The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy Read online

  I would *person* the counter, ringing up, wrapping, bagging, all the while smiling. The final bill would be rather large, with the customers seemingly unfazed by spending two or three times what I was to earn in the week. I’d feel like saying, why not give me the five hundred dollars, instead of spending it on another fucking vase for your friend to clutter up her Kelburn villa? But of course I didn’t. I was responsible for the climate in the shop, so I maintained my customary poise and was friendly as hell. Wendy occasionally stretched her neck around the corner of her office, brushing Neenish tart crumbs from her lips and searching the shop with her hazel eye.

  I enjoyed being front-of-house, watching the customers, admiring their generosity of spirit in the face of *what to buy*. I had time to reflect that giving is always a selfless act, even if it the gift is useless. Plus, the shop did a roaring trade in thank-you cards, which were white with embossed gold calligraphy. People were clearly very grateful to someone or other. I liked that. In a way, the very Acknowledgements you are perusing right now function as a series of thank-you cards in gold script, personally messaged and signed by yours truly.

  At the end of my first week, I worked late, relabelling a new shipment that had arrived just on closing time. Wendy apologised that Jan couldn’t run to overtime. If it had been up to her … But as we locked up the shop at ten o’clock she said, ‘I’m so pleased you’re on board, Janice. We’re a team, you and me.’ At that moment I felt like the stock on the shelves—valuable and precious.

  One evening, after I’d been at the Glass Menagerie a few weeks, I was relabelling in the stock room when I saw, in one of the cartons of big red glass platters, an invoice. Up until then I had seen no paperwork. I was on my way to take the document to Wendy when something caught my eye. Checking that Wendy was in her office, because it did seem an illicit thing to do, I perused the bill. According to the tally, ten glass platters had cost twenty dollars. In the shop, the platters sold for one hundred and twenty dollars each. I glanced at Wendy through the titled blinds. She was on the phone, laughing and flinging her pashmina back, her gold bangles flashing. I continued with my peeling and stickering.

  Things trundled on. Wendy was effusive in her praise of me, especially when I stayed late. ‘What would we do without you, Janice?’ she’d say, or ‘You’re a treasure, Janice.’ I’d think, *pay rise!* seeing as she liked me so much.

  One day, Wendy and I had our first little contretemps, not that it was much. I was flicking delicately over the shelves with my yellow feather duster like a cute little trained waxeye bird, when I accidentally knocked over a little red glass cat. As I bent to pick it up, I saw that its little ear was chipped off. I took the cat to Wendy and apologised. She tossed her pashmina, her gold jewellery rattling, and smiled.

  ‘No matter,’ she said. ‘These things happen. And you’re such a good worker, Janice.’

  I felt warm inside.

  ‘We won’t tell Jan,’ she said with a conspiratorial wink. ‘The cat can come out of your wages. It’s only twenty dollars.’

  Now, I would’ve thought that working in a gift shop such as the Glass Menagerie, there would be a certain amount of breakage. In fact, I’d already seen stock arrive broken, and that didn’t seem to cause much of a stir. Glass and breakage seemed to go together like a horse and carriage. It would take me two hours to earn twenty dollars, after tax. So I was a little miffed.

  That afternoon when Wendy went out to do the banking, I sped into her office and riffled at lightning speed through the filing cabinet, looking for an invoice for the one-eared cat. I found it: one hundred cats @ twenty cents each.

  When Wendy came back I was standing behind the counter staring into space.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. But I was all a-jangle.

  ‘Remember the climate of the shop,’ she said as she disappeared into her office. I could see she had a Neenish tart in a paper bag which she was trying to hide under her pashmina.

  The next day, I was apparently scowling as I did the dusting. When Wendy came through she said, ‘Oh please, a little good humour. The climate of the shop!’

  I made a lopsided smile, which vanished as soon as Wendy had passed by. I brooded all morning and sold a couple of vases and some curly gold thank-you cards. At lunchtime I sat on my stool and ate my sandwich from home and drank my drink. It was a cold day and I shivered as the Wellington wind whipped in through the delivery doors. The vodka and orange was just to get me through the afternoon. On my way back, Wendy stopped me and said, ‘Janice, what would we do without you? You’re a treasure,’ and she asked me if I’d mind staying late to do a bit of labelling. I said I wouldn’t mind. I think at this point it’s safe to say that Cinema of Unease had set in. But I needed the job.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ said Wendy.

  It was probably about three o’clock, but it seemed later because the afternoon had clouded over and the light outside was the grey of an old gaberdine coat. The customers had been few and far between and I’d dashed out back to finish my drink, but I was, to be honest, bored, despite the magical atmosphere of the shop. I wandered around the shelves, inspecting the vases, the platters, the little cats with both their ears. They swam past me in a flicker of colour and shine that increased in speed, so that soon I felt like I was inside a car wash. As the colours torrented past me, I found myself caught in a heightened state of ecstasy and anxiety, lightness and heaviness, and suddenly I couldn’t bear the confusion. To stem the flow of objets, I stopped in front of a display, a shelf laden with icy glitter. And I put out my hand and tipped the glass shelf vertical.

  An array of vases, ornaments and plates cascaded to the floor, mostly red, like the gushing of veins. The noise was tremendous, and then the debris was beautiful.

  From the corner of my vision I was aware of Wendy erupting from her office in a flash of turquoise. ‘Oh my God, you stupid girl!’ She stood in the jagged mess, gasping. In my distraction I had time to notice that one of her delicate veiny brown feet was bleeding through the bars of her gold sandal. ‘I will call Jan,’ she said.

  I looked at her face again, its rictus, and in that moment I somehow understood from her shiftless expression that Jan did not exist. The timing of my realisation was unfortunate, because I stepped back in alarm and bumped something behind me, and a fresh cascade of glass plummeted to the floor. Wendy’s shriek frightened me and made me turn to the left where I knocked down another shelf whose load shattered in a heap of shards. I turned to the right, and a further shelf toppled its cargo into the glittery heap that already covered the shop floor. At this point—quite distressed, as you can imagine—I literally saw red; I seemed to be in the Inferno. I began picking my way through the wreckage to my safe place, the counter. En route I knocked the last shelf. Oops. The remaining objets descended like a rain of blood.

  At the counter, surveying the riotous shop and the backdrop of grey skies, I felt myself suddenly burst through my red haze, and I received from somewhere an enormous sense of power. I *was* the climate of the shop. I had risen up and exploded. Wendy limped towards me in her high-heeled sandals with her bleeding foot. The look on her face resembled the afternoon’s clouds, but it was too late, it was done.

  Suffice to say, I exited through the gift shop, picking my way in my penny loafers through the rapids of glass and out into the leaden air. On my way home, despite everything, I felt a little jolt as I passed the secondhand shop and saw the fridge, indoors now, standing like a Dalek among the steampunk jumble of bar-heaters and ironing boards. Somehow it looked sad, and I was sad. When I was back at Mandy’s, I tore off my sixties dress and tights and climbed back into a big top and leggings.

  After leaving the Glass Menagerie under a bit of a cloud, I was at a loose end. Of course I went to the union about my dismissal and they began a case for me, but I didn’t feel very hopeful. Also—it never rains but it pours—I’d had a slight falling-out with Mandy over a power bill, whic
h was unfair because the numbers on the On/Off knob on the stove had been worn away and it was impossible to tell which was which, and anyway it was all resolved later; but meantime I’d left Mandy’s and moved into a bedsit in Hataitai at the top of a long zigzagging hill which lost the sun at two-fifteen in the afternoon even though it was summer. I felt that some areas of my life weren’t going very well—especially work, money, accommodation, education, friends and family. If I was going to be the kind of person I wanted to be, a survivor, then I needed to get proactive. I decided to start with my love life, which had been languishing lately. I would find a nice boyfriend, or perhaps girlfriend, who knew? I wanted love. Doesn’t everyone? Armed with sound advice handed down to me by Sorrell and Harry, from whom I learned the tenets of a good relationship by reverse psychology, I came up with a sterling plan that I thought would pretty much guarantee me partnered off in no time.

  I asked every man I knew if he would have coffee with me, and a few of the women. If he or she agreed, and the coffee was had, I would ask him or her on a date. If he or she agreed, and the date was had, I would ask him or her if I could stay the night. If he or she agreed and I stayed the night, we would of course have sex, and I would be well on my way to finding a nice boyfriend or nice girlfriend. After several weeks of doing this, I found that several of my attempts to get a nice boyfriend or nice girlfriend had come to fruition, and I had five candidates. I must say, I hadn’t anticipated such a rush, but it seemed a shame to get rid of any of them after all the hard work I’d put in, and at that point I didn’t know if any of them would last, so I had coffee, dates and sex with all of them at breakneck speed over a two-week period.

  The scheduling was a bit of a nightmare. Like a reporter, I had a little notebook that I’d been writing everything down in from the beginning of my campaign—who, when, where, what, how; it was crowded with incident. I was finding it difficult to make a decision about the lovers, in short. How to choose a nice boyfriend or nice girlfriend from the candidates? They all seemed nice in some ways and an incredible drag in others. None of them stood out as being *totally* nice, which would have made them resoundingly good boyfriend or girlfriend material, but none of them was terrible enough to strike off the agenda.

  In between sleepovers, I’d go back to my flat, or bundle the lovers out the door if we were sleeping at my place, then I would compare the attributes of the candidates for the nice boyfriend or nice girlfriend on a flowchart in my notebook. To give you some idea of my process:

  Pros Cons

  Good sex Unfulfilling or no sex

  Fun talk Silent

  Brainy Stupid

  Socially normal Cinema of Unease

  Good-looking No oil painting

  Financially stable Insolvent

  Nicely presented Atrocious dresser

  Abstemious Addicted

  Law-abiding Convictions

  The five candidates were Anton, Matiu, Eric, Miriam, and one whose identity I will save for later. You, Reader, can in a sense moderate my process. Here is a sample of best, middle, and worst.

  Best: Eric. Excellent sex, fun talk, brainy, awkward socially, terrible clothes, heavy drinker, no convictions, financial prospects abysmal. A great fuck and fun to be with but nothing translates to outside the house, so basically he would be your stay-at-home pet.

  Middle: Miriam. Fun talk, brainy, life of the party, good dresser, no addictions or convictions, good financial prospects. Good in every department except for sudden decision late at night that she doesn’t like girls after all.

  Worst: Anton. The only reason I didn’t strike him off the list immediately was that he looked really cool in his clothes.

  The trialling process was going extremely well, I thought, and I was certain that I would be able to choose quite soon, especially as I had a top candidate. I was slightly worried by the fact that I didn’t want to be seen in public with him, but that seemed a minor inconvenience by comparison with some of the others. I kept trying out and sometimes I added or removed a tick from my grid, and I was working towards who would be the best statistically. But before that could happen, I struck a hiccup with my scheduling.

  Late one afternoon at the end of my two weeks of dating, as the summer sun slanted into my flat, Matiu (good sex, fun talk, moderately brainy, bad T-shirts, zero financial prospects) encountered Anton in the doorway. Wellington is a small place. There was an incident involving a bed, a wardrobe, a locked door, yelling, some pounding upon the door, a window ledge, a broken door, screaming, police being called, police being cancelled, neighbours at the back door to see if everything is all right, and it is, it’s fine. Everyone has gone, except me. And unfortunately, because Wellington is so small and everyone knows everyone, my efforts to find a nice boyfriend or nice girlfriend have gone the way of the Berlin wall in 1989 within the hour. By text, post and tweet. All in a sorry state. There is a souvenir I believe, my little notebook, with my papers in the sleepout at 56 Summer Street, Hataitai, for future reference.

  Reader, something unusual has happened. I’ve slightly lost my thread. I can’t remember who I set out to thank in relating this episode of my life. I know there must be someone, even multiple subjects of my gratitude. Was it the candidates for nice boyfriend/nice girlfriend who *came to the party*? Maybe. Was it Sorrell and Harry (see above)? Perhaps. Valour at Hoki Aroha, who destroyed any chance of my having a loving sexual relationship, which is a gift for a writer because how can you write when you are happy and settled? He is the closest, but somehow my lover experiment doesn’t feel the right place to thank him. For once in these Acknowledgements, I am thankless. And, if truth be told, a little frightened, because without gratefulness there is destruction. I am worried that while I am down in Antarctica, an ice shelf the size of New Zealand will fall off, will float away and melt. I am worried that the people in my life will continue to float away. I am worried that I was not grateful enough for the little warmth while it was warm.

  No matter. To finish the story of the five candidates—a development was about to occur.

  I’d decided to call it a night after the double-booking fiasco and was just climbing into bed when I heard a tentative knocking. At first I thought it was some loose bit of board flapping in the gale, but it came again and again, and I realised someone was at the door. I went gingerly to investigate, opening the door a crack. Who should it be but the person with whom I was subsequently to spend nearly three years of my life only I didn’t know it then? Yes, the timid knocker was none other than Miles, whom if you remember I’d first met at Meow Café and on that occasion had recognised as the quintessential Kiwi man. I may have been a bit harsh towards Miles earlier in these Acknowledgments, a bit hasty in my rush to damn him, perhaps spurred on by how things eventually unravelled. It wasn’t always so grotesque.

  We stood looking at each other in the doorway. Miles was so out of breath (the zigzag really was something) that his big square head was nodding like a horse. I was in my op-shop slip, vodka and orange in hand (as I write, I’m aware that this description might seem reminiscent of Poppy years earlier, but I am *not* like Poppy). At that point, of course, I thought he’d come to remonstrate about a certain Restoration comedy, and I was about to slam the door in his face. So not an altogether auspicious beginning. But no, he simply stood there looking hopeful, all set for our prearranged visit. It turned out this candidate for nice boyfriend/nice girlfriend wasn’t friends or even friends-of-friends with any of the other candidates, and had failed to link with them on any form of cyber grapevine. I didn’t say anything, just ushered him in, hurriedly swiping my nice boyfriend/nice girlfriend grid (which was in any case redundant) from the table as we passed it on the way to the couch. The rest, as they say, is history.

  I suppose it might be true that we had an immediate rapport and found we laughed at the same jokes. I suppose it might be true that, when we kissed, my whole body and person thrilled to some new tune. I suppose it might be true that when he fucked me excuse m
y French I lost myself in him. I suppose it might be true that we spent hours whispering sweet nothings into each other’s faces and I hadn’t known that there was such a thing as sweet nothings. I suppose it might be true that he cared about what I thought. I suppose it might be true that we kept on having better and better sex and it never seemed to wane. I suppose it might be true that he tried to cater to my every need. I suppose it might be true that he thought I was gorgeous and said so on a daily basis. I suppose it might be true that he wanted me to be happy. I suppose it might be true that I told him everything about my life (everything I’ve told you, Reader), and that he told me everything about his. I suppose it might be true that he wanted to be with me forever. I suppose it might be true that he said I’d made him the happiest man alive. I suppose it might be true that he loved me. I loved him too.

  Nek minnit—it was quite whirlwind—we were moving into a fifties apartment with a view over the harbour; yes, the very apartment you know so well. Miles’s parents had coughed up the deposit like a furball from a privileged Persian cat. I didn’t like the politics of it, but in the end I didn’t complain. I just went along with it. Rocking up to the building that first windy autumn day, it was exciting to get out of the car, to cling together in the courtyard and look up at the building that was to be our home. Miles leaned his big tufty head on top of mine and said, ‘I think it’s home sweet home, don’t you?’ I said I thought it might be. The building looked to me, on first glance, like an icetray tipped on its side, clean and white, with all its little square compartments. We lugged Miles’s mattress from his old flat up all the steps—my first acquaintance with the jagged white Southeast Ridge—tossed it on the parquet floor and still had enough breath to leap upon it and have ferocious sex.