.

*

Abraham advised me a tenant had been found for the fourth room. Her name was Erin and she would be moving in the following week. I was going to be living with a female again. How was it going to be this time? Would she be an indifferent snob like Anne, or a disappointment like Bev, or could my Brooke Shields-lookalike fantasy possibly come true this time?

I was out on the patio taking my washing off the line one evening, when an odd-looking fellow rode up the drive on a black bicycle. It was only when the rider removed the neon green helmet and stood there under the porch light that I realised my error.

"Hullo, I'm Erin," she said, and gave me a sweaty handshake.

I observed that she had crooked teeth, many pimples and thin, mousy hair that looked as though it had been cut by a machete-wielding psychopath. Her smile was that of a Halloween pumpkin. Erin, at least, seemed friendly enough, and would surely prove a more amiable living companion than beer-guzzling, belching Bob.

Besides, she was the newcomer. I had unexpectedly found myself in the position of being one of the 'established' tenants while somebody new moved in. It was up to her to get along with me, and if, for some reason, we fell out, she'd be the one who would have to move.

By the following evening she was firmly entrenched in the living room, sitting in Bob's armchair, the remote control in her lap, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee from a giant mug with 'C'mon Canterbury' written on it in red and black. I sat down on the couch behind her with the intention of getting to know her. But she was engrossed in a TV soap.

Bob, meanwhile, was seated in the dining room with Abraham, him drinking beer, smoking and ranting away as ever, Abraham trying vainly to read the newspaper, too polite to ignore him. Abraham would glance down at his paper whenever Bob paused, then quickly look up as soon as Bob got going again, all the while contributing a thoughtful hum of accord now and then, as though audience to some profound philosophy rather than just Bob's monotonous babble.

It was about a week before Bob broke his silence with me. He was in his now customary spot beside Abraham when I walked into the room.

"Hey, you need a car, don't ya, son?" He grinned up at me.

"Me?" I gazed suspiciously at him. "Not especially. Why?"

"Young fullah like yourself ought a be takin' girls out 'stead a sitting round here all day."

I was tempted to say, 'Mind your own business, you fat slob,' but Abraham was there, and I wouldn't have said it anyway.

"I can't afford a car."

Bob took another long swig of beer, belched with particular satisfaction, smacked his lips and gleamed at Abraham, as though the pair of them shared some knowledge which was beyond the comprehension of a mere youngster like myself (although Abraham looked as puzzled as I was). The gelatinous eyes slipped back to me.

"Have a seat," he told me, pulling up the one beside him, though I'd no sooner sat down in it than he got to his feet himself and began plodding back and forth. "Well, I won some dough on the horses this week and fought I might get meself a new set a wheels, eh. The ol' Ford's a rust-bucket but she runs okay. Fought I might give her to you."

I blinked stupidly up at him as I took this in. I did not need a car, but, gee, it would be nice to have one. He was right; a young man like me should be taking out girls. Nonetheless, while one part of me was off fantasizing about this, the other was planted firmly on the ground, wondering why Bob would do such a thing for me, especially after I had been so rude the previous week.

Call me a phony, but I made an effort to be polite to Bob after that. I listened to all of his one-side conversations and agreed with everything he said without venturing to offer an opinion of my own. He, meanwhile, provided me with daily updates on his search for a new car. It was a difficult task, of course, finding just what he was looking for.

As the weeks went by, I began to suspect he was stringing me along, but I had built my dreams up around that old Ford and could not let them go so easily. Probably I was too embarrassed to admit even to myself that Bob the slob had put one over on me.

It came as no surprise to arrive home one day and find his door wide open and the room empty of all but the standard furniture. Abraham confirmed that Bob had moved out.

And I really had to laugh. It didn't matter about the car anymore. I was just glad he was gone.

*

Erin moved upstairs into Bob's old room, which also came as some relief to me. She'd had a habit of entering my room unannounced, for trivial reasons, like wanting to know where something was, or if something she'd found lying around was mine, or if I knew when Abraham would be home. There was no lock on the door and I didn't want her to catch me undressed or anything, lest she think me a pervert, so I'd asked her to knock before entering. But then she'd moved upstairs and stopped coming into my room.

One evening I went upstairs in hope of catching the sports news. Inevitably she was in there; a look on her face like she was chewing broken glass. When I sat down on the couch she stubbed out her cigarette and changed channels, then complained she could see the reflection of my head in the TV screen. So I moved to the other side, but still she complained, and no matter where I sat it seemed she could see the reflection of my head. Eventually I returned to my original spot and told her she would just have to put up with seeing the reflection of my head in the screen, since my head had as much right to be there as hers did.

She flicked through the channels some more, before settling on something that interested her. It was a puny guy with spectacles and he was explaining how his upcoming sitcom was going to be all about 'accountability,' as though 'accountability' were the latest breakthrough cure for all the world's ails, and that we must force ourselves to embrace it, no matter how painful the process.

"If ya broke up with yir girlfriend," the puny guy was saying, "maybe it was yir fault."

I chuckled at Erin. "Only a complete moron would watch that."

She lit another cigarette and inhaled bitterly. "Don't talk bullshit. What would you know? You're just threatened, that's your trouble."

"I'm threatened by mindless stupidity? Maybe."

"Don't try to ram your views down my throat, please. An' don't get any ideas about coming in here and watching sports either."

I knew I was conceding status by failing to reply to that. But this was another of my weaknesses. I could never think up my arguments quick enough. They were all there, inside my head, but I would get agitated and confused, and find myself unable to locate them. Or else they would come out mixed up and nonsensical. Besides, I had learned by now that there was not a lot of point in arguing with people about anything, because they would only despise you for it. I was not capable of making expressions as ugly as theirs nor thinking up insults as nasty. So it was easier to just concede status.

"And get your stupid-looking head out a the telly!"

I didn't bother to point out to her that it was not my stupid-looking head she could see in the television screen but her own.

From that point on it was with a scornful tone that Erin addressed me, if she deigned to address me at all. She barged past me in the hallway, changed channels every time I entered the living room, and slammed cupboard doors if we happened to be in the kitchen at the same time. So I just kept out of her way, as much as I could, spending my evenings downstairs listening to music. I lived in a house with all the modern conveniences, I had a furnished bedroom, and nobody made me dash home to cook them meals or answer their telephone calls all day. I did not want to put my place here in jeopardy.

But I had this unsettling premonition. My theory was that a premonition amounted to something you got when the signs were so vague you only registered them subconsciously, like a subtle change in someone's posture, or a fleeting look in their eye. Anyway, call it a premonition, a sixth sense, or whatever, the feeling intensified when Abraham told me he was going to be away a few days camping. I could not sleep properly at all. Once I came suddenly awake in the middle of the night with my heart beating in my ears. I realised that I had actually grown afraid of Erin.

Abraham had barely departed when my door flew open and I looked up from my bed to see Erin standing there, glowering down at me with all the hatred in the universe.

"Would you mind washing your bluddy dishes! I'm not here to clean up after you!"

I could think only of a coffee cup and side-plate I had on the bench the previous night.

"Get out a my room."

"I'm not in your room."

I got up from my bed to close the door myself but she stood there in the doorway to prevent me. I closed it anyway, shoving it firmly into her. Unexpectedly she shoved back, almost cracking me on the nose. The scornful cackle on the other side further enraged me. I booted the door and it slammed shut so cleanly I knew Erin must have got out of the way.

Hauling the wardrobe across the doorway, I did not leave my room again until midway through the afternoon. The idea of facing Erin now repulsed me.

Eventually I had to eat, of course, so crept upstairs to make some lunch. There I encountered a pile of dirty plates, pots and cups in the sink, and went through to the living room where I could hear Erin watching the television.

"Those aren't my dishes. Abraham must a left them."

"Actually they're mine," she said quietly, without turning her head to look at me. "Why should I wash my dishes if you're too lazy to wash yours?"

So that was the way it was going to be. The dishes piled up more and more until there was no room on the benches or anywhere else in the kitchen. I washed a few items that I used regularly and kept them in my room, rinsing them off in the bathroom after each meal. Then one evening I arrived home from work to find them gone, and Erin walking around in the hallway whistling a cheerful tune.

"You'll be kicked out for this!" I yelled at her. "You've got no right to go into my room."

She stopped whistling and blinked back at me. "Oh, I'll be kicked out, will I? An' wot's gunna happen when Abraham sees all the dishes in the sink? I took photos, y'know."

It seemed an odd thing to say, about the photos, until I went upstairs to the kitchen and found all the dishes gone. Neither were they in the cupboards, nor the utensils in the drawer. It remained a mystery to me until the next morning, when I went to take a shower and discovered the whole lot - pots, bowls, plates, utensils, everything - piled up in the bathtub, which served as the shower floor.

A stinging pain shot through my back as I retreated downstairs. I spun around to see that hideous head at the top of the staircase, cackling down at me. Picking up the teaspoon I made as if to hurl it back, though I wouldn't have done it, of course. It wasn't worth jeopardising my place in this house over. The head quickly vanished anyway.

"Do that again and it'll flatten' you," I yelled threateningly.

She poked her ugly face back around the corner. "I'll just knee you in the balls. That's all it takes to drop a man."

I went into my bedroom, pulled the wardrobe across the door, and lay down on my bed to read. But I could not concentrate on the words and had to keep going over the same passages again and again. More than anger, I felt humiliation. I had allowed her to get away with assaulting me. What kind of wimp was I becoming? But to retaliate would be to stoop to her level. It might get me kicked out, or even into trouble with the police. She was a woman after all. But just how crazy was she? If I retaliated would she burst into my room in the dead of night and stab me with a carving knife or something? This seemed entirely realistic to me then, so I knew that I was afraid of her.

I was still trying to read, though basically just thinking angry thoughts, when I heard the whir of the vacuum out in the hallway. It grew steadily louder, and there came the banging of the plastic head against my door. Why in hell couldn't she just leave me alone? It was time to have it out with her, once and for all.

I hauled the wardrobe aside again, but before I could open the door it flew open in front of me and Erin charged in, wielding the plastic vacuum pipe.

"You might at least do some bluddy housework, chauvinist pig!" she yelled, and whacked me on the head.

Seizing the pipe off her, I shoved her out of my room. She lunged back, driving her knee up so high she almost toppled over backward. But I had instinctively turned side-on and her knee merely glanced off my hip. A rough push sent her tumbling onto the hallway floor, rolling up on her shoulders, so that she really looked quite ridiculous with her over-sized backside in the air. I almost felt sorry for her.

The evening Abraham returned I stayed in the dining room. I wanted to be there to defend myself. But Erin, curiously, did not say anything about the dishes, and I supposed she must have been as embarrassed about the whole affair as I was. In fact, she seemed weirdly cheerful, even addressing me once or twice while chatting with Abraham and giving me that big pumpkin smile. I felt horribly uncomfortable, as though we had seen each other with our clothes off or something. But it was better to leave all that childishness behind, so I played along with her, like nothing had happened.

There came a gentle tap on my door later that night, so faint I was not sure I had heard anything at all until it came again. Getting up to answer it, I discovered Abraham standing in the hallway, his head slightly bowed, his eyes peering humbly up at me.

"Er, sorry to disturb you," he said, looking very awkward. "It's just that, well, I've received a complaint from Erin. She claims you assaulted her while I was away."

I stared back at him for a moment, unable to reply as I pondered what else she might have told him after I had left the dining room. "She attacked me with the vacuum pipe. It was self-defence."

"Oh, dear," he sighed feebly, scratching the back of his head. "It's just that she's threatened to go to the police."

The spectre of a prison cell entered my mind. Darkness, solitude, hours of boredom. I felt the first real wave of panic. "She's crazy! She charged into my room and attacked me!"

Abraham practically went into convulsions of head-scratching, shuffling his feet all the while.

"Look, she's upstairs watching TV and I'm here in my bedroom. Wouldn't it be the other way 'round if I'd attacked her?"

At this he ceased scratching and began to nod thoughtfully. "Yes, well, it might be best if we kept it that way. I've got a small TV in my room you can use. I never watch it."

"It's okay," I told him. "I'm not much of a TV fan either."

He seemed satisfied with the arrangement, but I was disappointed it had come to this; that I had caused trouble for this peaceful man so that he now deemed it necessary to as good as bar me from the living room.

In any case, it was only a few weeks after this when I looked through Erin's door, which had been left wide open, and noticed the room empty aside from the standard furniture. Abraham explained she had got behind with her rent and moved back in with her mother.

*

The spare downstairs bedroom had been occupied by a fellow of about my own age, with whom I never had chance to have a discussion, since he was constantly inside his room, venturing not once into the living room while I was there, and neither did I ever come across him in the kitchen. There was one occasion, late at night, when I'd heard him yelling abuse at Erin from his doorway; about what, I could only guess. It was a little bizarre, with him being the new guy. I could never have yelled at anyone that way. That aside, he remained little more to me than a figure in a collared shirt, slacks and tie who passed me in the hall or on the stairs now and then.

The upstairs room remained empty for some time after Erin left. When I asked Abraham about this he explained he hadn't advertised. He had been too busy with his Christian group and tennis and tramping club committees. That's when I had this stroke of genius. If I offered to look for someone for him, it might help restore his trust in me after the trouble with Erin. And, more to the point, I would be able to choose whoever I wanted. Abraham gratefully accepted, as he was going away again, this time on a skiing trip.

I called the newspaper next day and placed an advertisement in the Female Flatmate Wanted column. That column, I noticed, was about twenty times as long as the Male Flatmate Wanted column, and at least three times as long as the Flatmate Wanted column which did not specify gender. I wondered if anyone would even call, with so much competition.

Saturday morning I was woken at seven by the first call, and there were about ten more before lunch time. I began to fantasize about the Brooke Shields-lookalike again, though few of the women actually showed up, and none of those who did come seemed interested in the place except for one middleaged lady who I promised I'd call back without any intention of doing so. It did occur to me she might have turned out to be a good match for Abraham, but, call me a selfish bastard, I had my heart set on finding the woman of my destiny.

It grew increasingly frustrating. How difficult to get a place when I'd been the one looking, yet how difficult now to find someone who wanted to move in with me. Sure, the Female Flatmate Wanted column was a hell of a lot longer than the Male Flatmate Wanted column, and many of the callers never even came around. Even so, I couldn't help thinking it was just 'me' that people didn't want to live with. By the second weekend I would've accepted just about anyone, if only for the company, but no one showed any interest.

I was in the process of calling the newspaper again to advertise for a third weekend, when Alan's head poked out of its bedroom door and actually spoke to me.

"Someone called about the room. She's been calling all week but you're never here. I told her to come round at eight tonight. Name's Rebecca."

The head, which I'd only ever seen half a dozen times before, disappeared back into the bedroom. I'd got the impression he was even a little excited about this Rebecca coming around at eight, though I couldn't see why, since even if she did move in, he'd probably never meet her.

When I answered the door just before eight and saw two quite presentable young women standing there, one blonde, the other dark, both of them in summer dresses, a series of thoughts occurred to me in rapid succession: Whichever of the two she was, she would never move in. If she did move in, she would already have a boyfriend. If she didn't already have a boyfriend, she would never be interested in me.

The blonde turned out to be Rebecca. She had been transferred to Wellington by her bank from some South Island town I'd never heard of, and she wanted to move in right away, if that was alright. It was a few awkward seconds before I could get my mouth into motion.

"So yull be moving in then?"

"Absolutely, if it's okay with you. This is so much nicer than any of the other places we looked at. Some of them were rully grotty."

"So yull be bringing your things over straight away?"

"Well, yes, if that's alright."

My voice came out a little squeaky and I paused to clear my throat. "Course it's alright. I'll get you the spare key and you can move in straight away."

When I was a child we'd had a cat called Chester, who used to sit out on the fence and try to bat down the gulls as they flew over. Then one day he'd succeeded, winging one of those big black gulls, and it was about three times his size. He'd just sat there on the fence, staring at it with his yellow eyes, a sort of bewildered expression on his face, while it hopped about in the grass with its broken wing.

I suppose I was a bit like Chester after Rebecca moved in. The first day she was there I spent the entire evening on the couch secretly gazing at her as she sat in Bob and Erin's old armchair watching TV. It wasn't that she was super attractive or anything. Only the women on TV ever really were. In fact, she was slightly overweight and bore the early signs of a double chin. But after Erin she seemed like a Goddess to me.

"It's gunna be so good to have someone nice around here," I blurted out. "The last girl was nuts. She attacked me with the vaccuum cleaner, y'know."

Rebecca gave me a look as though I'd just grinned at her with a mouthful of wriggling maggots or something. I realised I'd probably sounded a little pathetic, carrying on like that to someone who'd just moved in. Of course, it was true, but there were some things best unsaid, and I never seemed to know where that narrow little line was.

*

I was almost giddy with excitement as I jumped off the bus and sprinted up the driveway after work next day. The thought of spending another evening with Rebecca, and the indefinite procession of such evenings to come, somehow seemed way too good to be true for the likes of me.

I suspected she'd be in the living room already. Deeming it best not to appear over-eager, I went into the kitchen to make coffee first. I could hear the muffled burble of the TV through the wall, so I knew Rebecca was in the living room, since neither Abraham nor Alan ever watched it.
As I was making my coffee, however, I became aware of two voices which were too clear to be from the TV. One was Rebecca's. The other was a man's voice which I didn't recognise. My spirits plummeted at the realisation she had a man in there with her. I had known from the start it was too good to be true. She was out of my class.

I stood at the doorway eavesdropping for a few minutes, desperately hoping for something to be said that would tell me it was merely a friend, or perhaps a door-to-door salesman - anything but a boyfriend - and slowly I began to detect something vaguely familiar about the male voice. Poking my head around the corner I was startled to see Alan sitting in the other armchair.
My relief at it not being a boyfriend was tempered by the fact it was him. Why had he suddenly come out of hibernation? I was even a little offended. But mostly I was jealous. The delights of Rebecca's company were no longer exclusively mine, it appeared.

Alan gave me a chummy greeting when I walked in with my coffee, like we were best mates or something. I knew he was only trying to show Rebecca what a super-friendly guy he was. I stared down at his big false-looking smile and resolved to tell Rebecca what an unsociable bastard he really was, the moment he returned to his room.

They had pulled the armchairs closer to the TV, and a little closer together as well, I noticed, so that I was left sort of excluded on the couch behind them. And they were having one of those discussions people had about the economy. It might as well have been Greek to me, and I really didn't care to learn about it. But, boy, did it make me feel inadequate sitting back there on the couch, not knowing what they were going on about. Much worse, though, were my feelings of exclusion and envy.

"God, America's a sick society!" Rebecca turned to Alan.

I saw they were watching 'COPS' and there had been a big shoot-out in some alley.

Alan naturally concurred. "Everybody's gotta a gun there, y'know. Can't walk down the street without being shot at."

"Have you been there, Alan?" I interrupted. In fact, he was probably finished, but I felt like I was interrupting. "I mean, you must a been there and had people shooting at you while you were walking down the street."

I tried to make it sound like a sincere question, but they both ignored me and turned back to the TV.

"They're all idiots," Alan went on, talking to Rebecca as though I hadn't spoken. "Did you see them during the Olympics. They were so bluddy patriotic. It was sickening."

Rebecca hummed in accord. "I'd be rully embarrassed if New Zullunders behaved like that."

"God, no," Alan dismissed the notion. "We're much more down to earth than the Yanks."

I sprang to my feet and thrust out my right arm. "Heil Kiwis!" And with that began goose-stepping around the room, the finger of my left hand under my nose.

Rebecca frowned curiously at me as I reigned in my limbs and ruturned to the couch. "What's got into you?"

Alan shook his head and spoke in a murmur. "Lost his marbles, I'd say."

She seemed satisfied with his explantion, so I didn't bother offering one. Actually, I wasn't sure mine would have been any different. But suddenly I was feeling too depressed to care. There were two distinct entities in the room now; them and me. Them sitting in the armchairs together; me the insignificant clown in the background.

*

I knew it was hopeless, but I did it anyway. I wrote a love poem and slipped it under her door. I didn't even want to think about the consequences. Much as I tried, I could not picture myself with a woman like her. I wasn't sure I could picture myself with anyone at all. When I thought of my future I saw myself alone, though it was the last thing I wanted to be. Sometimes I imagined that I met the woman of my destiny, fell madly in love with her, and then she would die.

Rebecca did not say anything about the poem when I saw her next day, and the lack of any kind of expression on her face might have led me to believe she had not found it at all. But when Alan twisted his skinny, big-eared face around and smirked over his shoulder, I knew she had read it and either told him or shown him.

I sat back there on the couch, contemplating this with a mixture of anxiety, humiliation and despair. One emotion rolled into the next, over and again, while I bided my time for more than an hour. At last Rebecca got up from her armchair. The ad's were on and there was a very suave couple sipping coffee on a patio. She collected the empty mugs at Alan's feet, along with the empty wrapper and tray from the chocolate biscuits they had shared, and went through to the kitchen. I stood up and followed, and as I did Alan glanced over his shoulder at me again.

I shut the kitchen door behind us. "Did you like my poem?"

"It was very cute," she said, without looking up while she made the coffee.

I didn't like the sound of that. 'Cute' meant you weren't being taken seriously. I stared down at the coffee jar and thought of the suave couple on their patio. It was true, of course. I was out of my class.

Rebecca opened her mouth to say something else, but at that moment Alan came through the door behind me. He moved in between us and looked first at her and then at me.

"She's not interested, okay," he told me.

I could see he thought he was a genuine super hero for telling me that, as though I were some crazed stalker who refused to take no for an answer.

"This is between me and Rebecca!" I retorted. "Now get out a the kitchen before I throw you out."

He took a step back when I said that, and for an instant he actually looked afraid. He was a skinny guy, average height, and looked the type who had never been in a fight in his life. I hovered menacingly, sensing I had this over him. Rebecca would see now who was the 'real' man around here.

"Oh, don't be so childish!" she scolded me.

The mocking tone in her voice succeeded in shaming me, so that I lowered my arms to my sides. Alan saw that the threat was gone and the hostility returned to his features.

"You're just a thug!" he sneered into my face, rising up onto the balls of his feet. "A check-out operator in a supermarket! What kind of future can you offer anyone? Christ, you can't even hold a normal conversation with anyone."

I glanced across at Rebecca, hoping she might dismiss all this as so much nonsense; perhaps even scold him, the way she had scolded me. But her eyes remained fixed on the electric jug, which was now coming to the boil. Her double-chin was prominent when she looked down like that, though she was no less beautiful to me. I turned back to Alan and, seeing him up close for the first time, realised he was a few years younger than I'd initially thought; probably no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven.

"This is none of your bizniss," I told him.

"Actually, it is," Rebecca said quietly.

I remained paralyzed on the spot for a moment, not wanting to comprehend what I was hearing.
"Stick to writing your pathetic li'l poems!" Alan snickered into my ear, then returned to the living room.

Rebecca poured the coffee and followed him, the two steaming mugs in her hands.

For at least twenty minutes afterward I remained in the kitchen, gazing through the window at the rough timber fence which separated our property from the neighbours.' I did not want to take my pain and humiliation back into the living room where its source lay. Nor did I want to take it downstairs to the solitude of my bedroom. It was as though I were floating somewhere on the edge of the universe; rejected, alone, not good enough; a weirdo who was incapable of holding normal conversations with people. And my despair was intense. I had always known she was too good for me. I had nothing to offer; no money, no assets, no prospects. That's why I had never been able to picture it.

*

The management skills course lasted a month and cost three hundred and ninety-nine dollars. I'd also had to pay for accommodation, since the course was in Palmerston North. And because I hadn't wanted to let my room at Abraham's go, I'd paid him rent for the month I'd been away; although he, naturally, had insisted on only charging me half. In all the course cost me most of my savings, and I'd taken up my holiday leave for the year as well. I wasn't even sure why I'd done it. I had no particular aspirations in that respect. I suppose I'd just needed to get away from Abraham's for a while, and I'd also thought it would be pretty cool to be able to tell people that I'd done that course; that I wasn't a mere check-out operator. I had a qualification in management skills. I had prospects. Abraham had told me the course would open up doors for me and soon enough I'd be moving up in the world. I'd liked the sound of that: 'opening up doors' and 'moving up in the world.' No one would be too good for me then. Not even Rebecca. And I'd known as soon as I'd made my decision that it was the right one, and that I would've regretted it if I'd passed the opportunity up. Neither had the course been as difficult as I'd feared. For the most part it had just been extremely boring. But the experience had taken my mind off Rebecca, and by the time it was over my despair had receded to a slow-burning ember. I wasn't even looking forward to seeing her again; letalone Alan. They wouldn't want to see me. That much was certain.

It was not Rebecca or Alan that I found seated in the living room the day I returned, however, but a thin, prune-faced dude in a black leather jacket and tapered jeans. He was sitting in Rebecca's armchair smoking a pipe, the wood-burner blazing away beside him. The room reeked of smoke from it, as well as the old dude's pipe, and the once cream wallpaper had turned a sickly grayish-beige, with black streaks toward the ceiling where the wood-burner was.

The old dude introduced himself as Benny, speaking in this raspy voice with a poncy English accent. His teeth were ginger with nicotine.

"Who left?" I asked. "Is Rebecca still here?"

"Webecca?" he looked puzzled. "I moved in last week and there was only Abwaham 'ere, til 'er Woyal 'Ighness awwived." He gestured with a nod toward Rebecca's old room, then returned his pipe to his mouth and puffed cheerfully.

"Her Royal Highness?"

"Penny. Awwived a few days ago."

'Benny and Penny?' It sounded like a cartoon duo. "Who's Penny?"

"University kid. Only been 'ere a few days, though you wouldn't think it to see the state of 'er woom. Toss seeds in there, they'll gwo!" He shook his head and chuckled, a sort of croaking, gurgling in his throat which deteriorated into a wheezing cough. The guy didn't have long, if you asked me.

The next three or four hours I spent sitting on the couch listening to his life story. Benny had been a member of the English Ballet Company during his youth and toured Europe with them, as the star performer, naturally, and there he had married a beautiful German model. He had then been called up for service in Vietnam, where he had, naturally, been a hero of the war, before falling victim of the 'bleedin' Yanks' and their 'Agent Owange.' During treatment he had developed a drug addiction, which he had only managed to overcome with his uncommon strength and determination. After the war, he and his wife had bought a hotel on some imaginably scenic Caribbean island, where they had spawned two young children and lived in bliss for five years. But, alas, tragedy had struck when Benny's super model wife had taken the children on vacation back to Germany to visit her family. There, all three of them had perished in a sixteen-car pile-up on the autobahn. This had proved too much, even for a man of granite such as Benny, and in his overwhelming grief and despair he had turned to the bottle. Yes, Benny had become an alcoholic; a condition from which he had only emerged after an unthinkably courageous struggle which had lasted many years. It was then that he had gone to Australia to work as a chef in some five-star hotel and begun to piece his life back together. He was now working in some equally esteemed hotel in downtown Wellington, though he did not say why he had come to New Zealand, and I was careful not to ask.

I soon became accustomed to finding myself bailed up in some corner of the house or another with Benny's rubbery old face ranting away in front of me; his pink-rimmed eyes bulging with intensity; his skeletal arms conducting a furious opera above his head. It wasn't just his life he raved on about either. He was equally effusive on the topic of 'er Woyal 'Ighness, the mess she made and the boys she had over, or else Abraham, with his failure to bring Penny into line and maintain general standards. All I could do was pretend to be interested while I waited for him to finish, every now and again offering some comment I desperately hoped would conclude the discussion, but which somehow never did. I mean, I couldn't be rude to the old guy, afterall.

"Things weren't like this 'back 'ome," he was fond of saying, shaking his head with a sigh.

A more cheerful subject for Benny was his beloved wood-burner (I already thought of it as his). He was telling me all about it one balmy morning, and about how he used to chop wood for his parents' wood-burner when he was a lad, where the winters had been bitterly harsh, and by and by he came to suggest we should cut some more timber together as the wood-box was growing empty. What could I say? I didn't want to chop timber for his stinking wood-burner. It wasn't even cold. But to refuse would have been rude, and I wasn't the sort to be rude to someone as old as he looked.

There was no problem finding timber, since the back yard was so overgrown with scrub and small trees they practically blocked out the light from all the bottom storey windows at the rear of the house where my bedroom was. Instead of an ax, Benny handed me a ridiculous little tomahawk so blunt and rusty it might as well have been a butter knife for all the effect it had. And the whole time I was hacking away, my frustration rapidly mounting, Benny was standing behind me, an old man dressed in James Dean clothes, criticising the way I was handling the tomahawk and expounding at length on how it ought to be done.

I had been at it for what seemed like an eternity, though which was probably only about ten minutes, when I glanced over my shoulder and caught him staring at my backside. The guy was staring right at my backside! And the thing was, he looked so guilty when I caught him. Had he just looked away I might have thought little of it, but this startled expression came into his rheumy eyes and completely gave him away.

Tossing the tomahawk down on the meager pile of kindling I'd managed to batter out of the bushes, I walked past him. "That's it," I said without looking at him. "I've had enough a this."

"Tell me something," he called after me. "If I 'ad an itch in my ear, would you scwatch it for me?" He twisted his head around and offered a grotesquely hairy right ear.

I stared back at the hideous thing in horror. "I'd rather stick my head in the toilet!"

He laughed wickedly, exposing the nicotine-stained teeth. "Well now, wouldn't that be appwopiate." And the choking, gurgling chuckle deteriorated into a coughing fit.

*

I knew there was a Penny and that she was not just another character in the soap opera Benny tried to pass off as his life. I knew because of this sort of pompous voice I'd heard in the hall a few times after I'd gone to bed, and also because of the squeaky sex-gasps and male groaning I'd heard while passing her door late one night. But she was never in before midnight, it seemed, and her door was always closed in the mornings. Plus she was away the first weekend after my return, so that it was fully two weeks before I actually saw her.

I had pictured her as some very tall, very attractive young woman with an unthinkably high opinion of herself, and I wasn't too far off the mark. The part I was wrong about was her being attractive. She was okay with all her make-up on and the fashion model hairdo, though somehow plain despite it all and certainly nothing special. Not that I cared. Call me an old-fashioned bore, but I'd known the night I'd heard her sex-gasps that she was going to be for me .
The day we met she informed me she would be having a party that afternoon. She had got her results back from uni' and had passed all her exams with flying colours, naturally. She told me this in an offhanded tone, as though it were no big deal and just to be expected. In fact, the party would be just a bit of a get-together before they headed off to the restaurant.

Personally I didn't want to be around when the university freaks came over and played their loud music, drank til they threw up, had sex on the carpet, generally wrecked the place, and whatever else they did at the student parties you always heard about. I decided I'd catch the train out to J'ville and see my old team play. I'd have a few beers with the boys afterward, to kill time while Penny's party was going on.

It was the pre-season competition, and I'd already missed the start while I was on the management course. It was then I'd made my decision not to play this year. I just wasn't interested anymore, and I supposed my playing days were over.

Watching the game, I didn't miss it either. All the dirty tricks were going on in the lineouts as everyone tried to get higher than every else. Elbows went flying in, players were shoved in the back, others were held down by their jerseys. A few scuffles broke out but that was rugby. A guy could break your jaw, knock your teeth out, smash your nose in and stomp on your head, so long as you were prepared to shake hands afterward and leave it all out there on the field.

At one point a burly fellow in the other team punched Pigsy in the side of the face for not handing the ball over quickly enough at a free kick. I heard the blow from the sideline; a loud, meaty slap. Everyone just stood there gawking, even the ref; one of those balding, skeletal types with no backside. The incident had occurred right in front of him, and he just acted like he hadn't seen it.

Pigsy tossed the ball into the mud. "Alright, have it then," I heard him say, then the game carried on.

It had rained overnight and by halftime you could hardly tell the teams apart for the mud. Whenever our side got the ball they would lock it up in the forwards like they always did, driving upfield at an almost indiscernible pace. The other team was mostly Pacific Islanders and they preferred to throw the ball around and run with it. They'd have destroyed us there. But we didn't give them much chance, knowing we had the advantage up front. The backs could only stand around watching, lined up flat in defensive formation even though it was us who had the ball most of the time. I used to be among them, and supposed what I was doing now really wasn't so different - standing around in the cold air watching the forwards inching up the field.

I'd planned to have a chat with them during the break, but when they huddled around Bruce for the team-talk he let fly with a furious barrage of expletives, hurling his orange quarters down into the mud in the process, so I decided to keep my distance. I wasn't even wearing the club uniform afterall. A few of them glanced across at me, though none of them waved or made any sign of acknowledgement. And neither did I. In truth, I realised I had nothing in common with them anymore, now that I wasn't a player.

I left before the second half began and was home by five. My intention was to stay in my room downstairs and read a book until the party was over. I could tie a pillow around my head if the noise was too loud. As I walked up the drive, however, the anticipated din of tuneless music was curiously absent. I continued on inside, hoping the party had finished already. Poking my head into the living room, however, I was startled to discover a group of teenage boys sitting there watching TV. They were straight out of 'Wayne's World,' these guys, with their spectacles, zits and bad haircuts. One of them extended a friendly 'How's it goin'' and pointed out they were watching the cricket. It was 'the Kiwis and the Currymunchers' and we only needed a 'run-rate of two-point-three an over to win' (whatever that meant).

There came a high-pitched peel of laughter from Penny's room and next thing she led a bunch of similarly overgrown teenage girls into the living room. Even allowing for the high-heels, the shortest of them would have been a clear few inches taller than any of the boys. I couldn't help thinking they had selected these geeks to be their friends or sex toys or whatever specifically for this reason.

Penny, sporting spectacles for the occasion, laid some of her glossy magazines on the dining room table, and they all sat there flipping through the pages, chatting animatedly, munching biscuits and drinking diet cola. One of them held up an article on 'Women Against Rugby, ' a group which had sprung up during the All Blacks' preparations to tour South Africa.

'They're opposed to 'the image of New Zealand as a nation of cauliflower-eared thugs who go to a racist country to chase a ball up and down a paddock in their underwear!'" This description was greeted with derisive laughter by her companions.

"Sport and politics should be kept separate," one of the geeks said.

Penny blinked through her spectacles without expression. "It's the modern-day Nazi Germany, you know. Different rules for blacks and whites. You're obviously very confused."

Another of the geeks spoke up: "We played soccer with Indonesia, didn't we? Did anyone protest about Timor?"

Nobody seemed to have an answer to that. Where in hell was 'Timor' anyway?

A delighted horror-shriek rose up from the enormous blonde next to Penny. "My god!" she cried, holding up the magazine for the others to see. The contents were then displayed for the benefit of the geek-boys. The page was full of pictures of naked men. The geek-boys gazed up at the magazine with perverse grins on their faces, then returned their attention to the cricket.

I glanced across at Penny and saw her watching them, her eyes flickering like a serpent in a manner that quite sickened me. But at least I hadn't come home to an unruly mob of intoxicated university students.

*

I liked to creep up behind Benny and frighten hell out of him with this really loud, high-pitched chicken cluck. One time I got him in the lounge while he was eating ice-cream and startled him so badly the bowl flipped out of his hands and ended up on the floor, a pink dome of strawberry ice-cream beside it. Another time he was drinking coffee and the result was a steaming brown puddle on the carpet at his feet. Then there was the time he had Abraham bailed up in the kitchen, raving onto him about something or another. It was irresistable, even with Abraham there, and Benny's feet had literally left the ground. He'd spun around with this amazingly feroicous expression on his haggard, old face and started chasing me around the house.

"This 'as got to stop!" he croaked behind me. "It's vewy childish!"

He kept rasping away like that, speaking in this sort of insistent tone, like he actually thought he could reason with me.

We went around in circles a few times, through the living room and into the kitchen, out the other kitchen door and into the hall, then back into the living room and so on, and each time I passed Abraham in the kitchen I detected a glimmer of humour in his eyes.

When Benny finally calmed down and returned to his armchair, I went over and laughed down at him. "Hey, screaming faggot hopper, boy I got you a beauty, eh!"

I had a few variations on that name; 'raving spring hopper,' 'yelling maggot hopper,' 'raging mucus hopper...' All entirely infantile, but they annoyed hell out of him, which was the idea, of course, and I just couldn't bring myself to use his real name anymore.

"Wot do you want now," he muttered wearily, not bothering to look up at me.

I continued laughing down at him. "There was Abraham in front of ya, me behind ya, and you jumping up like a big ol' terrified clown in between us!"

He just sat there smoking his pipe and took it all. I knew what a cruel bastard I was being, even as I carried on like that. But I had him now, and I needed to keep it this way. Only on these terms could I deal with him, after that time chopping wood in the back yard. I had to keep on top of him.

Sometimes I almost felt sorry for him. I might even have laid off him had he not had this knack of doing things now and again which annoyed hell out of me. Once I arrived home to find him running stark naked down the hall from his bedroom to the bathroom. It was disgusting, being confronted by his skeletal white body like that. I got the feeling he'd been standing there waiting for me to walk inside, the way he'd come darting out like that.

When I noticed he'd left his door slightly ajar I decided to take my revenge. I had no idea what I was going to do as I crept into his room, only that I was determined to do something that would really irritate him. The rush of the shower going further down the hall assured me I was in no danger of being caught, but the stakes were high. If, by some chance, I were discovered, I'd be out for certain, no matter how soft Abraham was. I wanted to do something, just nothing Benny could be sure of. So when I spotted a pile of tobacco pouches on the desk by his bed, I grabbed one and shoved it in my pocket. In doing so I noticed the cover of a magazine in the partially-open drawer. I noticed it because of the tanned hue of bare flesh. It turned out to be one of those nudist club magazines, with whole naked families in it. Personally I couldn't see why anybody would want to perve at those people's bodies. They would've looked a hell of a lot better with their clothes on. Nonetheless, it gave me an idea. Grabbing up that magazine, I hurried out of the room with it.

I wasn't as nervous about the stealing as I was about sneaking into Benny's room. If you were caught in someone's room, you were caught red-handed and that was that. But if you stole something, they had to prove you took it, and they had to be certain it was stolen in the first place. My guess was, Benny wouldn't be completely certain how many pouches of tobacco he'd had there on his desk and would just be suspicious enough to be irritated. As for the magazine, he might not notice it for a while, and chances were he'd be too embarrassed to go to Abraham about it anyway.

The tobacco I would simply dispose of, then leave the empty pouch somewhere conspicuous for Benny to notice. The magazine I didn't really plan to steal at all. Rather, I was going to leave it somewhere I knew Penny would find it. In truth, I wanted to get back at her even more than I wanted to get back at Benny.

There were two toilets in the house, one downstairs, which Abraham, Benny and I used, and the other at the end of the upstairs hall, which was sort of unspokenly reserved for members of the opposite sex. If the downstairs toilet was in use and I was desperate, I'd go upstairs and use Penny's toilet, though Abraham and Benny never did. Next to that toilet a pile of magazines was accumulating, hers at the top but a wide variety further down. They'd been accumulating for as long as I'd been there, and probably for decades before, judging by the yellowish tinge on the ones near the bottom. I went in there and placed Benny's nudist weirdoes magazine right on top of the pile, leaving it open to a photograph of a rather grotesque, middleaged woman.

I half-expected Penny to just ignore the magazine. She seemed so liberal and open-minded or whatever, what, with her geek-boys staying the nights and all. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me if she had taken that magazine to use for entertainment at her next little party.

There came an urgent banging on my door that evening, and I knew it wasn't Abraham. Sure enough, when I answered it, I was confronted by Penny's scowling features.

"Is this piece of filth yours?!" She thrust the nudist magazine in front of me.

I peered down at it and assumed a mystified expression. "What is it?"

"A fucking porn magazine! What does it look like!"

I glanced up at her, a little bewildered. I hadn't expected that kind of language from her, as young as she was. Neither had I anticipated she would be so upset by the magazine.

"Nope." I shook my head. "Not mine. Maybe it's Benny's."

"He said it must be yours."

I shook my head again. "What's the big deal anyway? It's harmless."

She gave me a look as if I'd just sneezed in her face or something. "It's a fucking porno, you idiot! Christ, you 'are' confused! Don't you know this is the sort of thing that leads to rape?"

The whole joke was beginning to backfire and I was becoming as irritated as her. "Look, the magazine's not mine. I'm not some kind of pervert, okay." With that I shut the door in her methodically-blinking face.

I got the gentle tap on my bedroom door later that night, and Abraham, amid a fair bit of head-scratching and shuffling of the feet, advised me Penny had complained to him over the magazine, which she regarded as 'sexual harassment.' I started to feel very worried when he said that. Hell, I'd already had one tenant accusing me of assault, and now here was another saying I was a sexual deviot or something. Abraham must have been gaining the impression I was a regular criminal. At the very least he would be thinking I was a troublemaker, what, with the way I was always giving Benny a hard time as well. I didn't seem to be able to get along with anybody. But it wasn't my magazine afterall, and there was no way anyone could prove I'd put it there, so I assumed a bewildered expression for Abraham and denied all knowledge of the magazine prior to Penny showing it me.

It was about a week later when I encountered Penny moving all her things out. Of course, she wasn't moving them herself. She had a few of the geek-boys around to take care of that, while she stood inside her doorway issuing orders as they hurried in and hobbled out.

I went downstairs to Abraham's room and knocked on his door. It was Saturday afternoon and he wasn't up yet. Unless he was going away camping or skiing, you never saw him til at least midway through the afternoon. I hadn't disturbed him like this before, but I really was feeling guilty. After about five rounds of knocking (more like banging by the end), his door eased open slightly and Abraham stood before me in his striped pajamas, his receding gray hair all awry, his sleep-crusted eyes squinting at the daylight.

"Is Penny leaving because of me?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so," he said, trying in vain to brush some of his hair into place with his hand. "Penny has simply been living beyond her means here."

When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained she hadn't paid any rent for some time. The check she had promised from her father had never arrived.

"How long's this been going on?"

"Well, since she moved in, really."

I gazed at him for a moment. He'd given up on his hair and really looked quite ridiculous, standing there in his pajamas, squinting at the light. "Hell, Abraham, that was a couple a months ago. Can't you go to the police or something?"

He smiled and shook his head. It was a sad sort of smile, I thought. How could he have been so gullible? And as if all this weren't crazy enough, he then perked up with the news we wouldn't need to look for a new tenant. Penny had been good enough to arrange for someone to replace her.

*

Thus Lorraine, the enormous blonde, moved in, and actually not very much changed. She had geek-boys over and there were the nauseating squeals and groans at all hours of the night. I suppose that was her idea of being modern and liberated; having sex all the time. Lorraine's room was practically a jungle, almost as if on purpose, much in the tradition of Penny. There was no sign of the carpet for all the clothes and magazines piled across the floor. They were the same kinds of magazines as Penny liked to read; the headlines on the cover referring to fashion, celebrity gossip and sex. Lorraine even dressed like Penny, and used the same pompous phrases.

One very big difference between soon became apparent, however. Lorraine seldom went out. She took over the living room the way Erin had, and she took it over from Benny, which was actually quite hysterical. The evenings invariably found her sitting there, in Benny's old armchair beside the wood-burner, watching some sex-orientated American series, debauched English comedy or melodramatic soap, or else with the telephone at her ear and the TV on mute - sometimes for hours. Boy, would that drive Benny insane! He didn't have the courage to do anything about it, of course, but I'd hear him ranting on to Abraham all the time.

Lorraine didn't appear to exercise at all, and she would go through a packet of biscuits and a large bottle of diet coke every day. And she would sit there in her pink flannel robe with her fat, off-white, dimpled legs on display, like all we wanted to do was perve at them or something. Personally I'd rather have stuck my head in the toilet, and intense was my repugnance when Benny broke it to me he'd overheard her telling someone on the phone she thought I had a 'cute butt.' He laughed delightedly as he observed my reaction, and the croaking, gurgling chuckle soon deteriorated into a coughing fit. I couldn't see him lasting much longer.

Sunday mornings, miraculously,Lorraine did not occupy the living room. The first week I assumed she was sleeping late. The second, however, I was eating lunch when she arrived home with Abraham.

"Been out?" I asked as she sat down in her armchair and switched the TV on.

It was a stupid enough question and seemed to irritate her slightly as she answered over her shoulder. "Yes, I went to church with Abraham."

"Church?" I was dumfounded, remembering the party with the geek-boys and the squeals I'd heard at night. "Are you a christian then?"

"Naturally. Aren't you?"

"No, at least, I don't believe in the Bible."

She turned fully around now. "You mean, you're a heathen?"

'Heathen' sounded sinister, the way she said it, like a cannibal or a headhunter or something.

"I'm not saying there's no god," I hasted to add, "But the Bible just seems like mythology to me. Half of it's implausible."

"No!" She laughed. "That's archaeology you're talking about. Jesus died on the cross for us. The Bible tells us so. If you'd prefer to believe your ancestors were monkeys, go ahead!"

I decided not to pursue it. Christians could be very nasty about these kinds of things and I didn't want to offend her. She might get mad and accuse me of being confused, ramming my views down her throat and not being able to hold a normal conversation with anyone.

Lorraine, as it turned out, only stayed a month, though it must have seemed more like years to Benny. Her uncle had got her a job on a newspaper up in Auckland. Benny told me this himself, and laughed himself into another coughing fit in the process. He couldn't imagine what kind of articles she was going to be writing for that paper.

Personally I was just glad she was gone, and I hastened to ask Abraham if I could do the looking again. Okay, it hadn't worked out with Rebecca, but that had only been because Alan had been around to blow my chances. If it hadn't been for him, she would've been mine. I was sure of that. At least I wasn't going to have any competition from prune-faced, old Benny with his nicotine teeth and raspy voice. However, it soon became apparent he was going to present an entirely different problem.

I arrived home one night to find Abraham bailed up in the hall, and Benny raving onto him about how he had finally taken all he could from his unthinkably unreasonable employers and had walked out on them that very afternoon. He was telling Abraham this in a sort of heroic tone, like he expected to be admired for losing his job or something. Perhaps I should've admired him too. But all I could think about was the prospect of the faggot hopper sitting around the house twenty-four hours a day, smoking his pipe, stinking us out with his wood-burner, and ranting on about his super model wife and how he single-handedly won the Vietnam War.

And that's how it went. He reclaimed his armchair and domination of the living room, and at whatever time I might happen to venture into the room he would be sitting there puffing on his pipe with the wood-burner blazing away beside him. Before long the living room began to reek like an incinerator, and his coughing fits occurred with more and more frequency.

The women came in their pairs, saw Benny in his armchair with his pipe, observed the stained and grimy wallpaper, inhaled the stench of all the smoke in the room, and were never heard from again.

After a couple of weeks of this I decided to have it out with him. "Look, Benny, do you think you could sort of, well, be in your room when these people come round?"

He responded with an indignant rant, naturally, but after that he did slip off to his room whenever there was a knock at the door, and I'd dart around opening all the windows wide before going to answer it.

A Japanese university student came to see the house. She didn't understand much English but this old Japanese dude was with her and he was able to translate. When he said she'd take the room it caught me off guard, because I hadn't offered it to her yet, and I wasn't sure I wanted to live with someone I couldn't communicate with. There were no prospects in that. But what could I say to the old dude? And besides, Abraham was losing money the whole time this went on. So I agreed politely when he told me she would be moving in the next day. I didn't want to be rude.
When I arrived home from work the following evening, however, the room was still empty. I went into the living room and asked Benny if he knew anything.

"Oh, she bought 'er things 'wound this morning," he explained. "But 'alf an 'our later she moved 'em back out again."

I turned away and cursed loudly. "She prob'ly saw you sitting here with your stinking bluddy pipe in your gob!" I stared at him in exasperation. "I s'pose you started raving on to her about your life story and all your problems too."

He just sat there with this pitiful expression on his haggard, old face, and I had to feel sorry for him. It wasn't right for me to be talking to him like this, even if he was the faggot hopper. What a bastard I'd become!

"Never said a word to 'er," he protested. "She only came in 'ere for a minute, then walked stwaight back out again."

A few days later I glanced into Benny's room and saw it was empty. The door was wide open and the furniture was bare. All his things had gone. The guilt was back inside me again, and it was Abraham's tennis club night, so Benny's absence remained a mystery til late that evening.

"He's gone back to Australia," Abraham said cheerfully. "I drove him to the airport myself this afternoon. He didn't think there were any prospects here."

I was surprised at Benny's sudden departure, and even a little offended I'd been left out of the picture like this. But far greater was my sense of joy. He was gone and now I had a fresh start. Two rooms were empty and I had a double chance to find the woman of my destiny.

*

Initially I was under the impression the girl was retarded. Georgina worked as a nanny, and it would have been hard to imagine her working as anything else. She seemed so childlike herself, sitting there like a cherub, engulfed by the armchair, her hair in pigtails, answering my questions in this innocent baby voice. Somehow I felt a profound sense of sorrow for her. How did she make her way through such a harsh world? Who was ever going to marry her? It made me feel terrible. So there was no way I could reject her when she said she would like to take the room, though it was obvious she was not going to be very good company for me. There was still the other room, after all.

Barely had Georgina moved in than Abraham gave me the news it would not be necessary to look for anyone else. Georgia had a friend who would be taking the empty downstairs room.

Sally arrived a few days later and, call me a cruel bastard, but my disappointment was intense. She looked older than me, probably mid-thirties, and yet she was as much of a little girl as Georgina. Only, she wasn't sweet and frafile-looking, and I suppose she just didn't rouse that protective instinct in me that Georgina did. She was short and gaunt with a cartoonish overbite and wore her hair straight down without a fringe or anything.

Her appearance was not the reason I took an almost immediate disliking to her, of course. It was the way she never bothered to thank me after I'd spent about an hour ruining my back helping her uncle haul her emormous king-size waterbed up the drive and manipulate it through the doorways into her downstairs bedroom - which it filled almost entirely. And it was the way she said practically nothing to me after she'd moved in, despite my efforts to start a conversation out of politeness. I was quickly gaining the impression that either Sally was docile, or she was just rude and thought me soft.

From Abraham I learned Sally was a nanny also, though she was having trouble finding work right then. Big surprise, I thought. No way I would have entrusted her with my children - if I'd had any, that is.

The night I got out Abraham's Monopoly set, they groaned and made faces at each other. Probably I only managed to persuade them right then because they were still new and when you were new you were careful not to offend anyone too much. I'd already talked Abraham into it, and he was sitting at the dinner table with a sort of boyish grin on his face, eagerly waiting.

The girls were so bad at it though. Abraham and I cleaned them out in half an hour. Sally made no attempt at all; just sat there with this terminally-ill expression on her face the whole time. Georgina almost seemed to be enjoying herself to begin with, since she got around the board first and managed to land on two of the yellow ones, her favourites. But then she started feeling sorry for Sally and made a bunch of stupid swaps with her which ended up with her going bust even before Sally.

Abraham and I battled on past midnight, and I was never able to figure out exactly how he beat me. I managed to get all the good properties, including Mayfair and Park Lane, and the green ones and the yellow ones off Georgina. But he just sat there patiently toiling away, smiling faintly, building up his properties one house at a time, while I went for hotels as soon as I could afford them. And somehow he beat me. Call me a sore-loser, but I was half-inclined to ram the whole board down his throat by the end of the game. I never got the girls to play Monopoly after that either.

*

Sally was going to be having a birthday party and I thought it might be kind of fun to hang around and observe. I imagined all these dweeby nannies coming over, putting on paper hats, eating cake and drinking Fanta, listening to Abba and The Beatles or something. Maybe there would be the odd adult-minded one among them. The last thing I expected at Sally's party were guys.

Friday night, on the bus home from the supermarket, I found I was actually looking forward to the party. My excitement gave way to confusion, however, when I made my way up the drive and heard the heavy-metal blasting out of the open doorway. The dark shape of a tall man in the upstairs hall added to my foreboding when I peered inside. He was a towering head-banger with tattoos all over his arms, long black hair and a pointed goatee, and he was dressed entirely in black, except for the violent red and white motif on his T-shirt. He scowled down at me with heavy black eyebrows.

"Who are you?" he bellowed above the music, as though 'I' were the impostor.

"I live here." I tried to sound forceful, though I was thoroughly intimidated by the guy.

I ducked past him and, with a sense he was following me, continued into the living room, where I found Sally and a smaller version of the head-banger sharing a bottle of whisky on the couch. They were the only people in there. I couldn't see Georgina at all. And it was her I was looking for. I wasn't altogether surprised to learn Sally's friends were Neanderthals, but I couldn't imagine Georgina being a part of a crowd like this. I imagined she was probably in her bedroom, huddling miserably beneath her blankets, waiting for these horrid people to go away.

"So, wudda ya do?" It was the deep voice of the tall head-banger behind me.

"Me?" I turned to face him, feigning a casual expression. "Check-out operator at Whopping Shopping." I might have told him about the management course I'd done as well, except I had to shout to be heard as it was.

He grinned down at me in a way that gave me the feeling he knew everything that was inside my head. I'd met plenty like him before. They would try to dominate you, and if you let them they would make your life hell, but if you didn't they would usually end up treating you with some degree of respect.

"He's bluddy good at his job too, mate," the smaller version yelled from the couch like some awe-stricken hero worshipper.

"I'm on fifteen an hour." The big version glowered down at me. "Wudda you on?"

"Fifteen an hour?!" That was about twice what I made.

"Yeh." He stepped forward and leaned over me. "What, do ya think I'm bullshittin' ya, mate?"

"No, I believe you," I said hastily, taking a step backward despite myself. "It just seems like a helluva lot."

A sort of twisted smirk crossed his face. "That's cuz you work in a supermarket, you sap!"

I backed up again and glanced across at Sally. This was her guest, afterall. She just sat there with a weird smile on her gormless face, as if somehow pleased her friend was being rude to me. The little guy was smiling too.

"Look," I said to the tall head-banger. "Enjoy the party. I've got some work to take care of."

I started for the kitchen door, which was further away than the door to the hall but a safer option.

He was behind me again. "What kind a work?" he demanded.

I glanced over my shoulder at him. "Gotta do some writing. That's all."

"Riding? Yeh, I like riding. Ride me Triumph all the time."

"No, wri-ting," I said, pausing to face him. "As in 'wri-ting letters.'"

I knew even as I explained that he understood perfectly well what I had said. In one extreme of my vision I saw the large, blackened hands close into fists. I just wanted to get the hell away from him.

There was a pause between songs, so I repeated once more: "Wri-ting." And as I emphasised the 't' a tiny drop of spittle hit him in the face.

I didn't wait for his reaction, just turned and hastened through the kitchen and downstairs to my bedroom. Once inside, I shut the door and pushed the big wardrobe in front of it, the way I used to when Erin was around. I half-expected him to come charging through at any moment, and only after twenty minutes or so had passed with nothing happening did I begin to relax. I could still hear the angry din of the music coming through the ceiling, and I didn't feel entirely secure at all. I wished I had a girlfriend right then, that I could go and spend the night with and be away from this place. But I didn't have a girlfriend, of course.

I wasn't sure how I got to sleep with all that music, only that it was the same terrible noise which woke me. It was still quite dark, and when I looked at my digital alarm clock the red figures showed '6:44.' It was six forty-four on a Saturday morning and they were still there, and they had their heavy-metal music blaring away on the stereo! I tried to get back to sleep but the anger prevented me. I knew Abraham wouldn't do anything. Nothing ever disturbed him downstairs in his den, and, even if it did, he wouldn't do anything.

I lay there thinking about it for a while. If the head-bangers had stayed one night, they might be planning to stay another, and they might be there all day as well. And if they knew they could just walk in and take over the place like this, showing no respect for anyone who lived here, it was likely they'd be back and before long this would become the party-pad for the local head-banger community. I had to go upstairs and turn that stereo off right in front of them, then face up to the inevitable confrontation with the towering head-banger.

Then the noise suddenly went dead. I listened for a while to see if they were changing records or something, yet five or ten minutes passed and there was no more noise. Perhaps they'd gone, I thought hopefully. Either way, I was going upstairs.

The living room was empty and the lights were off, but there was a leather jacket on the back of the couch, so they were still in the house somewhere, or else they had just popped out for cigarettes or something. Then I heard voices comong from one of the bedrooms - Georgina's. There was Sally's voice and hers, and the small version of the head-banger's.

Next thing Sally came stalking into the living room, looking even more ugly than usual with her hair in a mess and the absence of the make-up she applied so haphazardly to her face each day.

"I think a fuse has blown or something stupid," she said. "Can you tell Abraham to fix it for us." This was no request but basically an order.

"It's seven-thirty in the morning, Sally. I'm not getting anyone up to fix a fuse so you can play your lousy music.

She gave me a very surprised look, an expression which quickly turned hateful.

There was the sound of the toilet flushing, then a lot of banging and thumping on the toilet door itself, and a moment later the tall head-banger came swaggering into the room, doing up his fly. I would have thought he'd have known how to fix a fuse, being such a clever 'fifteen an hour' bastard. He walked past Sally and came directly toward me, and my heart froze as I realised it was going to be all on, right then. I was too frightened to react, letalone move, and at the same time I knew it was best to stand my ground anyway. At the last instant he broke off his gaze and stepped around me.

"We're out a here," he growled at Sally, and snatched the leather jacket off the back of the couch.
When he and his little mate had gone, Sally stalked into the kitchen where I was making coffee. "You ruined my party!"

What did she expect me to do? Drop to my knees and grovel for forgiveness because I hadn't got Abraham up at 7am to fix a fuse? It was so ridiculous I couldn't think of anything to say back to her. So I just ignored her. She continued to stare accusingly at me for a few seconds, then huffed loudly and stomped back out into the kitchen

I drank my coffee then went and took a long, hot shower. Normally I liked to shower in the morning to help me wake up, but on this occasion I needed it to help me calm down. While I was in there I could hear something going on upstairs, knocking and banging sounds, and I began to fear that Sally's friends had returned. There were no male voices, though, just Georgina's once or twice, and the sounds of them moving about in the hall.

After showering I went upstairs to the living room and immediately saw what had happened. The big colour TV was no longer in the corner, but I could hear the muffled drone of it coming through the wall from Georgina's room. And I really had to laugh, a sort of vaguely manic laugh, even in my own ears. I couldn't believe they had taken Abraham's TV in there where no one else could watch it. Abraham would throw a fit, surely.

Being Saturday it was mid-afternoon before I had chance to tell him. I searched his sleep-crusted eyes for some sign of anger, or at least mild irritation, but none showed. He just lowered his gaze and ran a hand through his disheveled hair.

"Well, perhaps they wanted it in there."

I stared at him in disbelief. It was a moment before I could bring myself to reply. "Abraham, I pay rent too. I want to be able to watch television."

His chin began to quiver, as it always did in these situations, when he was about to say something he hadn't quite worked out in his mind. "I'll bring my small set upstairs, if you like."

I shrugged in resignation. It was all pretty hopeless. You could get away with anything with Abraham.

"So what's next? The microwave? The fridge, perhaps?"

I didn't wait for him to reply. I was too disgusted by the whole thing. For the first time I even gave some thought to leaving, if only for a moment or so. Looking for a place to stay was such a drag, and I might end up with people who'd want me to dash home and cook for them or answer their telephone calls all day. I could stand up for myself here, and I decided that all I really needed to do was assert some authority over these girls, then things would get back to normal.

*

So the nannies stayed in Georgina's room all the time and we hardly saw them anymore. They must have either done their cooking before I got home, or else ordered pizza or something, and I might almost have forgotten their existence were it not for the fresh pile of dirty dishes in the sink each evening - which dishes Abraham faithfully washed along with his own.

About the only time I would see them was at weekends when occasionally I'd glimpse one of them scurrying down the hall to the toilet or back. I'm not sure why I looked every time, nor why I made a habit of leaving the door to the hallway open. The movement caught my attention, of course, but there was more to it than that. I think I would've given anything for one of them to just stop and talk for a while.

I glanced up once to see Georgina on her way to the toilet, and as instinctively glanced again as she returned to her room a few minutes later.

"Do y'always hafta stare!" I heard a voice which, because of its hateful tone, I found difficult to believe was really Georgina's. The girl in The Exorcist had just turned her head around three-sixty degrees.

Her bedroom door slammed shut, and for some minutes after I remained rooted to my seat, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Sally might have done something like that. But Georgina? Childlike, helpless, almost pitiful Georgina? There I was wondering how someone as fragile as her managed to make her way through life, and she had spoken to me like I were an animal!

Next thing I was banging on her bedroom door, which soon opened to the pair of their startled white faces, both looking very bewildered as they peered up at me. And I was yelling at them: "If you're gunna treat me like some kind a disease, go 'n' find somewhere else to stay!" I didn't have the authority to say that, of course, but I was angry, and they were such a couple of dweebs they wouldn't have known anyway. "Yuv been warned!" I cried, jabbing a forefinger into the air for effect.

I wasn't sure when they left or how they managed to get Sally's waterbed back out of the house, but when I returned from work a few nights later the doors to both of their rooms were open and all their things had gone. Neither could I say why it troubled me so much. I knew by now Abraham wouldn't hold me responsible.

Indeed, he was as surprised as I was (probably more so, in fact) when I gave him the news. Georgina was all paid up, he said, though Sally was a few weeks behind.

The ring of the telephone interrupted our thoughts. Abraham answered it and proceeded to spend the next half hour or so listening, all the while murmuring such thoughts as 'I see,' and 'No, I wasn't aware of that,' in a hushed tone.

It didn't take me long to figure out what the conversation was about as I sat in Benny's old armchair listening from the living room.

"Georgina's mother or Sally's?" I asked when finally he put down the phone.

He looked a little distracted and failed to meet my eyes. "Well, Sally's actually."

"What did she say about me?"

Abraham ran a hand through his receding grey hair and did his foot-shuffling, chin-quivering ruotine. "Well, she said Sally and Georgina moved out because they were very frightened of you. They claim you were having violent mood-swings."

"I told them off for being rude. It was hardly a violent mood-swing."

I could see this telephone call had bothered him, and I was starting to feel a little insecure about the whole thing. How many people had complained about me now? And still he wouldn't meet my eyes.

Wandering back into the living room, I thought very hard about what had happened and how I could justify myself to him. It wasn't about my place in this house anymore. I couldn't have cared if he'd evicted me now. He was a peaceful, extremely tolerant man, and I just wanted to regain his trust.

I was standing there in the middle of the living room, staring at the blank screen of the little TV Abraham had brought upstairs to replace the big set, when something occurred to me. I hurried through to Georgina's old room and gazed around.

"Abraham," I called. "Where's your TV?"

He came up beside me a few seconds later. "Oh dear," he groaned. "They had no right to take that with them."

That was the closest to angry I ever saw him.

*

Somehow it didn't seem right. One was plain, overweight and dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans; the other was slim, radiant, somewhat attractive, and attired in a low-cut summer dress. And they 'both' wanted to move in, having just come to the city together after finishing university 'up 'n Auckland.' There 'had' to be a catch. Was I dreaming? The attractive one was going to be living in the same house as 'me!' My gaze inadvertently rested on her cleavage for an instant during the interview, and when it returned hastily to her eyes, they were looking at me, and there was the distinct glint of amusement.

They moved in that very afternoon and I helped carry their things up the drive for them. I then went out to the back yard to read in the sunshine. I wanted to give them plenty of space while they settled in. It had to work out this time; for my sake, for their sake, for Abraham's sake. Afterall, if I couldn't get on with someone as pleasant-seeming as Jonika, there wasn't much hope for me, was there? And what would Abraham think?

Fifteen or twenty minutes later they came and joined me. Jonika emerged in denim shorts and a yellow bikini top. I couldn't help noticing she was pretty well endowed. Maureen followed her out, still in her black T-shirt and jeans.

"It's so nice and secluded out here!" Jonika chirped. "We could sunbathe nude out here and no one would see us!"

I froze up when she said that. They laughed together, and I knew it was a joke, but I couldn't believe she had said it and I didn't know how to react. So I made out as if I hadn't heard.

"So," I began, clearing my throat of a squeaky edge, "What kind of jobs are you two looking for?"
Jonika's reply was so full of jargon that I was soon lost. I understood only that she had a degree in Psychology and was looking for a job in that field. Maureen wanted to be a social worker. I gathered, from her ensuing exchange with Jonika, that she had not in fact obtained her degree.

"And you?" Jonika asked me. "What did you study?"

"Me? I didn't go to university."

They looked at me a little strangely when I said that, and I solmehow felt compelled to tell them about the management skills course I had completed in Palmerston North.

"So . . . was that, like, a one year course?" Jonika asked me.

"No, one month intensive."

I got the strange looks again, then Maureen broke into a broad grin, as if I'd performed a trick or something.

After perhaps half an hour Jonika decided she'd had enough sun and the pair of them went back inside. I waited another half hour or so, not wanting to appear too anxious, then joined them in the living room. It felt so good to be sitting there talking with Jonika that even the mindless garbage on TV was tolerable.

They made their dinner around seven, pasta with salad. Both were vegetarians, it turned out. Neither did they drink coffee, just herbal tea with a leafy aroma. They seemed like such health nuts, though Maureen, I soon discovered, was a smoker.

Following dinner they scoured the evening paper for jobs, took down a few numbers to call the next day, then settled back into the armchairs to watch TV.

There was a current affairs show on, beginning with a report about a successful British businesswoman, a Maori politician who had lied, acid attacks on women in Bangladesh, and the Intifada in Palestine.

"How can there be so much hatred in the world? I mean, people are educated, aren't they?"

Jonika had this very forlorn look on her face when she said that, like a schoolgirl who sees two boys fighting.

"I s'pose life is very difficult in some places," I said.

"I've had a difficult life," she replied, without removing her eyes from the little screen. "My parents were divorced, y'know. And my aunt died of leukaemia when I was twelve."

"I don't imagine you were ever shot dead for throwing stones, though."

Jonika turned her head and stared at me. "But . . . you sound like an anti-Semitist."

Maureen rolled her eyes at her, like I'd made the stupidest remark in history. "He'll only make enemies, talking like that."

I watched her light another Marlboro. 'Anti-Semitist,' Jonika had said. Hell, that made me seem like some kind of Nazi. First night with these two and I'd put my foot in it well and truly. When was I going to learn to keep my big mouth shut? I'd stumbled over that narrow little line again, and it was time to back off if I were to have any chance of staying on good terms with them.

*

"We should hit the beach today," Jonika said brightly. "It's absolutely gorgeous outside."

I was like an excited little boy as we prepared our picnic lunch. I couldn't believe we were going to be spending the whole day together. It was almost a 'date,' though not quite. And Maureen wasn't around.

Oriental Bay was the only beach this side of the harbour, and the only one we could walk to - though it took almost an hour. It was a strip of sand about a hundred metres long (much of it shipped in from a real beach somewhere), and it was inevitably covered by hordes of people when we arrived.

Eventually we found a spot for ourselves right behind the life guard's tower. Trouble was, we couldn't go into the water together, as one of us needed to remain on the beach to keep an eye on our belongings. Jonika insisted I go in first, so I stripped down to my old rugby shorts and went charging into the surf. I wanted to show off a bit and let her see what a big super star I was in the water. When I looked back, however, I realised she was completely obscured by the people milling about in front of the life guard's tower. Suddenly I was eager to be back on the warm sand beside her, rather than swimming around in the cold, murky harbour alone.

I gave it about minutes, then waded ashore. As I did so I noticed a bunch of guys sitting on the concrete wall above our spot, legs dangling, all chuckling among themselves as they peered down in Jonika's direction. I still couldn't see her and just assumed it was the usual guy-talk about how well endowed she was or something. Then the people in front of her moved and I saw exactly why she was drawing so much attention. Jonika was topless! Women 'never' went topless here. There might have been beaches for that sort of thing in Auckland, but this was Wellington. On the rare occasions you saw a topless woman on a beach here you assumed she was a foreigner, and invariably there was some bunch of guys hanging around perving at them - if not actually trying to pick them up.

Then another thought occurred to me. I was here with the only topless woman on the beach. Thus it was with some confused sense of triumph that I swaggered over and sat down right beside her, knowing those guys were watching, and that they must've been thinking I was a real stud. Of course, I acknowledged the irony. A woman like her would never want me for a boyfriend.

After a while she flipped over and asked me to rub some lotion onto her back. I tried to act casual about it but was so nervous I fumbled the bottle and dropped it in the sand. It wasn't quite as thrilling as I'd imagined though, rubbing it on. Her back was all sweaty and the lotion turned greasy and sort of dirty between my fingers. The round curve of her backside beneath the yellow bikini bottom did more for me, though I was careful not too stare at that, lest anyone thought me a pervert.

I asked her to do my back when I'd finished. She could hardly have refused, afterall. But that wasn't as thrilling as I'd imagined either. Her hands were harder than I'd expected, and she rubbed it in fairly haphazardously, like she didn't really care.

On the way home Jonika stopped outside this pet store. "Oh, just look at the li'l darlings! Aren't they cute?"

There were all these fluffy, bright-eyed kittens darting and tumbling around in a cage just inside the window.

"I want one a these," she cooed, then turned to me. "Do you think Abraham'd mind?"

I had a good chuckle about that. "I doubt Abraham'd mind if you brought an eight ton African elephant home. In fact, he prob'ly wouldn't even notice."

About two hours later we walked out of that pet store with a tiny, tabby kitten crawling around in a box in Jonika's arms. It had taken her that long to make up her mind which one she wanted - or rather, which ones she was going to have to leave behind.

As we walked up the hill she wanted to pet it and lifted it out of the box. It ended up on me a couple of times and almost fell from my shoulder, except it managed to save itself by sticking its sharp little claws into my flesh. Jonika doubled up with laughter about that, and I wondered in a moment of bitterness how amusing she would have found it if the little demon had stuck its dagger-like claws into her.

It was too good to last, of course, Jonika and I spending time together like that. She got a job working weekends at a gym and was gone all day. Naturally she was very happy about it. The wages would keep her going til she got a fulltime job. She'd been an aerobics instructor at her university gym, 'up 'n Auckland.'

So I stayed home weekends and looked after her kitten, playing with it, cleaning up after it, ensuring it always had enough cat-food and milk in its saucers. Maureen didn't seem interested, which suited me fine. I thought of the kitten as 'ours,' Jonika's and mine, since we'd been together when she'd bought it. And the best part was the kitty-litter and the saucers were in Jonika's room, so it was okay for me to go in there, her own personal bedroom, to take care of the kitten. She was tidier than the others had been, but often left a few clothes and magazines lying around on the floor. I'd often linger in there for a little longer than I had to, as though in some way it made me closer to her, like a best friend.

*

Jonika and Maureen were watching an American sitcom in which everyone, male and female, looked like super models, and they were all very sophisticated and lived lives full of quirky adventures, though their problems were ultimately very trivial. I was observing it mostly for the horror factor, pondering with some astonishment that people could actually be entertained by something so superificial. Personally I derived more amusement from watching the little kitten scurrying about, jumping on the furniture, and stalking Abraham's old tomcat Lucy, who lay cowering beneath a cabinet in the corner.

Probably it wasn't until about the tenth time I'd leaned down and scratched my ankles and shins that I became conscious of what I was doing. Looking down at my legs I saw they had come up in a series of small red lumps.

"Fleas!" I leapt to my feet and stared at the lumps in horror.

Jonika looked momentarily startled, while Maureen went into demented groper mode. "What?" they asked in unison.

"Fleas!" I repeated, pointing at my shins and ankles. "They're eating me alive!"

"I'm not getting bitten," Jonika said calmly, checking her own long, dark legs. "It's probably mozzies."

"How could it be?" I asked impatiently. "I only changed into my shorts when I got home from work."

"Perhaps he's got fleas in his room," Maureen said to Jonika, having evidently decided I was too ridiculous to talk to in person. "Thuz no fleas in here."

Even as she said that I caught one; a tiny black spec on the knuckle of my big toe, which had started itching. "There!" I cried, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger. "Definitely a flea."

I went through to the kitchen and put it in a jar, then returned to the living room, brandishing my captive triumphantly.

Jonika glanced at the tiny spec dancing about inside the jar and giggled condescendingly. Maureen used the remote control to turn the TV up.

I blinked at them both a couple of times, nonplussed they had failed to acknowledge my discovery, letalone show any concern. Returning to the kitchen, I placed the jar on a bench and wrote a note for Abraham. I then went downstairs and put my long pants and socks back on, despite the humidity.

Later I heard Abraham in the kitchen, putting the milk bottles into the fridge. I walked in there just in time to see him flicking the flea out of the jar onto the kitchen floor.

"Abraham! Those things are eating me alive!"

"Oh, sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't realise."

I had to stop and laugh for a moment. The situation was absurd. We had fleas in the house and nobody seemed to care except me. They must have been thinking I was some kind of lunatic. But who in hell was sane anyway?

"Yes, Abraham. That's why I left the note. Look, can we get something done about them? I can't go through summer in long pants all the time. Perhaps we could get an exterminator in."

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary. Far too much trouble. They'd have to rip up the carpets and everything." He went to the cupboard and took out a can of fly spray. "Here, this should solve the problem."

But I couldn't spray the living room with Jonika and Maureen in there, so I just had to keep my long pants on.

"I can't believe Abraham let that flea go in the house!" I told Jonika.

"I think you should've given it a name," she giggled.

"I can't believe he put a flea in a glass!" Maureen rolled her eyes at her.

That was all either of them had to say about it.

*

The living room was crowded with glamorous young women. At least, that's the way it seemed at first, and I was too intimidated to speak; just crept through to the adjoining dining room and surveyed them from a safer distance. In fact, there were just four, among whom Jonika and one of the visitors were reasonably attractive. The second visitor was heavily-dolled up, but on closer inspection she was really too thin, and almost as sour-faced as Maureen - who rounded off the quartet. The newcomers occupied the couch where I normally sat. A pair of bulky orange and black rucksacks rested on the carpet in front of them.

"Rosalyn and Veronique were at varsity with us, up 'n Auckland," Jonika told me. "They'll be staying a few days til they find a place of their own."

"Fine by me," I said, though it wasn't. Their presence was an intrusion on my personal relationship with Jonika, which I had come to regard as intimate, in a purely friendship sort of way. I suddenly felt very insecure.

After heating a pie in the microwave and boiling some frozen vegetables to go with it, I returned to the dining room table to eat and made like I was watching TV. It was them I was observing, however, not the TV. Rosalyn seemed friendly, smiling constantly, her hair hanging down in loose curls. She liked to impersonate the TV characters and was really quite good at it.

Veronique was more reserved, in terms of her personality, that is. Appearance-wise, she was the most radical of the four, what, with studs in her nose and ears, and her short, spiky hair bleached white as bone. At one point her handbag started ringing and she took out a mobile phone then proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes or so speaking loudly into it, as though there were a bad connection of something.

Then their favourite sitcom came on and the whole way through they were chatting about the characters as if they were personal acquaintances of theirs. 'Monica' had recently been voted the 'most beautiful woman in the world,' they said, though I had to wonder what kind of election they'd had to decide something like that.

When Abraham got home from tennis and discovered he would be having a couple of extra, nonpaying tenants for the next few days he smiled cheerfully and asked them to stand up so he could demonstrate how to collapse the couch into a double-bed.

They were very polite about it that first night and waited patiently for us all to go to bed before preparing to do so themselves. And we went earlier than usual because we knew they must have been tired from traveling.

By the third night they had taken to telling us when they felt like going to bed, and by the end of the first week they were actually asking us to vacate the living room.

I couldn't wait for them to leave. I never had chance to talk with Jonika anymore. Evenings they usually went out together, never once inviting me, just leaving me alone in the living room with Jonika's nuisance kitten.

Almost three weeks went by before Jonika gave me the news: "We've found a place! It's absolutely gorgeous, right on the sea, within walking distance of the city. We're moving in this weekend."

So she was going with them. The one person I'd managed to develop some kind of friendship with here was moving out just a few months after moving in. I had to turn away to hide my disappointment. Yet somehow I wasn't surprised. Why would someone like Jonika want to stick around with a couple of softies like me and Abraham? It had always been too good to last.

"It's two bedrooms so we're converting the sunroom into a bedroom for me. It'll be just like my own li'l studio, and overlooking the harbour! The rent's quite a bit more than it is here. But we'll save on bus fares. And it'll be 'our' place. We can entertain friends and go out for midnights swims." She laughed gaily.

I couldn't even pretend to be happy for her. It was a two bedroom flat and they were turning the sunroom into a bedroom for her. That made three, and the other two were obviously Rosalyn and Veronique.

Maureen was staying, and also staying was a certain annoying little set of teeth and claws. Pets, apparently, were not allowed. Jonika and Maureen tried very hard to persuade Abraham to take the kitten as his own, since Maureen would be too busy with her new job and everything, but he was surprisingly firm in declining. So they tried to talk me into it, and I knew then they thought me soft.

Jonika must have hoped either Abraham or I would develop an attachment to it and change our minds, because she left it with us anyway, though with the promise to come and collect it within a week and return it to the pet store. This, of course, she failed to do. I could see Abraham was a little upset about it too, since it managed to damage something or another every day, and it still went on the carpet more often than in the kitty litter. It was a constant attention-seeker, and there we were, all of us, trying to rid ourselves of the responsibility of looking after it. Thus it was with a somewhat heroic sense of righteousness that I took that kitten back to the pet store myself. Yet it also made me sad, returning this poor creature that Jonika had rejected.

"It wasn't your place to do that!" Maureen flared when she found out.

I was sitting on the couch, gazing into the blank screen of the TV, which was off, and she was standing over me in her black T-shirt and jeans, acting like she had given a damn about the kitten. And suddenly I was having one of those unsettling premonitions again, like the one before all the trouble with Erin.

*

There were no potential Jonika's or Rebecca's among the few who came around the first weekend I advertised, but I was determined to get somebody in. Maureen had insisted on meeting anyone before they moved in, but she wasn't around that weekend, so I resolved to get it over with before she could have any input.

In fact, the only one interested was a drippy-looking teenager who'd caught two buses and a train out from the Hutt Valley just to look at the place. I could hardly have rejected her.

Christine turned out to be the daughter of a priest. This surprised me, only because I'd always thought priests were not supposed to marry, letalone have kids. Whatever happened to that 'vow of celibacy' business? I didn't know much about religion, of course, other than what we'd been taught at Sunday school when I was seven or eight years old, and which no longer seemed plausible to me now, even if that did make me a 'heathen.' Neither was I much interested. But with Christine it didn't matter. She told me she was not the fanatical kind who went around preaching to everyone.

Indeed, she turned out to be decent enough company. The day after she moved in she invited me to walk down to the video store with her, and I actually felt a weird sense of gratitude. I'd grown so used to being left behind while everyone else went off and had fun together that even a walk down to the video store with drippy-looking Christine seemed like more of a privilege than I deserved.

And the movies she chose! One was about drug dealers in America, the other was about terrorists in the Middle East. The first was excrutiatingly boring, and I bided my time trying to analyse just why whoever had bothered to make this film thought it would appeal to anyone. I supposed it could only be because the ultra-cool pretty boys starrring in it might appeal to teenage girls like Christine, despite their incessant use of vulgar language. She further surprised me by lighting a cigarette while we were watching it.

The second film wasn't any more interesting. It was British and some unthinkably courageous British woman managed to infiltrate this foreign terrorist organisation and ended up being forced to watch them torture some guy. They stripped him naked in front of her and pulled his hands away from his private parts. Christine went all scarlet in the face and just about choked on her cigarette. And I had to chuckle at her. There she was, daughter of a priest, smoking away and watching a film about terrorism, and she must have exclaimed 'My God!' about twelve times.

Trotting up the drive after work the following day, I found I was really quite excited about spending another evening with Christine. I couldn't even have cared if she wanted to watch stupid videos again. At least she didn't carry on like she knew all the characters personally. But when I entered the living room I found Maureen in there with her, the pair of them sitting in the armchairs in front of the TV, the way Rebecca and Alan used to.

Christine greeted me with what struck me as a slightly reserved 'Hi,' while Maureen ignored me completely. That unsettling premonition was back inside me again, and I was very relieved when, around ten-thirty, Maureen wandered off to her bedroom, leaving Christine and me together for a while.

"No videos tonight?" I asked her.

"No, what makes you think I watch videos every night?" Her tone seemed vaguely patronising.

I shrugged. "Just curious."

After a pause, she asked me, "So, why did you give Maureen's friend's kitten back to the pet store?"

What I felt then was not so much anger as despair. If Maureen had her mind set on conspiring against me, my friendship with Christine was going to take some work to retain. I explained the whole thing to her, but she got up out of her chair and began moving around the room, like what I was saying made her uncomfortable.

"That's not what Maureen said. She said it was left in her care and you didn't even consult her."

"I wouldn't take too much notice of what Maureen tells you, Christine."

She was over by the dinner table when I said that. I saw her glance toward the kitchen door, then a vacant smile crept over her face. It was obvious Maureen was standing just inside the kitchen doorway eavesdropping.

Saturday night Maureen talked Christine into going to a barbecue with her, and the next afternoon Christine gave me all the news about how she had met Rebecca, who seemed like such a nice person, and who had been utterly devastated by what I'd done to her poor little kitten.

There was some consolation for me, at least, when Christine began getting insect bites around her ankles. So at last I had an ally on the flea front. We got together and approached Abraham about it, and the next evening he came home with some minuscule contraption designed to drive off insects with an ultrahigh frequency sound or something. Needless to say, it didn't work.
Christine and I did the video thing again a couple of weeks after the first time. Maureen invited her to a party, and used every conceivable angle to entice her, but she didn't feel like going.

I was the last one up the following night and twice Maureen stuck her head through the door to demand I turned the TV down. And twice I turned it down. I wasn't really watching it anyway. Call me a coward, but I was keen to avoid a confrontation with her. I was afraid she'd lose her temper and there'd be more trouble in the house.

A third time her head came through the door. "Would you turn that fucking thing down?!" And with that she slammed the door so hard one of Abraham's framed landscapes dropped from the wall.

Next thing I was banging on her door, which soon opened slightly, to the sight of her horrified, nasty face.

"Who in hell do you think you are to speak to me like that?" I bellowed down at her.

She started to yell back, but all of a sudden her voice changed and she assumed this entirely petrified expression. "You're dangerous! Leave me alone, you bast'd!" And the door slammed shut on me.

Next day I got home from work to find Maureen in the living room with some formally-attired, middleaged, overweight Maori woman.

"If you ever burst into my room and threaten me again it'll become a police matter," she threatened me, the out-of-place individual standing beside her.

"Don't be ridiculous. Nobody burst into your room, nobody threatened you, and the police aren't gunna throw anyone in prison for yelling at you."

I sat down on the couch but they both remained on their feet. Maureen glanced at her companion then came and stood over me.

"You're a lunatic. Jonika left 'cuz a you, and now Christine's talking about leaving 'cuz a you. She's rully afraid."

Her friend was watching me very closely, like a spy or something. Was she waiting for Maureen to make me lose my temper? The whole thing seemed a little weird. And of course what she'd said about Jonika wasn't true. As she continued her tirade, spitting out expletives with increasing frequency, I got up and left the room, more concerned about what else she'd said.

Christine was not home right then, and it was a few hours before Abraham returned from his tramping club meeting. He came to my door and knocked a little more assertively than usual. Was this it then? Was I on my way out? I couldn't really blame him if I was. I mean, coming after the nannies, Benny, Penny, Rebecca and Alan, and Erin before them. This had to look bad.

"What exactly happened between you and Maureen last night?" he asked me, his head bowed slightly less than usual.

I gave him my version of events, which produced the customary head-scratching, foot-shuffling antics.

"Well, Maureen's story is somewhat different, although Christine's account supports yours a little more. But I'm afraid she's moving back to her parents'. She's very upset."

"Maybe I can talk her out of it," I said.

Abraham had no sooner gone upstairs than the door to Christine's room slid open behind me. She'd come home without my knowing and must have been listening the whole time.

"Look, I'm not leaving 'cuz a you or Maureen," she said. "It's the tension around this place. It's not very nice living with people who hate each other, y'know."

She smiled at me then, almost in sympathy. "It's not the only reason I'm leaving, okay. Thuz the fleas as well. They're driving me crazy." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "This place needs more taking care of. It's becoming a dump."

I went back into the living room and stared around me; at the blackened wall above the wood burner from when Benny and Bob had lived here; at the rips in the upholstery Jonika's little kitten had made; the small TV Abraham had brought upstairs after the nannies had stolen the big one,and at the multitude of food and drink stains left in the carpet by various tenants and some of which were probably mine. This was no longer the neat and tidy house I had felt so privileged to move into more than two years before. The kitchen and the bathroom were deteriorating too, and there were cobwebs and patches of mold in the corners of the ceilings. Outside the weeds were growing up between the tiles in the patio and forcing them apart, the once pale green exterior of the house had turned a sort of dull olive with grime, and the back yard had become an impenetrable jungle that blocked all the light out of my bedroom. Christine was right. The place was becoming a dump.

*

Hardly surprising that Maureen left soon after Christine. For one thing, she'd given up her new job. Apparently her friends were now all making a lot more than she'd been. Some stupid-looking guy with dreadlocks had been staying over lately, and my guess was she'd moved in with him. Of course, before leaving she had made it very clear to Abraham she was going solely because she was petrified of me. It must have been important to her to have him believe that, even though she was leaving the place anyway. She refused to pay the two month's rent she owed too, on the grounds she had been 'driven out.'

My sense of guilt was very unsettling. I blamed Maureen entirely for what had happened, but at the same time I had to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, I was clearly a difficult person to live with. There were too many of them to say the problems hadn't been my fault at all. Was the entire human race comprised of bastards? Or were all of these people actually right about me? Was I the insulting, inconsiderate pig they said I was? The confused idiot who rammed his views down everybody's throats? The mixed-up loser who couldn't hold normal conversations with people? The fucking lunatic who had violent mood swings? If so, what hope was there for me? Why go on living if I were just some weird virus that infected the lives of normal people?

I went downstairs and told Abraham (or at least blurted out in his presence): "Look, I know I've had trouble with a few of the tenants and I wouldn't blame you if you blamed me for it all. So I'll be very careful not to cause trouble again, and if any trouble does develop, regardless of who's at fault, I'll be the one who leaves."

He didn't offer any protest, of course.

*

Daffy Duck's twin sister stood before me. The girl had long black hair, too dark for her complexion, with a fringe so straight it looked like it had been slashed off with a guillotine. She smiled up at me in a friendly, if timid, sort of way. It was the lisp which completed the image, and when she introduced herself as 'Leetha' I gathered she meant 'Lisa.' She looked so bad, and she had that lisp. It all made me feel the same way Georgina had. I found myself experiencing a profound sense of sadness for her.

She told me she was unemployed. I asked her if she could afford the rent, and she said she could, although it would only leave twenty over for food and 'thtuff."

"You get eighty a week from social welfare? Is that all?"

She nodded. "I'm theventeen. Not much, ith it? A dog couldn't live on that."

Well, I'd made up my mind to accept her. It was out of pity, of course. I couldn't see how the poor girl was going to get into any other place. She had it all stacked against her. And as for my dream of finding another Jonika or Rebecca, there was always the other room.

When Abraham met Lisa he told her she need only pay fifty a week, since she was unemployed. He then smiled cheerfully at me and explained a friend of his at the tennis club had arranged to move into the remaining room.

So there it was. I resigned myself to Daffy Duck and whoever else it was Abraham had coming. I'd more or less lost faith in this method of finding the woman of my destiny anyway.

That first week I did not see Lisa leave the house once, and it is doubtful she did at all. I'd arrive home in the evenings to find her seated in Jonika's old armchair, her spindly white legs sticking out with big fluffy yellow slippers on. Invariably she had a mug of coffee and a cigarette in her hand. The coffee always seemed to go cold before she could drink it and she was forever waddling in and out of the kitchen for fresh cups. As for the cigarettes, it was mind-boggling she could afford them. And in the living room she would remain, watching American sitcoms until after I'd gone to bed. I truly wondered what extent of scorn and ridicule she had endured in her life to make her lock herself away like this.

Then one evening she told me she wouldn't be able to meet her rent, despite it being only fifty.

"Why can't you get an accommodation allowance?" I asked her.

"What'th that?"

"You don't know? Hell, just write them a letter saying how much you're paying. They'll give you extra money."

"Oh, but I'm no good at that thort of thing."

"I'll write it for you."

She gave me a strange look, as if she didn't trust me to write the letter for her, although I couldn't see why she should be suspicious about something like that. In the end she let me write it for her anyway.

It was about a week later that Abraham mentioned it to me she had received a twenty dollar increase from the social welfare deparment. She herself never said a thing about it to me.

*

Lisa had woken up with a wheeze and a runny nose, which she decided was pheumonia. She asked me to go to the chemist to get some medicine for her. It was pouring outside so I took the bus to the shopping centre, where I had to wait about half an hour while the solitary assistant on hand dealt with all the people in the queue ahead of me.

When I got back she was sitting in the living room watching TV, the electric heater glowing beside her, a mug of coffee at her side and a cigarette burning in the ashtray. She was in Jonika's old armchair, as always, the remote control in her lap.

Over in the dining room Abraham was at the table with some big, well-dressed Maori guy who promptly stood up and introduced himself.

"Alf," he said, engulfing my hand with his own.

He was my height and twice as wide at the shoulders, and presented a fairly handsome spectacle, what, with his broad white smile, sturdy build and immaculate attire. He was well-spoken too, and when he sat down and resumed his discussion with Abraham, I heard 'specified measures' and 'encourage improved business results,' and was quickly lost. In truth, it was all a little intimidating.

After changing into dry clothes I made coffee and joined them at the table. Alf told me what he did, but I understood only that he worked for a major corporation. This in itself suprirsed me. He was built more like a security guard or construction worker. And he looked you directly in the eye when he spoke to you, almost to the point of unsettling you, though he was polite and friendly enough. There was a firm edge about him that warned you he wouldn't take any nonsense.

A few nights after Alf had moved in there was a live telecast of the All Blacks' match in Wales and I got up at three in the morning to see it. I half-expected to find Lisa in there watching some stupid show, the electric heater glowing and a mug of coffee beside her. The living room seemed strangely deserted when I flicked on the light and she wasn't in there.

About ten minutes after kick-off Alf wandered in, making a very big yawn as he did. With his poka-dot pajamas and his hair standing up at the back, he looked like an overgrown kid. He went through to the kitchen, returned shortly with a bottle of 'Lion' beer, and sat down on the couch beside me.

The All Blacks were expected to win easily but there was no scoring during the first quarter of the game and my frustration was mounting.

"Spin the ball!" I appealed to the TV screen.

"Nah." Alf shook his big head dismissively. "We need to keep it in the forwards, chap.' We've got the ascendancy up front."

Paying no attention to him, the All Blacks spun the ball through the backs and scored the first try of the game. I leapt up from the couch with a whoop, arms raised in jubilation.

Alf was shaking his head again. "We were lucky, chap.' If we wanna control this game we've gotta keep it in the pack."

"Come on," I chuckled at him. "We're gunna win this by twenny."

He took a swig of his beer and scowled at the screen. "You're being a bit arrogant there.' Wales is a team with a proud history. We're not gunna beat them by twenny on their home track."

Alf was right, because the All Blacks won by thirty. He even seemed a little annoyed about it too. I'd have to tread warily around Alf.

*

I came awake one night with a very strange feeling inside me; some premonition of tragedy. The telephone was ringing, and it continued to ring. I crept upstairs to answer it and was not surprised to hear my brother's voice on the other end of the line.

"I've got some bad news concerning dad," he said.

I wondered for a moment which dad he meant, our real father or our stepfather. But then I remembered Rick always referred to our stepfather by his first name.

"Go on," I said.

"He had a heart-attack. They've got him in intensive care and, I'd better warn you, it doesn't look good."
"He's in Wellington Hospital?" Our father had moved out to the country after the divorce, living there in virtual seclusion for the past twenty-odd years, and we'd hardly heard from him since.

"Yep. We're visiting him there tomorrow morning and I think you should come with us."

I knew I'd get hell from the manager for skipping a morning, even though I hadn't had time off in nearly three years. I knew also that I'd get worse hell from Rick and my mother if I didn't go to the hospital with them. It seemed the right thing to do, afterall.

They were there at reception when I arrived, Rick in his suit, Barb in a jacket and leather skirt, mum in a pullover and trousers; the three of them looking very sombre and brave .

We rode the elevator up to the third floor, walked down the long, empty corridor, our shoes clacking on the polished floor, the sharp smell of disinfectant in our nostrils all the way. Two nurses went by in white uniforms and frowned suspiciously at us; or so it seemed to me.

At last we came to the ward where my father was. I wondered what kind of state he was in. Would he be conscious? Would he even be able to converse with us? In fact, we found him sitting upright in the big hospital bed, a sort of impish smile on his face, which was drawn and very pale.
Our mother took the chair beside the bed while Rick and Barb stood arm in arm behind her. I remained at the foot of the bed; never entirely comfortable with this man who had turned his back on us two decades before; moved out to the country and virtual isolation so he was almost a stranger to us now, and of whom most of my childhood memories involved grim-faced scoldings and heated arguments with our mother.

He spoke to us about the job of his earlier years, installing insulation on construction projects, which he blamed for his ill-health. He had been pursuing legal action against the contruction company and the asbestos suppliers for some years but their lawyers had managed to draw the process out with one trick after another, undoubtedly in the knowledge he wasn't going to last much longer.

It was a much older, much less frightening version of my father than the one I remembered. His eyes danced merrily as he talked, and I recalled his peculiar brand of humour; self-effacing and slightly morbid. No doubt he saw himself as an exhibit on display right then, like a creature in the zoo, and us the gawking spectators. I felt sure he was covering up; that he was humiliated at being found in this state of weakness and would probably have preffered it if we hadn't come.
I was very glad when the visit ended, and I did not go back when Rick and our mother visited him again. The supermarket would not have given me more time off anyway.

A few days later the phone rang in the middle of the night. I was already awake, and I knew what it was about even before I picked up the receiver and heard my brother's voice telling me our father had suffered two more heart attacks and died.

*

I became aware of a repetitive, metallic banging emanating from the kitchen. It wasn't the first time I'd heart it, but I hadn't really been conscious of it until then. I'd just registered it as the sound of someone chopping carrots or something. This time it was louder than usual, however, and it seemed like an angry sound to me as I lay reading downstairs in my bedroom.

Suddenly my door burst open and I looked up to find Lisa glowering down at me. "Why do ya hafta bend the bluddy thing all the time!" She brandished the silver lid of the coffee tin before me.

"So I can lift it off without having to prise it open with a teaspoon everytime, Lisa. I've been doing that since long before you got here."

"Well, ith bluddy thelfish. It meanth I've gotta thraighten it all the time!"

"Okay, I won't do it anymore. Whatever makes you happy."

I'd made a special effort to stay calm about it. The last thing I needed was another conflict. Afterall, I'd made that crazy deal with Abraham about moving out if there were any more trouble, regardless of who was at fault. Besides, I was more amused by Lisa than annoyed. She really did remind me of Daffy Duck right then. All that was missing was the little black cloud above her head.

But after that there was something else every day. If I entered the kitchen while she was in there I'd be in her way no matter what I did and she'd start cursing to herself and slamming cupboard doors the way Erin used to do. If my washing was left in the machine when she wanted to use it, it would be thrown out onto the laundry floor. And if I happened to strike up a conversation with Abraham in the dining room while she was watching TV, she'd tut and curse and turn the volume up to its deafening maximum.

"You know, Lisa," I told her after one such incident, "it'd do you a lotta good to get a job. I mean, you've been here almost a month now and you never seem to leave the house. That's not much of a life."

She didn't respond right then, just kept her eyes on the TV screen as though I hadn't spoken. But later that evening Alf summonsed me upstairs to the dinner table and called Lisa over to join us.

"We've got a problem here, chap,'" he said to me, the firm edge in his tone. "Lisa's not comfortable with you here."

It was a bit off, him assuming the authoritative role like this. Sure, he was bigger than me and a year or two older, but he'd only just arrived.

"Look, Alf, I don't know what Lisa's problem is. But I can't breathe in this house without upsetting her."

He nodded his big head thoughtfully. Alf spoke and moved, and basically did everything, at a fairly slow pace. It was sure difficult to imagine him zipping around the tennis court. "Well, it's not for you to criticise other people's lifestyles.' It's not as if you have to face the obstacles she does."

I supposed he meant because she was a woman. But she wasn't going to find a job without looking for one. And it could hardly be said she actually had a lifestyle to criticise. But I kept all this to myself, of course.

"It was just a bit of advice," I told her.

She didn't say anything, just stared sulkily at the table, that Daffy Duck look on her face.

"You can be quite forceful, chap,' Alf went on. "I noticed it the night we were watching the rugby. It doesn't bother me, a course, but I can see how Lisa might find it intimidating."

I blinked back at him for a moment, trying to comprehend what he had just said. Alf had accused 'me' of being intimidating? I got out of my chair and paced around the room. All of a sudden the idea of leaving Abraham's didn't seem like such a bad option. I'd had nothing but problems here, and what else did I have to lose?"

"Okay, fine," I announced to the pair of them. "I'm gunna start looking for another place. Just give me time, alright. I don't wunna end up in a hovel or anything."

Alf turned to Lisa, who sniffed: "Long'th it duthn't take too long."

I ignored her and was on my way out of the room when I saw her face screw up and turn all red. Alf leaned across and embraced her.

"Hey, come on, darling," he said quietly. "He said he'll go."

*

If a heathen was someone who didn't believe in God, then I supposed I was one. At least, I didn't believe in the Christian god or the god of any other religion which was written in a book. But I had an idea there might be some divine force controlling our destiny. In a million years we might be godlike ourselves, the way technology was progressing - provided we didn't destroy ourselves in the process, of course. Or perhaps that force was somewhere inside us, like a sixth sense, the untapped ninety per cent of our brain.

I must have believed in something because there were times when things would happen and I'd take it as a sign. Like when, the same week I'd promised Alf and Lisa to look for another place to live, I got offered a trainee supervisor position at one of the supermarket's rural stores.

I wasn't too enthused about moving to some little hick-town in the middle of nowhere. There'd be only farmers and forestry workers. Probably there wouldn't be a gym; at least, not one with an aerobics programme or anything, and almost certainly I would never meet a girl.

But it was a promotion, afterall; the reason I'd completed the month-long management skills course in Palmerston North, and might shut my mother up about her 'thirty-two year old son still working as a check-out operator.' Besides, everyone said people were a lot friendlier in the country.

The company set me up in this old farm hands' accommodation. It operated like a boarding house and had about thirty rooms. Obviously in its hey-day it would have been packed to the brim, but now it was nearly empty. In fact, the comparison to a boarding house was flattering. You got a tiny room with one small window, a narrow bed, a lone chest of drawers and only one power socket. There was a common kitchen with a gas stove, and a toilet and bathroom on each of the three floors. The big living room had a big TV, a rickety old pool table, a couple of sofas and a scattering of wooden chairs.

The sole occupants of the living room in the evenings were a bunch of brawny, unshaven, heavily-tattooed men, who spent their time on the pool table, drinking beer and smoking. They seemed mystified by my presence and asked me what I did, and when I informed them they giggled among themselves and said that was 'no job for a man.' They themselves were freezing works slaughtermen, and I gathered they meant that was what 'real men' did. It was like living with half a dozen Bobs.

Each night that first week I lay on my thin, lumpy mattress that was too short for me, wearing both my sweatshirts and a jersey to compensate for the absence of blankets or heating, using a rolled up bundle of clothes for a pillow, and thinking: 'What in hell am I doing here? This is not where I want to be.' And my despair was intense.

Neither was trainee supervisor what I'd imagined it would be. I still had to work on check-out all day, watching people cutting each other off with their trolleys and getting fidgety while they waited, and I still had to say 'hello' to all of their impatient, disinsterested faces. I still had to put up with their rudeness, and with insults from my boss. And I still had to do my own bagging as well. About the only thing that had changed was my badge, which now read 'Supervisor.' I was also required to sort out minor problems, like finding the price if a barcode wasn't registering on the scanner and changing the paper rolls in the tills when they ran out. But anything of real importance, such as customer complaints and signiatures on cheques, was dealt with by the real supervisor, Jo, a crude, farting woman whose husband had committed suicide.

The town had its own weekly newspaper, and you could find out all about everything that was going on in the area just by reading it. There were a couple of ad's in the Flatmates Wanted column, with no gender stipulations mentioned. The first turned out to be away out of town, and there was no public transport here, so I called the other and spoke to a woman who said she and a friend were moving into an empty house and needed someone else. We arranged to meet the following morning.

Jane was short, petite, blonde, probably in her early twenties, and might have been quite attractive had she not been so tiny. She seemed pleasant enough, if a little reserved. She worked as a teacher in a primary school.

Her friend was late, so she showed me around while we waited. The house was ancient and the floorboards creaked and rocked a little as we walked around in it. But it was very spacious. The room I would be in looked at least twelve times the size of the one at the farm hands' accommodation. That may have been partly because it was bare, and I realised I'd be spending a bit of cash at the secondhand furniture store.

We were back out on the verandah when a rusty Cortina screamed up the shingle drive and bumped to a halt in front of us. Out jumped a chubby girl who could not have been more than fifteen, her black hair in pigtails, a cigarette in her mouth, wearing a black bomber jacket over white freezing works dungarees and gumboots. This was Jane's friend, Kylie.

It almost seemed like I was doing them a favour by accepting the room; a far cry from the city, where people looked you over, scrutinised you during an interview, then decided if they wanted you or not.

Jane had some living room furniture, along with a small fridge and all the pots, plates and utensils we would need. The house was already equipped with an old gas stove, and there was an equally antiquated ringer-washing machine out back in the laundry. We had no TV, though Kylie set her stereo system up in the living room.

To be honest, the radio drove me crazy. All these bands were supposed to be the 'next Beatles' or something, but about all they played were remakes of hits from the sixties and seventies. Then there were the ad's, clearly designed for mentally handicapped toddlers, and the creepy DJs, feigning American accents and cracking juvenile jokes about the male genitalia to show you what genuine shock-jocks they were. The DJs were inviting callers to tell them all the reasons they hated men, and an updated list was read out at regular intervals. Personally I would have preferred to listen to some sports programme, but it wasn't my stereo.

So when Jane came to me and said she and Kylie had been talking, and they'd decided I should buy a TV, I was not entirely averse to the idea, although I wondered aloud why 'I' should be the one to buy it when I didn't particularly like TV.

She frowned at me, the way she might have frowned at a child who had given the wrong answer. "The stereo's Kylie's and I've supplied almost everything else. We're also getting firewood from my father. We just feel it's your turn to contribute something."

I gazed up from her couch and considered this. Perhaps she had a point, although the idea that I derived any benefit from Kylie's stereo was absurd. But I was determined to make things work here. It would get around the town pretty quick if they thought I was a weirdo. I'd already agreed to mow the lawns and chop the wood for them.

Jane smiled at her victory. "You mize well buy it straight away then. There's a sale on at Connor 'n' Son's."

In fact, local prices were generally a little higher than they were in the city. But the locals expected you to spend your wages in the town if you earned them in the town, and I was hardly going to take a three hour bus ride back to Wellington to do my shopping anyway.

During lunch break next day I went to the electrical appliances store with the intention of putting down a payment on the cheapest TV they had. I was lucky too, because the miniature set they showed me was the last in stock and cost almost a hundred less than the next cheapest.

The dealer had me sign a bunch of forms, then sealed the TV up in a thick cardboard box. "Three ninety-nine, thank you very much," he informed me, punching the figures up on the cash register.

I stared back at him. "That's the full amount. I asked for hire-purchase."

He chuckled as though the notion were ridiculous. "Not for 'sale' items, son. Any of the others, yes. But this li'l beauty's enough of a bargain as it is."

Well, I'd made up my mind to buy it, and I could just afford it to. So, what the hell, I wrote out a cheque for the full amount and gave it to him.

I could tell by their silence that Jane and Kylie weren't overly impressed with the puny set I'd brought home, especailly as I wasn't able to tune it into the stations clearly. But what could they say? They'd asked me to supply a TV and that's what I'd done. Jane suggested I call the dealer and ask him to come around and tune it in properly for us, since it was under warranty and everything.

"No, no, no!" He gave me the ridiculous notion chuckle when I phoned. "you won't get a clear picture on that, son; not without an external aerial. It's only a cheap li'l set."

*

"Do you think you could turn your light off when you're not in your room, to save us money?" Jane told me.

She was on a stool in the kitchen, trying to bring something down from the cupboard. I had to look slightly upward at her as I walked past.

I was going to the toilet and would have been back in two minutes, but to keep her happy, I said, "Sure," and went back to turn off my light.

I couldn't see what it was she was trying to get out of the cupboard, but she was still struggling to bring it down when I returned.

"Do you want some help?"

She scowled down at me and didn't reply. It all seemed a bit weird, if you asked me.

She called after me as I continued toward the bathroom, "We got some extra groceries. The bill's on the table. I haven't calculated your share yet."

"That's okay. I'm pretty good at maths." And with that I fairly scrambled into the bathroom before she could stop me again.

I made some goofy error when I worked out the bill. When Jane pointed it out to me I chuckled at my silly mistake.

"But you said you were good at maths," she replied flatly. "Can you see where you went wrong?"
"Course I can. It was just an oversight, that's all." I handed her a ten dollar note.

"No," she said. "I want the correct change."

I paused for a moment to remember life at the farm hands' accommodation. "Okay." I forced a smile. "But you'll have to wait til tomorrow. I don't have precisely eight dollars and forty-five cents on me now, and all the shops are closed."

She didn't reply to that; just got back on the stool and continued to struggle with whatever it was she was trying to bring down from the cupboard.

*

A few weeks after bringing it home I found a use for my TV, other than having it sit there for Jane and Kylie to watch (which, if nothing else, relieved me of the hideous noises of the stereo system). The All Blacks were in South Africa and there was going to be a live telecast of their opening game in the middle of the night. It was the first time they'd been there since I was a kid, and it was okay by everybody now too, because Nelson Mandela was president.

Curiously, when I climbed out of bed a little before two, the lights were already on in the living room. Jane's boyfriend stayed over sometimes and I supposed he must have got up to watch it as well. Or it could have been Kylie. She had played for the girls' team at high school and had talked to me about rugby a few times. I say talked 'to' me because my meagre offerings were either dismissed or ignored. Afterall, she had played the game, for an entire two seasons, so no man was going to impose his views on her when it came to rugby. But neither Jane's boyfriend nor Kylie - mercifully - were around, and I sat there and watched the game alone.

I managed another three hours sleep after the game, then got up around eight, unable to sleep in daylight, as always. I was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in my hand, making a very big yawn, when Jane approached me.

"We've been talking," she said, the school teacher's edge to her tone. "We'd prefer it if you didn't get up and wander 'round at nights. The floorboards creak and it's very unsettling."

"I was only watching the rugby - on the couch. I hear you and Kylie coming home late all the time."

"Yes, but that's the weekends. Everybody goes out in the weekends."

"But you don't even use the door handle, just slam the door closed in the middle of the night. Now, you made me go out and buy this TV, and these games are the first thing I've ever wanted to watch on it, so I'm gunna watch them."

Jane appeared set to launch into an angry tirade, but I was spared when Kylie strolled sleepily into the kitchen. She was wearing a silky, pink nighty, which really looked quite preposterous on her curveless, tomboy frame. Taking up the dishcloth, she ran it across the bench.

"Would you mind cleaning up after yuv had your breakfast," she told me. "It'll be one less thing I hafta do round here."

"I haven't had breakfast yet," I said, and, without waiting for a response, walked out of the kitchen.

I wasn't sure which of them had infuriarated me the most; her insinuating she did all the housework when she did the least of the three of us, or Jane trying to impose some kind of curfew on me. I went into my the bedroom and closed the door. The solitude seemed like bliss. If only I could have stayed there the rest of my life, completely alone, safe from the insanity of other human beings.

*

The night of the All Blacks' second tour match I got up to watch it and crept through to the living room. I was so preoccupied with preventing the floorboards from creaking that what happened next was really quite comical. The first thing was, I could not find the remote control. As often as not they left it under the couch or buried beneath the cushions, or somewhere equally obscure like that.

And I was still searching for it when I noticed, with some confusion, that my TV wasn't even there. I surveyed the entire room, and my confusion slowly gave way to anger. I knew where it was alright, and I went straight through there and got it. Jane's silhouette rose up in her bed as I was on my way out, but I shut the door before she had chance to say anything.

The only thing that surprised me when she entered the living room about fifteen minutes later was that it had taken her that long. She was wearing one of her boyfriend's T-shirts, which came down past her knees, the sleeves flapping loosely around her elbows.

"I'm gunna have to ask you to leave," she said firmly, in the manner of the righteous and criminally wronged. "It's not working out here. You're extremely inconsiderate and we don't feel safe with you here at all. And I certainly won't have you bursting into my bedroom in the middle of the night. I could've called the police, y'know."

*

It must have been as difficult to find tenants in that town as it was to find flats. There was just one vacancy in the paper that week and when I called I was told right away I could take it.

"But don't you wunna meet me first?"

The guy chuckled. "Nah, no need for 'at, is 'ere?" It was a happy-go-lucky voice with the trace of an English accent.

When I met the owner of the voice, he looked much as I'd expected he would. Larry, one of those people who suited his name so well you couldn't imagine him being called anything else, turned out to be a tall, gangly sort of fellow, a few years younger than me, with a beaming round face; the roundness of which was accentuated by the crewcut stubble of his hair.

When I asked about his accent he laughed boisterously and assured me I was imagining things. His parents were English, however, he added thoughtfully. Then he laughed again. "I ain't never been asked 'at before."

Larry was renting yet had completely furnished the house out himself. There was even a bed and two dressers in the spare room. So I left all the secondhand stuff I'd bought at Jane and Kylie's, along with the stupid TV.

He explained he was planning to put a mortgage on a house a few years down the track and was steadily accumulating all the things he'd need to put in it. "Reckon I done things sort a backwards," he chuckled.

The rent was cheap enough; just a little more than I'd been paying at Jane and Kylie's, and a mere fraction of what you'd pay in the city, and Larry seemed like about as friendly a guy as you could meet. I'd been putting a fair bit away in the bank each week since coming to the town, what, with the better wages and cheaper rents, and had started thinking about saving for a secondhand car.

That first night Larry got a couple of beers out of the fridge and we sat there in the living room drinking them, talking and watching the news together. He told me all about his job as a postie, and then it was my turn to brag a little about my new position as trainee supervisor. Only he wasn't listening anymore. An item about Maori land claims on the TV had caught his attention.

"Shoot the bast'ds," he growled. "They ought a get off their arses and earn an honest living like the rest of us!"

I blinked at the TV for a few seconds, that familiar sinking feeling inside me. Why in hell was it so impossible to find normal people to live with? Still, I thought, it wasn't a thing that needed to get between us, and I was determined to get along with this guy. Afterall, if I couldn't get along with 'Happy Larry,' there wasn't much hope for me, was there?

"So," he said, suddenly cheerful again when the item was over, "Moved out a that place quick enough, didn't ya?"

"I tell ya, Larry, they treated me like an animal. I'm never gunna live with women again."

He laughed raucously, as though I had said something highly amusing, and I supposed I must have appeared quite comical to him too, sitting there expounding my condemnations of the opposing gender. But I needed to get it out of my system, and once I'd started I just couldn't seem to stop. I was raving away like Benny used to.

"No, Larry, I've had it with women. Don't think I'm ever gunna marry one. They're always complaining about everything we do-"

Larry cut me off with a particularly loud peel of laughter. "Calm down, mate. Sounds like you're the one with the problem. I don't let all 'at rubbish bother me.

He said this in a slightly heroic tone, which struck me as ironic. I also knew he was right. I did have a problem. I was becoming the same as the people I was complaining about.

*

Over the next few weeks I half-expected some conflict to arise between Larry and myself, and I was actually a little surprised when none did. Surely he'd find something to complain about. But, if anything, he seemed to have taken a liking to me, for whatever weird reason. He invited me to tag along when he went out on Saturday evenings.

Larry was a member of the Retired Servicemen's Club, though he wouldn't have been more than thirty. He'd spent a bit of time in the airforce after high school. One night he took me to the club for a few frames of snooker, signing me in as his guest.

His friends were all pretty much like he was; happy-go-lucky, cheerful types with very laid-back attitudes. Simon, the fresh-faced beanpole of a local constable, kept us entertained with tales of carnage on the state highway. There was the guy who'd been convicted of drunk driving three times and had his license disqualified, but he'd got in his car one night anyway, so drunk he could hardly walk, and had ended up running a red light and ploughing into the side of another car. The occupant of that car, a mother of three, was trapped in her seat and burned alive. Then there was the guy who'd deliberately swerved out as a car-load of teenagers was overtaking him, causing the driver to lose control and smash into a power pole. That time the victims were lucky. They all died on impact. Simon had plenty more tales of a similarly horrific nature and plainly to revelled in providing us with all the grisly details. It made me think that, should I perish in a car wreck on the highway some day, Simon would be here to tell people about it with similar relish.

They were perched up on stools beside the bar and reminded me of three buzzards sitting on a branch. The third buzzard was Pommy, an obese, balding, bespectacled guy. His idea was that all these accidents were caused by the 'bleedin' Mowries' and the legal system was too lenient and, therefore, equally to blame. He was also concerned about Pacific Island immigration and reckoned if someone didn't put a stop to it they'd overrun the country. Pommy had been 'up 'n Auckland' over Christmas, visiting relatives, and about all he'd seen were Islanders. Half of them didn't even speak English properly. But what had really got his goat was when someone had told him to go back home if he didn't like it.

"Bleedin' racist! We saved the world, we did. If it 'adn't been for us, you'd all be speakin' German."

Steve the barman hovered around, wiping glasses and offering a comment now and then. He was a chubby guy with receding orange hair, a missing front tooth and a double chin. Like Pommy, he must have been well into his forties, and I was kind of surprised to see Larry hanging out with such old guys. At one point he leaned across the bar and started telling us about some pain-in-the-arse customer he'd served that day.

"Typical stock agent," he said. "Dey all piss-heads, so far as I'm concerned. Only fing worse dan stock agents is the farmers 'emselves, and it's a good fing not too many of dem make deir way in here."

For his part, Simon particularly disliked journalists and teachers, while Larry's gripe was with bankers and accountants. As for Pommy, he couldn't stand shearers or freezing workers.

Next they started on about Larry's past flatmates, and I suspect they did so to draw me into the conversation, since I'd said practically nothing up to that stage.

"Crikey, mate," Steve beamed across the bar at me, "He had diss bloke staying wiv him one time, took off all of a sudden, and a week later Larry gets a phone bill for free hundred dollars worf a calls to Aussie!"

"Yeah, that bast'd!" Larry chuckled into his beer. "His missus was over there. Reckon that's where he went."

"'E's a bleedin' softy, is our Larry," Pommy chimed in. "'Ad another chap staying with 'im a few years back. Boxer chap, you know, real poser. Got pissed one night and gave 'im a black eye!

Larry chuckled again. "Angus Macdonald. Angus bluddy Macdonald! 'Ow was I to know 'e'd turn out to be a Mowri?!"

"Well," Pommy went on, "Ol' Larry 'ere didn't even kick the beggar out. So wot 'appens? Two weeks later same thing 'appens again. Only, this time it's the other eye!"

They all laughed raucously over that, even Larry, as though it were tremendously funny that it had been the other eye that time.

As for me, I just sat there shaking my head in wonder. "Hell, Jane kicked me out just 'cuz I wanted to watch rugby on my own TV!"

They all looked at me a little strangely then, like I'd said something foolish and they were making up their minds I was a bit of a sap.

Steve broke the silence. "Right bitch that one. Her mother was road-kill, y'know. Thinks the world owes her something."

*

Larry helped me out looking for a car. I was grateful for that, as I knew practically nothing about these things, and he knew just about everything. His father had been a mechanic. The cars in my price range invariably had a lot of mileage on them and were at least a decade old. Some of them were full of rust, dents and dings. I was very surprised, therefore, when we came across a shiny red station wagon, just a few years old, with less than forty thousand kilometres on the clock. It was perfect for me.

Larry laughed at me for wanting to buy a Lada. I didn't see why. Even the dealer said it was a real steal. It's only previous owner had been a little old lady who'd hardly driven it at all; just used it for shopping. It was tidy inside, fairly roomy, and even had a radio-cassette player. I was already picturing myself in the driver's seat with a girl beside me. Next time I met someone like Rebecca or Jonika I'd be able to take her out in my shiny red Lada. Boy, would she be impressed! This car was going to change my life.

Despite Larry's assessment that it was mechanically very sound, backed up by the dealer's devout assurances, the clutch dropped out just a few weeks after I'd bought it. I called the dealer to see if that was covered by the warranty, but he just gave me that same ridiculous-notion chuckle I'd got from the guy who'd sold me the TV.

"No, not for that car, son. It's only a cheap li'l Lada."

And I really had to laugh. It was a vaguely manic sort of laugh too, even in my own ears.

My immediate problem was the work function I was supposed to be attending that evening. It was at some lodge way out of town. And that's all I concerned myself with right then. I didn't want to think about the car and how long it would take me to save enough to have the clutch repaired.

"Tell you wot," Larry beamed at me, "I'll come with you, eh. I'm not doing anything tonight."

So we drove out there in his Charger, with its V8 engine and fat tyres, the big speakers blasting out British rock 'n roll all the way.

In fact, we were the first there, and Larry proceeded to occupy himself hitting on the barmaid. This seemed to amuse her, more than anything, and you could tell she wasn't interested. Whenever she went out back for some reason or another, he'd turn to me with this sort of frenzied grin on his face and growl something like: 'Cor, mate, see those knockers? She's a goddess!" To which all I could do was smile sheepishly back at him. I didn't find her attractive, and Larry was as embarrassing as hell.

When the others began to arrive Larry gave up on the barmaid and tried instead to hit on the check-out girls. They all knew him, of course, and just laughed it off, the way the barmaid had done.

It didn't take him long to get drunk either, and my biggest concern as the party got into full swing was how I would be getting home that night. I watched with a mixture of amusement and discomfort as his antics became progressively more obscene. He had the women falling off their chairs when he pulled a giant novelty condom over his head and blew it up from the inside until it burst. I had to admit it was quite funny, seeing his beaming round face inside an inflated condom, like some kind of bizarre spaceman.

A short time after there was a chorus of delighted-horror shrieks from the direction of the dance floor, and when I went over to find out what was going on I saw Larry prancing about in the middle in his socks and Y-front underpants. Next time I looked, it was just his socks.

"My God!" Jo laughed in front of me. "Who brought him here?!"

I slipped back to the bar and tried to remain inconspicuous. The branch manager was a few seats down from me and I overheard her talking about getting a move on. I asked her for a lift back to the town.

*

I was sitting in the living room watching Larry's gigantic colour TV, the volume booming through the speakers of his stereo system the way he had it rigged up, waiting for the rugby to come on. During the ad's break before kick-off I hurried through to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Larry came in while I was pouring it, wearing dark blue overalls and green gardening gloves.

"Mind giving us a hand with the gard'ning," he said, taking the orange juice out of the fridge and drinking straight from the jug.

"Eh? The game's about to start. I'll come out soon as it's finished."

He scowled back at me. It was the expression he usually reserved for news items about Maori land claims. "That'll be a cuppla hours. Be getting dark by then."

"It'll be over by four-thirty," I assured him. "I'll come out straight after."

He seemed to scowl right through me then, like he felt betrayed. "Look, I'm not gunna do it all meself. Last chap 'ere never did a thing and I don't wunna get lumbered with the lot again."

"Oh, come on, Larry," I forced a chuckle. "I do me share. Just this morning I mopped the floor."

He glanced down at the floor where he'd left a trail of very large, muddy boot-prints across the chequered tiles. "Oh, sorry 'bout 'at!" He laughed into my face.

"I did the bathroom too," I added.

Feeling I'd justified myself, I took my coffee and returned to the living room. But how could I enjoy the game when I knew he was out there toiling away in the garden, and that he had asked for my help and I'd refused him? He'd helped me out with the car, afterall.

Larry didn't say much when I joined him in the garden; just showed me what he wanted done. I was to pull out all the weeds that ran around the edge of the back yard, then do the same in the front garden.

"Hell, it'll take weeks," I moaned.

"Best to get started right away then." He beamed at me.

Larry wandered over to the garden shed, then returned with a hoe, a spade and a pair of green gardening gloves like his own, all of which were handed to me.

An hour or so later I stood up stiffly from my work, my lower back aching, my palms and the sides of my fingers stinging with watery calluses despite the gloves, the back of my neck burnt from the sun. I decided I'd take a break to see what the score was and grab a glass of orange juice.

Approaching the front door I noticed Larry over on the front lawn, sitting on a beer crate, a can of beer in his hand, chatting loudly with old Fred, the neighbour, who was seated on his doorstep about ten metres away.

The grin sort of froze on his face when he realised I was there. Then he chuckled boisterously, as though it were all a big joke and you had to love him for being such a rascal.

I glanced across at old Fred. He looked like some ancient Indian chief, sitting there with his leathery, tanned face and long white hair.

"G'day, Fred," I called.

He just murmuered without looking at me, the way he always did. I got the impression he didn't like me much; not that he knew me at all.

The All Blacks were ahead when I switched the TV back on, and there was only about fifteen minutes to go. Australia were hard on attack, however, and a converted try would give them a one point lead. Suddenly, weirdly, I found myself hoping they would. I was cheering against the All Blacks! Hell, I'd become some kind of traitor or something?

In the final moments the Wallaby halfback burst clean through to score between the goal-posts. I leapt up impulsively and punched both fists in the air. "Yesss!" And that sounded very strange in my own ears.

*

Even for spring there seemed an extraordinarhy abundance of flies around; large, black, buzzing flies that got into your face all the time and pestered you when you were eating. Larry and I cooked for each other twice a week and on his cooking nights he would leave my meal out on the kitchen bench, so that when I arrived home from work I'd find all these big black flies crawling over it. I kept asking him to cover it but he'd just laugh into my face and say, 'Crikey, mate, they won't eat much!' as if it were his own original joke. Yet when I cooked he'd always complain if he found so much as the tiniest shred of potato skin in his mashed potato. Larry also wanted me to get a crewcut and smile more often, like there was something horribly wrong with me for not being the same as him.

But we got along for the most part. Either I'd back off before we quite reached the argument stage, or Larry would just make a joke and change the subject.

"Ain't seen ol' Fred about for a while," he observed one such time.

"Maybe he went on holiday."

"No, 'e would a told me." He blinked pensively at the giant TV screen.

Later that evening there was a sharp knock at the door. Larry went and answered it then returned with Simon, the fresh-faced beanpole of a local constable.

"When did it 'appen?" he asked as they sat down..

"Not sure. Two or three weeks ago, maybe more. I've seen a few bodies in my time, mate, but this was not a pretty sight at all. Maggots all over 'im!"

A big black fly buzzed into my face as I listened, and I waved it away.

"Don't think 'e 'ad any family 'round 'ere," said Larry.

"No, reckon he didn't. Might a lain there for ever had your mate Reg not noticed his mail piling up in the box."

Larry began to chuckle. "Funny thing was, last time I saw the ol' devil 'e'd 'ad 'is 'air cut!"

"Bit like Samson, eh." Simon laughed with him. "Poor ol' Fred. Loses his hair 'n' snuffs it!"

I couldn't see much humour in it myself. I was just thinking about how many flies there'd been around lately.

*

I was sorry to be leaving Larry's. I'd been there almost a year and was more comfortable than I'd ever been anywhere. He'd never really got on my case about anything much, and he'd actually treated me like a human being for the most part. I'd appreciated that. Larry had his faults, sure, and some of them could be downright annoying. But who in hell was perfect anyway?

Leaving his place was my only regret. I'd finally got the transfer I'd applied for almost as soon as I'd arrived here, even if it was to some town that wasn't much bigger or closer to the city than this one. I'd also have to work Saturdays, apparently. But I'd be a fully-fledged supervisor, no trainee, and my wages would be higher.

The Lada had given me nothing but problems since the day I'd driven it out of the used car yard, and it had probably gone through eight sets of tyres in that time. But now I was moving it came into its own. I folded the rear seat down and crammed all my things into the back, and that's where they stayed during my first few days in the new town. The company had arranged for me to stay at a pub until I found a place, and the room at the pub was about as small as the one at the farm hands' accommodation.

In this town there was a daily newspaper, albeit a mere eight to twelve pages. There were five vacancies advertised for flatmates wanted that week, three of them specifying 'female only.' The fourth sought a professional male and I was flatly told by the woman who answered my call that she did not consider supervisor at a supermarket 'professional' at all.

Evidently they were fussier here, and I was already contemplating life at the pub for the indefinite future as I made my second call. This time, however, I was invited straight around for an interview. The overweight, middleaged woman who opened the door reminded me of one of the aunts on 'Bewitched,' what, with her horn-rimmed glasses and slanty smile. Her son was away at university and she had the house to herself. There were blankets on the bed and everything else in the spare bedroom, including two chests of drawers, a built-in wardrobe and a large wooden desk. She had satellite TV in the living room and there was a computer in the study, which I was informed I would be welcome to use. I'd never lived in a house with a computer before, and had no idea how to use one.

So the room was mine, and it seemed like paradise after three nights at the pub. Helen told me not to worry about housework because it gave her something to do during the day, and she even insisted on cooking my meals, doing my laundry and tidying my bedroom for me.

And yet, that first night, I experienced an unsettling premonition as I lay in the bed that was slightly too short for me. I didn't understand it at all; only that it was a bad feeling inside me, a profound sense of sadness, as though Helen were terminally ill or something.

The entire back wall of her living room was concealed behind a gigantic flag of the Stars and Stripes. She explained her son was at university in California and she was now a member of the New Zealand American Club. Indeed, from her endless stories about this, it seemed she was their very favourite Kiwi - as good as an American herself! And her son had won an academic scholarship to get there. It was obvious he was some kind of genius. There were framed photographs of him all over the house; a good-looking kid with short, sandy hair.

Helen, it seemed, was permanently stationed in her armchair, the televison blaring away, an entire selection of remote controls on the glass-topped coffee table in front of her. She was the world's foremost expert on all things American, including the NFL, and watched the games they showed on satellite. She had a '49ers' cap and T-shirt, and it was a kind of ritual with her to wear them whenever San Francisco were playing. She'd have her tub of popcorn and would sit there yelling American-sounding things like, "'At-a-way! Go get 'em, boys! Yee-haa!" as though they were family. And the worst part was, the 49ers always won.

About the only excitement in the town, from what I'd gathered from the check-out crew, was when a fight broke out in one of the pubs and someone got stabbed or something. So I didn't go out much myself. The difference between me and Helen, of course, was that I had a job. And I preferred to stay in my room and read than watch television. Sometimes it worried me that I was still single at my age and there were no prospects in the town. But what could I do? If pursuing my career meant I got stuck in an isolated little farming community like this, then so be it. I was never going to meet the woman of my dreams though.

*

Helen kept a lot of beer in the fridge for when Tom came around, whoever Tom was, and she told me to help myself. I did just that one evening; helped myself to a can of Budweiser, then joined her in the living room. The news was on and Helen was very pleased they were bombing Baghdad.

"Their religion's evil and the women don't have any freedom," she enlightened me. America's got the power to change things. That's what it's all about. First thing they shud do is knock out the TV stations. Stop the propaganda. It's poison!"

"Who? The Iraqis or the Americans?"

She gave me a look like I'd just set my hair alight or something, but didn't respond.

The sports news came on and they were talking about Team New Zealand's victory over the San Diego Yacht Club. 'A li'l country like ours can beat the whole of America!' the Kiwi skipper was gloating.

I glanced up at the Stars and Stripes on Helen's wall and thought I'd score some points with her. "Fancy pouring so much a the public's money into a rich man's sport, eh." I chuckled at the absurdity of it.

"Wudda ya mean by that?"

The smile dropped off my face. Had I said the wrong thing again? I hastened to explain myself. "Well, it's sponsored by public televison, isn't it? Public money so some millionaire can build a yacht that's quicker than some other millionaire's yacht - and call it 'Team New Zealand.'"

Helen rose up and wagged her finger down at me. "Yuv got no idea what you're on about. Ya shudn't be so opiniated. This isn't the city, y'know. People'll kill ya for talking like that 'round here!"

I didn't know which amazed me more: this unexpected outburst, or the fact she was actually on her feet. Either way, I'd made up my mind already to look for another place. Those unpleasant feelings I'd been experiencing at nights weren't pity at all. Living with Helen was like living with my mother again.

Next day after work I went to the fridge for a glass of orange juice and noticed all the beer had vanished.

"Oh, Tom came 'round and took the whole lot away," she said brightly; too brightly, and who in hell was Tom anyway?

"Would it be possible to watch the rugby tomorrow night?" I asked, sitting down on the couch beside her. "It'll be on at two but I'll keep very quiet."

"I'll be taping for Tom on the other channel at that time," she replied. "I promised him."

I paused for a moment to think about the meals she had cooked me, and the laundry she had done in the weekend. "Sure, no problem." I smiled.

Returning to the kitchen to get my dinner, I found the oven warmer empty. I asked Helen about that.

"I left a cuppla chops out," she said, without removing her eyes from the TV screen. "They're on the bench. All you hafta do is pop 'em under the grill. Thuz spuds in the pantry."

So I made my own dinner, and when I'd finished I rinsed off my plate, pots and utensils and put them in the dish washing machine.

I was getting ready for bed when there came a knock at my door. It opened before I had chance to cover myself, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles peered in at me. She didn't seem to notice I was undressed. Perhaps it was the glasses, but Helen always seemed to be focussing on something about ten feet beyond you.

"Wud you mind coming into the kitchen?"

With that unsettling premonition I made my way down the hall. She was standing beside the dish washing machine.

"Look, I tol'ja the day you came, forks do not go in the same basket as knives and they must be put in with the prongs up." She made me take my fork out and put it in the correct basket, prongs up, while she supervised. "Now, I don't wunna hafta tell you again. Don't think I'm here to clean up after ya just 'cuz I'm a woman."

*

There were two cars in the drive when I got home on Saturday. So I parked the Lada out on the road and walked up to the house. I found Helen seated at the dining room table with a group of people. They were eating roast turkey and there were bottles and glasses of wine all over the table, Budweiser cans and glasses of beer. I was introduced to no one, and no one introduced themselves to me. The room, in fact, went a little quiet when I entered, and they all seemed to look at me strangely, as though I were a pervert or something.

"Smells great," I said. "Any over?"

"No, thuz none over," Helen replied blandly. "You can cook for yourself, can'cha?"

I blushed under the scrutiny of her guests. "Christ, a-course I can cook for meself. But when people have guests 'round for a meal they usually include those they're living with."

Helen rose from her chair and came toward me with a very fierce look on her face. "Oh, so you're calling me a rude host! I won't be insulted in my own house like that. You're completely delusional. And I'll not tolerate blasphemy either. This is a Christian home!"

All eyes were fixed on me and I was intimidated by them. My throat seized up and for an appalling moment I feared I might break down in front of these strangers. Mercifully I managed to control myself.

"Well it won't be my home much longer," I told her. "I'll be gone in two weeks." I was no longer concerned about the consequences. I'd made up my mind to leave and was now committing myself to it. Clearly it was the right thing to do.

The eyes continued to stare; Helen's fairly set to pop out of their sockets as she stared up through the lenses of her glasses. I almost pitied her, standing there with her mouth open, humiliated in front of her guests.

"You won't be out in two weeks. Yull be out this weekend!" she snapped. "I'm kicking you out!"

*

The following morning I went through to the kitchen early, feeling very hungry. I had not eaten the previous night; just hidden away in my room. In fact, I hadn't been eating much at all lately, since Helen had effectively stopped cooking for me. The longer hours were tiring me out and I couldn't be bothered cooking the food she left out when I got home. Instead I'd go straight to my room and read til I fell asleep.

I might have been a supervisor now, but I still spent most of my time on check-out, serving impatient customers, bagging their groceries, stocking the shelves, sweeping the floors. Harry was the real supervisor. I was being groomed to replace him when he retired the next year. By that time I'd be thirty-four; mid-thirties, working as a supervisor in a small-town supermarket, with no hope of finding anyone.

The manager himself wasn't much older than me. His father was very high up in the company, it was said. He drove a racing green Jaguar and was invariably accompanied by a group of sombre-looking men in suits, carrying briefcases, marching through the premises. The only time he spoke to you was to ridicule you in front of everybody for doing something wrong, and the rest of the time it was as though you didn't exist. Sometimes I had to wonder about that too. Did I exist at all?

As I sat down to my bowl of cereal I noticed a long brown envelope lying on the table. It caught my eye because it had my name scrawled in bold red ink at the top. On closer inspection I discovered it was a list Helen had made of all the things she expected me to pay for before I leaving. This included a month's wear and tear on the furniture, the can of beer I'd drunk, and, of course, my share of the bills for satellite television and the telephone, which she must have imagined I'd used.

I slumped back into the chair and felt all the energy go out of me. Why in hell was everyone so crazy? Were there any sane people left in the world?

My immediate concern was to find another place, and until then I would have to go back to that lonely little room at the pub, where I couldn't even get in and out at nights without finding the manager to unlock the back door for me.

I did not want to go there, and neither did I want to see Helen again - ever. All I knew as I climbed into my Lada was that I wanted to get away; to escape it all; and with this vehicle I had the means at my disposal to do so. I drove into the town, past the supermarket, and observed the racing green Jaguar parked out front, and knew I did not want to go back there either. A little further ahead I saw a rusty Ford Anglia bump to a halt right outside the Black Power fortress, a puny skinhead leap out, spray-paint a red swastika on the concrete wall, then scramble back into the Anglia, which was already speeding away before he could properly close the door. I reckoned that puny skinhead needed to find a way to feel big.

The lights turned red as I approached the state highway intersection, and an old black van with a white peace sign on the side pulled up in the lane beside me. The driver sported a blond ponytail and beard, and he was smoking a roll-your-own. He caught my eye, so I waved casually, just to be friendly. At this he raised a clenched fist and gestured menacingly toward the roadside. He was snarling, his nose screwed up and his nicotine-stained front teeth showing. Hell, all I'd done was try to be friendly!

Mercifully the lights changed and I was on the state highway far away from the guy. People might have mocked my Lada but little did they know. I could get it up over a hundred-and-ten if I kept my foot flat long enough. That's what I was doing, too, though the engine screamed. It was my anger, of course. But I couldn't stop having all these angry thoughts. I was thinking about progress yet it seemed to me society was going completely the other way. The more people had, the less they needed each other. Fear and greed were coming back to the surface. If there were a god, surely it would eradicate us from its planet the way we might eradicate some destructive pest from our garden. I could see that. I really could. And if the eradication of our species made sense to me, then surely I was as insane as everybody said.

I had to slow down because there was a rugged section of highway with one lane blocked off by orange cones and a big 'ROAD WORKS' sign. The workers weren't there on a Sunday; just the cones and the sign. I found myself thinking about all the road-works that must have been going on right then, and all the planning that was involved for each and every one of them, and I couldn't help but wonder how on earth we managed to keep it all together; this incredibly complex world we had created. Surely it could only be a matter of time before it all just fell apart.

The road-works went all the way through the passing lane, and by the time we emerged from it I was at the end of a very long queue, all of us stuck behind some absolute bastard who was crawling along at about sixty. People like that ought to be kept off the roads, if you asked me. As often as not they were old people, too frightened to go any faster, and couldn't care less about all the horns blasting behind them.

When at last we came to another passing lane a big articulated truck swerved out to overtake the front car, and it used up the entire passing lane to do so. It was another three or four kilometres before we came to the next passing lane. Most of the cars got by the slow-motion driver then, but before I had chance the signs came up warning the passing lane would end in a hundred metres. The car behind me flashed his headlights when I failed to overtake, but, hell, I was just following the rules.

We came to a long straight where there were no passing lanes, though it was obviously safe to overtake. I had the Lada up to its maximum one-ten and thought I'd pass fairly smoothly. Yet once I drew level with the slow bastard, I didn't seem to be making any more progress. I checked the speedometer and the needle was still there, vibrating away on the '110.' I was too confused to understand what was going on. Then a car loomed up on the horizon and swiftly approached me. I was slightly ahead of the other vehicle by then and decided to risk it. Apprehension dampened my forehead as I cut in front, half-expecting to clip her. I didn't, thankfully, but she was right there in my rear-vision mirror with her headlights on full beam, and that's where she remained, two blazing headlights in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

After a while the gap between our cars opened, gradually at first, then suddenly she became a spec in the distance, as though she had decided the game was over. Even as I was observing this there came a blue flash up ahead, and next thing a white police car swung out from behind a cluster of bushes.

I drove very conservatively after getting that speeding ticket. I didn't care less that it was going to cost me a hundred dollars. It was more the humiliation; the sheer humiliation of that woman laughing her stupid-looking head off at me as she drove by. Was I a born loser or what?!

At the next town there was an intersection where you could continue going north or take the other road west toward the coast. I found myself pulling away from the general flow of traffic and heading west. I still didn't know where I was going, only that I had to keep going. What the hell, it was my life, my car, my money that paid for the petrol. Why shouldn't I just drive off into nowhere if that's what I wanted to do?

No sooner was I back on the open road than a big black Falcon came out of a side road and just moved in front of me. I mean, I was already up to eighty or so, and this guy just cruised out doing about thirty. He didn't even make an attempt to speed up or anything. I gave him a blast on the horn, impulsively, and knew right away what a mistake that was. A tattooed arm came out of the driver's window and stuck its middle finger in the air. So I ended up trapped behind this guy doing about seventy in a one hundred kilometre per hour zone. There were regular bends and dips in the road, and no real opportunity to overtake arose until about five kilometres on. Wouldn't you believe it, this bastard refused to get out of the passing lane, and when I moved into the slow lane the big Falcon rumbled noisily and sped off ahead.

Not long after that we came up behind a double-trailer sheep truck which kept us at about sixty until the next passing lane. Of course, the bastard in front of me drew level with the front trailer and stayed there until the signs came up warning the passing lane was about to end. Only then did he motor past it.

'To hell with the signs,' I thought angrily. Where had following the rules ever got me? But as I started to accelerate the truck swerved into the fast lane to prevent me overtaking.

I supposed it would have been reckless to pass then. It was just that the Falcon had got me so mad. This truck driver was quite the bastard too. There were a few places further along where he could have moved over a little to let me pass. But he didn't. I had to follow that dusty, stinking sheep truck all the way to the next town.

He pulled into a petrol station there and I got past him. I needed gas myself but had no intention of stopping there. You never knew how people were going to react these days. He might pull out a crowbar and smash my skull in or something. You heard about those kinds of things on the news. It was a fair distance to the next petrol station as well, and I fretted all the way as the fuel gauge dipped below empty. The Lada kept buzzing along, however, and finally I got there.

By nightfall I was out on the coast, driving along a narrow, shingle road. I hadn't seen another car since the last town an hour or so earlier, where I'd filled the tank for the second time that day. I didn't have enough money to fill it again. Even if the thought of returning to the town had appealed to me now, I couldn't have gone back. But it didn't. I had a sense that time was liquid, and I was already looking back on my past even as I lived it. And nothing actually mattered, because I'd never really existed at all.

At first it was peaceful, being alone on the road like this, with no people around to drive me insane. But peace was too easy. Memories conspired against it. I found myself thinking back on the last few years, since I'd moved away from Bruce and the boys. I'd truly believed I was headed for something better; that I would find the girl of my dreams and live happily ever after. Yet where was I now, if not in the deepest depths of despair? How they'd laugh, if they could see me now, fleeing from Helen's in my Lada. Gregory, Anne, Erin, Alan, Rebecca, Benny and Penny, Jonika, Maureen, the nannies, Daffy Duck, Jane and Kylie: They were all up there in the dark sky, sort of pecking down at me with hateful expressions; triumphant because they had dragged me down and driven me to this.

Two yellow dots appeared in the distance and the faces kept pecking down at me. I was an 'inconsiderate bastard, rude, lost my marbles, incapable of holding a normal conversation, ramming my views down everyone's throats, a weirdo, a sap, a chauvinist pig, selfish, too forceful...' The dots became distinct yellow circles, racing toward me, and I was racing toward them, my foot flat on the accelerator. The silver rim of the horizon was the finish line and I was almost there.

The last face I saw was Helen's, pecking down at me savagely, two yellow circles blazing behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. 'Yuv got no idea what you're on about. Ya shudn't be so opiniated. People'll kill ya for talking like that 'round here!' The sky was her star-spangled banner, flagging me on toward the finish line. She screamed hoarsely at me; a supernatural matador in a horror movie, then with a blast like a rifle shot the whole world spun abruptly over and an unbelievable force ripped through my body. The stars and stripes were in flames all around me. The used car salesman was giving me the ridiculous-notion chuckle because the warranty wasn't going to be covering this one. But what did I care? I'd made it to the finish line and the challenge was gone.

The end