Etiquette for a Dinner Party (18 page)

He leaned down, untied the shoelaces and stepped out of his shoes. He stepped over the flood of paint and grabbed the heavy sports bag. Sneakers would do.

The clarity and focus of the early morning stayed with him all day. He thought often about the pleasurable task ahead. He even sketched the Thomas property — how it would look after the blackberries had been cleared, the lawns mowed.

At four-thirty, he drove to Graham's house. The street was congested with parked cars, but he found a space nearby. He slung the bag of gardening tools across his shoulder and picked up the spade and rake in his free hand. His pace was brisk and he greeted passers-by with a chirpy good afternoon.

John stopped for a moment, looked up and down the street. He put the bag down, ran his hands through his hair, and looked again, all around him. He didn't understand. It was ridiculous to even be thinking it — unbelievable, laughable — but Graham Thomas's bungalow had disappeared.

A woman walked towards him. She was holding the hands of two young children.

'He's got a big school bag, Mum.' The little girl was staring at John, pointing downwards at the sports bag. 'Your bag's bigger than my bag.'

She spun around on tiny pink plastic shoes, reaching over her shoulder to tap her own school backpack. 'See? This is my school bag.'

The girl's mother stopped too. 'Are you okay there?' she asked.

'Oh yes, fine thanks, just fine.' .

That night, Linda's friends came for dinner. She invited them more and more these days. John found the evening pleasant.

Later on, after the couple had left, she turned on him.

'How dare you?'

'How dare I what?'

'Humiliate me.'

'How did I humiliate you? I hardly said anything all evening.'

She reached high to put dishes away in the top cupboards.

'People here for dinner, and you're an hour late. Too late to eat with us. Where were you?'

Linda closed the cupboard doors and turned towards him, agitated. She picked up the red and white checked tea towel from the kitchen bench and folded it in half. John watched as she smoothed the cotton cloth flat, lining up the edges so they matched perfectly on all four sides. Then she folded it again, into quarters. Again and again, she folded, making sure each time that the edges were even. She pressed down hard with the palms of her hands, until the tea towel was one sixteenth of its normal size.

John watched the process of folding, reducing, folding again. 'Christmas paper,' he said.

'What?' Linda stopped, looked up at John. She was crying.

'Christmas paper around the snow globe. You kept it.'

She stopped then, and an emotion flickered across her face. Tenderness. John hadn't seen it in a long time. She took John's face in her hands, and began to kiss him. John held her face too, felt her lips on his and tried to remember how he should feel. Then she wrenched herself away, stepped back. He opened his eyes, startled.

Her face was twisted; her mouth turning down in disgust, a deep frown across her forehead. She was still crying, sobbing as she stared at his mouth.

'Dirt,' she said. She said it again — dirt . . . DIRT
—
each time louder, in a higher pitch, until she was screaming, shaking, backing away towards the door. 'You taste of dirt.'

John was dumbfounded. She was making no sense at all. But as she turned and ran from the kitchen, he saw that his hands had left two faint, muddy marks on the sides of her face. .

It was a Tuesday. John was waiting for the bus. He had started taking the bus after Linda suggested he shouldn't be driving. He'd agreed, thinking of the day he couldn't find Graham Thomas's house.

He was going to see a doctor — it was something Linda had arranged.

He was about to board when he saw the woman fall down the front steps of her house. The big blue ceramic urn in her arms tumbled to the ground. He stepped out of the queue and the bus left without him.

The woman was sixty maybe, and reminded him of a barrel; she was that sort of shape.

'Oh . . . thank you so much,' she said as he helped her to her feet. She had grazed her knee. 'I don't know what happened . . . my feet just went out from under me.'

'Are you hurt?'

'No no, I'm fine . . . just so clumsy . . .' They looked at the pot. It had not broken, but a piece of the large green plant inside it had snapped and was hanging loosely.

'Where's this going?' he asked.

'Oh just right here, at the bottom of the steps.' She stood on the spot. 'Here.' He carried it over to her. 'Thank you, thank you so much.'

'No problem.' Together they patted down the soil around the plant. 'What is it, anyway, a cactus?'

'No, no . . . it's an aloe vera. They grow quite big, actually. And you can break pieces off and put them on cuts and wounds. They're healing plants.'

'That's lucky then, isn't it?'

'Yes it is,' she said, with a smile. 'Thank you again.'

He walked back to the front gate, then turned and looked.

'I think . . . I hope you don't mind me saying . . . but . . . I think the pot would look better on the other side of the steps. More . . . I don't know. More balanced.'

She limped to join him at the gate; together they assessed the view.

'You're absolutely right,' she said.

John was too late for the doctor's appointment, so he went to the office instead. He worked steadily through the contents of his in-tray. He made detailed notes, then ordered them with tiny page numbers. He stacked the pages in a neat pile.

He found a note on his desk. It was his handwriting and it had Graham Thomas's phone number on it. He rang the number, but it was disconnected.

He sat for a while listening to the rhythmic beeps, and wondered which part of the number he had written down incorrectly. .

Later that week, he sat on the bus and watched Karori flick by. When the bus pulled up at the city end of Karori Road, he got off.

He stood for a moment and looked at the villa. It was loved: recently painted a lemon colour, window sills and front door a deep green. Two big bay windows on either side of the door reflected the sky. To the right of the door, on the veranda, were two swan plants in black pots. To the left of the door, a space. He absorbed the imbalance.

He put his briefcase just inside the fence and walked up the footpath. He hesitated for a moment on the top step, then picked up one of the black pots and carefully placed it on the left-hand side of the door. He walked back down the path and picked up his briefcase. He did not look back at his handiwork — he knew it was good. He started walking to work. .

After that, things changed for the better. John barely glanced at the New Listings Chart. That's not to say he wasn't busy. Oh, he was busy. Flat out. The boss knew this too. She left him to get on with it. The job in hand.

From time to time, he wouldn't get in until the afternoon. This was never intentional. But there were mornings when he would walk one, maybe two, kilometres, and catch a bus on another route. Sometimes he would discover he had disembarked and was standing in front of a garden. Sometimes, he was off the bus and standing in front of the garden, and he would think: why? But then he would look again, and see.

Like the time the flamingos were grouped around the pond, turned away from the water. As if, he thought.
As if.
His eyes rolled in exasperation, then he turned the birds round, tipping them forward slightly so their bills were close to the pool of water. It was not an easy task — too far forward and they would topple in. But he did his best.

He was just about to leave when he saw that, in fact, there was not nearly enough water for them. He got the garden hose and filled the pond to the top. He put the hose back neatly, rolled it round the reel down the side of the house. Then he went to work.

One Friday morning, or possibly afternoon, John arrived at work and a new person was sitting at his desk. She smiled at him and wished him well. His pot plant and his snow globe were on the floor next to the desk. He picked them up and put the globe in his pocket. Then he used his shirt sleeve to rub his name off the New Listings Chart. He could see the boss — a silhouette in the corridor — walking towards him. He smiled at her too, waved out to her, and caught the elevator downstairs.

In his pocket there was sixty dollars in notes and change. He wanted a map of Wellington, so he went to Whitcoulls. John put the plant on the counter as he sorted through his coins. He brushed away the sprinkling of dirt that settled around the base of the plant.

'That's a nice plant. Is it a rubber tree?' asked the woman called Marjorie.

'I don't know,' he replied.

'I think it might be a rubber tree,' said Marjorie. 'A ficus. That's the proper name. I don't usually remember the proper names, but that one's easy.'

'Ficus,' he said.

'Yes,' said Marjorie. 'Ficus. Have you just bought it?' She handed him his map and change.

'No,' he said. 'Would you like it?'

'Pardon me . . . ?'

He smiled and said: 'Have a nice day Marjorie.'

He sat in the sunshine in a nearby park and unfolded the map. The creases were sharp, dividing the suburbs, bays and hills into even blocks. He spread the map over the wooden seat and looked up, around the city skyline.

'Brooklyn?' he called out. .