‘Thank you, Tupou,’ Whero says in a little-girl voice.
‘Anyway,’ Tupou continues, ‘the doctor’s just rung. He asked if you’ve signed those papers he left for you.’
‘What papers?’
Bugger. From behind the door, I see I’ve been outed: I hid those papers so Whero wouldn’t find them.
‘Does the doctor want to commit me or something?’ Whero asks, as if it’s a joke.
‘No, he thinks he knows what your condition is …’
‘My con-dition?’ The way Whero says it sounds like she’s shit scared. I’m scared too. Why the fuck can’t people leave us alone?
‘He wants you to sign the papers so that he can get your medical records released to him.’
‘Thanks,’ Whero says, ‘but no thanks.’
‘No isn’t an option,’ Tupou says firmly. He seems to be enjoying being masterly. ‘Give a dog a bone, Whero … I’m trying to give a damn. And are those your pills on the bedside table? Good, there’s a glass of water too.’
Tupou is firm. He puts two tablets in the water and gives the glass to Whero. ‘Bottoms up. Take all of it down. God, that sounds so sexy! Now show me your tongue. Good girl!’ Satisfied, he gets up. ‘Right. I’ll leave you to get dressed. Dermot wants to see you at Karl Jeffs’ recording studio. He and Karl want to run through your songs and choose some for an album. Here’s the address. Take the Hammersmith line.’
When Tupou leaves, I sneak back to Whero.
‘Some friend you are,’ I say. ‘You could have pretended to take the pills.’
‘I can’t stop to argue with you, Red. I’m not going to miss a second chance to redeem myself.’ She looks at me tenderly. ‘After all, aren’t you the one who got pissed off when I walked off the stage?’ She takes a serious look at me. ‘Listen, you’d better stay here.’
‘Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?’ I ask. ‘You and me, we’re a team. I’m your back-up girl. We always do this together.’
‘Not today,’ she continues. ‘I can’t have you around looking like Madam Death. I’ll take along the backing tape and sing along to that. And I can accompany myself on the guitar.’
‘No,’ I protest. But the world is going round and around, and Whero leads me firmly to the bed. ‘Stay there. Rest.’
She goes to the bathroom. I hear her showering. Shortly afterwards she’s back in bra and panties, slipping on her jeans, a sexy top and a leather jacket. To top it off, she puts on six-inch stilettos. ‘What d’ya reckon?’ she asks.
‘You’re fuckable,’ I reply. I’m panicking. I can feel her slipping away.
‘See ya,’ she says in a flippant tone.
‘No, wait …’ But it’s too late. She’s out the door and gone.
A few days after I found Kotare out at Manukau, I managed to convince Mr Chattopadhyay to take me on full-time.
I rang my folks and asked them for a loan to pay Mr Papadopoulos the rent we owed him and sorted that out so that we would still have a roof over our heads. Of course, the main problem after that was who was going to look after you, bub, during the day? I couldn’t trust Kotare to do that, and, anyway, despite his problems he was hunting for a new job.
There was a lovely Pacific Island lady who lived just a bit down the street and she said I could leave you with her — she was looking after her grandchildren. Oh, Mrs Fitisimanu adored you, Whero!
I thought everything was coming right, but, one evening, when I got home after work, Mrs Fitisimanu was waiting at the front gate with you wrapped up in blankets in her arms. Some of the other neighbours were around. Something was happening in the flat. All the lights were on and there was a huge racket coming from upstairs. Downstairs, the windows were, as usual, dark.
I placated the neighbours. They were grumpy. ‘Tell your husband to stop all this noise. If he keeps this up, we’re calling the cops.’
I asked Mrs Fitisimanu to take you back to her place. I walked along the pathway, opened the door and started to go up the stairs.
‘Hon?’ I called. ‘Are you up there?’
When I went into the sitting room it was a shambles. It looked like an explosion had happened and all the furniture had been thrown to the sides of the room. In the middle, walking round and round in circles was Kotare. Round and round. Whimpering. Agitated. His hands were cutting up the air. Then he stood stock still, thinking a moment, before looking through the furniture for two large sound speakers.
‘Hon, what are you doing?’
He looked at me, but he didn’t really see me. ‘This will show them,’ he said. He placed the speakers downwards pointing at the floor, and then hooked them up to the hi-fi.
‘Who?’ I asked again.
‘The kids downstairs.’ He put a CD into the hi-fi and let rip at full volume. ‘I’ll show them! I’ll give them a piece of my mind.’
I went over to him, managed to get past, but he held me back from switching the hi-fi off. ‘Please, Kotare,’ I pleaded, ‘what about the other neighbours?’
‘If those kids are gonna keep their music on all night, then I’m gonna turn up mine.’
‘What music?’
‘Their music,’ he answered. He was having difficulty breathing, the way you do, Whero, when you’re stressed out. ‘They make fun of me, playing their songs. And when I went down to talk to them, they just laughed in my face. Well, who has the last laugh now, eh?’
I was still wrestling with him. ‘You went downstairs? Visited the kids?’ I managed to pull the cord from the wall.
‘Fuck you, Anahera,’ he said, bunching his fists. His eyeballs were bulging out of their sockets. The look of a crazy man was written all over his red, perspiring face. ‘Put the fuckin’ plug back in.’
‘You promised you wouldn’t go down there,’ I cried. My heart was thudding. Oh, what was happening to my darling?
‘Put the music back on!’ Kotare roared. ‘Can’t you hear them? They’ve put their volume up. We have to fix them, drown them out, fix them good.’
That’s when I began to sob. I crumpled to my knees.
‘I can hear them even louder now, Anahera. Rose, Thelma, Sambo, Koro and Johnny Mack. They’re laughing at me.’ And he jumped up and down on the floor. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ He put the plug back into the socket. The CD fired up again.
I stumbled to the hi-fi, pulled the CD out and threw it to the other side of the room.
‘What did ya do that for?’ Kotare asked.
‘Hon, there are no kids downstairs.’
He tried to take this in. Then, ‘They moved out?’
I went up to him and held him tight. ‘There’s never been anyone down there, hon.’
‘Never? But I’ve spoken to them, I’ve drunk with them, I’ve sat in their sitting room.’ He thrust me away. ‘Bull-shit, Anahera. They’re there all right. They’ve gone all quiet now, gone all fuckin’ quiet, playin’ possum, but they’re there. I’ll wake them up. They want to play games? I’ll wake the bastards up.’