Opportunity by Grimshaw Charlotte

Author:Grimshaw, Charlotte [Charlotte Grimshaw]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978 1869792213
Publisher: Random House New Zealand

the mountain

From my hotel room I could see the lights of New Plymouth. There was a house facing me with two horizontal slit windows. They stared at me out of the darkness, yellow eyes.

In the morning we had walked around the boardwalk, from one end of town to the centre, where the Len Lye sculpture, the Wind Wand, stretched high up into the sky. It moved with the wind, it dipped and bobbed. I thought it was beautiful. The surf crashed against the rocky breakwater, spray rose, the light was silvery, the white foam so pure white and cold, rainbows in the spray. Alan took my arm. Two teenage girls watched us, him short and plump in his scarf and black jacket, me much taller in my anorak and jeans, my glasses blurred with sea drops. I wished he would let go of my arm but he was talking and happy and I didn't want to pull away.

Alan said he'd expected a flat, dull, inland town. He never looked at maps. He talked about the sea — so strange, he said, coming from Auckland, to see surf crashing in at the edge of a city. We passed a shopping centre and went into a modern building called Puke Ariki. There was a trendy café where you could sit out on the balcony and watch the Wind Wand moving like a giant flower stalk over the sea. Alan drank wine; I had a Coke. He called it rot-gut: 'A glass of rot-gut for my friend.' When he liked a place, he needed to describe it, and he wasn't satisfied until he'd called attention to every feature and oddity, everything ugly and lovely. I sat and listened, and chimed in sometimes. He wanted to know that I'd registered all the impressions he'd had. If I hadn't, he would explain, describe, until he was sure. He shifted nervously on his seat. He waved his hands for emphasis. Then he sat back, smiling.

We finished our drinks and walked back up the main street. He talked about the mountain, how it had been shrouded in cloud when we'd flown in and been driven from the airport, how it was stubbornly refusing to show itself now.

'The guys in the minibus,' he said, laughing. 'What were all the names?'

We'd been met at the airport by a woman with a hard, flat Australian accent. She was the liaison person for the Taranaki Festival, at which Alan was to perform. He was a pianist, a Bach specialist. In the minivan were another sort of musicians — Kiwi rap artists. The woman had taken out a clipboard and asked for names. Humourless and earnest, they came out with '9-Funk', 'Snoop Rag', 'D-Money'. I could feel Alan laughing. I sat up the front with the woman, and Alan delightedly climbed in the back. He said, 'Are you 9, or Funk, or Snoop?' They corrected him. 'I'm D. He's Rag.' They high-fived and whooped and said 'Yo' and 'Dude'. They invited us to their dance party, which was to start at midnight.

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