A Mistake Read online

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Here.’

  He gave her a card. A birthday invitation. It read Getting Fucking Old. Let’s Get Fucking Old Together. Coco’s Cantina & 126 Ponsonby Road.

  ‘It’s blow-out time Lizzy. This weekend. The whole weekend. You must come. I’m on the seven o’clock up tonight.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Degustation at Coco’s then they’ve rented out an upstairs studio on Ponsonby Road for two whole days. It’s gonna be mad. Peter Petrides’ birthday bash. You know him from med school don’t you? He knows you. Ha ha ha. How are things?’

  ‘Oh fine, fine. How’s work.’

  ‘So much. Oh, so much.’ He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and shook his head side to side moaning softly. ‘So, so much.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘And what’s up with you?’

  ‘Oh, working,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t know why you do it. I mean the conditions. Look around. Go private. Where everything’s clean and quiet. Pay off your mortgage.’

  ‘I paid off my mortgage in 2007,’ she said. ‘What are you on? Second marriage at 40? Worth it? You’ll be sending your complications down the road to us in due course I expect.’

  ‘Ha ha ha. Yet here you are.’

  ‘Yet here I am.’

  Yet here she was, kissing Michael Garvin under a bush on Orientation Week outside the Student Union in the rain 20 years ago. Pashing him, like they counted occasions, like it was an outcome. Pashing occurred at whenever, no one knows where. So drunk she didn’t remember getting there or getting back to the hall, just this memory of being there, under a huge round bush on a circle of dry dirt a million miles through the Dunedin rain from the noise and lights of the union as he pashed her, as she pashed him. Sort of lovely, sheltered, lit by lights.

  She found the bush sober a few days later the first week of classes and it was in the middle of the lawn outside the Union and it was a tiny round scrubby thing and the lawn wasn’t very big either and everyone had seen and knew about it and it set the tone for a rep, a rep that took years to live down or rise into, complicate and make her own. She finally accidentally actually slept with Peter later, her neighbour at Selwyn and a sweetheart and soft, the night of the med school ball. Michael and a couple of med int students, one of whom was now head of orthopaedics at Canterbury, wrote REDRUM on the mirror in red lipstick and filled the room to the ceiling with screwed-up newspaper while they were passed out in bed together in there. Applause in the dining halls when they came in for breakfast late turned to stamping and chanting, shame, shame, shame. One of the private school med prats sang a few lines in Spanish about amor perdido in a passable tenor. Peter chose to bow and she gave them all the finger and the attention was a marker and she got better and better and better.

  Later in the year Michael Garvin became the kind of guy who locked a D-lock from someone’s bike round his neck and they lost the key and he paraded it around the hallways until his neck swelled up and he stopped laughing and got all grey and afraid and firemen had to cut it off with an angle grinder and no one hardly mentioned that again at all. He just got more successful. It felt sometimes that only the women and the gay men remember, the others put it behind their eyes and you could only see it later, certain lights, certain angles, certain conferences in Melbourne, certain specialties could see.

  ‘Oh well, see you on the other side of your ulcer,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some tits to do.’ He pointed to the card. ‘Come. It’s gonna be great.’

  In pre-op Vladimir was gowning up.

  ‘Oh hello, Vladi. Wasn’t expecting to see you here,’ she said. ‘Who’ve we got.’

  ‘Mmm.’ He smiled, nodded left and right and they went over the charge sheet together.

  ‘Is he consented yet?’

  ‘Dr Smith is assisting. He is consenting the patient now.’

  There was a silence between them. The nurses were unfamiliar apart from an Indian girl she’d seen before, couldn’t remember her name. A new team of strangers. They were gowned up and prepping instruments. ‘Hello everyone,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘You remind me of a human error,’ Vladimir said suddenly, and he smiled and waited.

  ‘Oh?’ said Elizabeth. She continued washing and said into the mirrors, ‘Do go on, Vladi.’

  Everyone laughed behind them. Vladimir was standing in the middle of the linoleum of pre-op, grinning, his hands already gloved.

  ‘It is a story about a famous physicist called Albert Einstein,’ he said. In his Irkutsk Russian he pronounced it Eye-in-steen.

  ‘Who?’ said Elizabeth rudely and looked sideways at him. ‘Who, Vladi?’

  The senior nurse laughed and looked over at them.

  ‘Eye-in-steen?’ Vladi said, smiling. ‘Eye in-steen.’

  ‘Einstein,’ said the Indian girl.

  ‘Oh, Einstein, is it,’ said Elizabeth and grinned at the senior nurse. ‘All right. With you now.’

  ‘Ah, Einstein,’ said Vladimir, and smiled.

  ‘Mm-hmm. What’s your name again,’ Elizabeth said, nodding to the Indian girl. ‘You. What’s your name?’

  ‘Narysha,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Albert Einstein dies,’ said Vladimir, ‘and passes up into heaven. There he meets God, who is pleased with him. God says to Einstein, “You have done so well and for your reward, please, ask me anything.”’

  The phone rang and Narysha left to answer it. They were all variously paused, half-smiling, half-bored with his slow delivery, his telegraphed beats.

  ‘Einstein says to God, “Okay God, I have a question. How did you create the universe and the stars and the forests and the blah blah blah?”’

  Patiently they smiled for him. Vladimir made a face, a dutiful pout, of God.

  ‘“Ah, well,” God says. “I will show you.” God goes to the whiteboard. And he begins to write equations.’

  He sketched and wagged his hand and drew, did his God at the whiteboard. Then he stopped.

  ‘But then Einstein says, “Hold on,”’ Vladimir said. ‘“Yes, what is it?” God says. And Einstein says: “You made an error.”’

  Vladimir made a face of regret, and shrugged. Elizabeth started laughing ahead of the punchline.

  ‘And God says, “I know. I . . . know.”’

  Vladimir watched them.

  They all waited even as Elizabeth laughed and then they checked each other and then they laughed and then chuckled with him slightly longer then was necessary to be polite. Elizabeth laughed loudly for them and then she stared at him but he was a stone.

  Then he said, ‘I will go fishing this weekend. Would you like to come?’

  She frowned for him.

  ‘Fishing?’

  He shrugged. ‘Fishing.’

  ‘I don’t fish, Vladi.’

  He smiled. ‘But you could try. You could learn.’

  She just looked at him, half-smiling. He smiled back at her.

  ‘Everything is always there. You go away from it,’ he said. ‘You take a rest. You come back.’ And he smiled, and shrugged.

  Narysha came back in.

  ‘It’s cancelled.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ Elizabeth said. ‘What? Really?’

  They all stood half-gowned and washed and looking at her.

  ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, says who.’

  ‘It’s, I don’t know. They just told me it’s cancelled.’

  ‘Well, Betty, find out who.’

  Narysha went out again without replying and Vladimir slowly, gently shrugged again.

  ‘What a waste of time,’ Elizabeth said and no one looked at anyone else.

  Elizabeth knocked at the door of the head of surgery and went straight in.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ said Mary and rose from her chair.

  ‘Hi Mary.’

  They kissed cheeks and stood at an angle to each other.

  ‘Well, how are you?’


  ‘Oh fine, fine. How’s this position?’

  ‘Oh, it’s so good, Liz.’ Mary rolled her eyes. ‘So good. Such a relief after DHB land. Have a seat. Tea?’

  ‘I’m good. Fine.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry about this morning.’ She smiled.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh you know. He ate something in the middle of the night and forgot about it and remembered all of a sudden during consent.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well. You’re going through a bit over there I gather.’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’ll blow over.’

  ‘It’s a cracked system, Liz.’

  ‘Oh. Well, yes it is.’

  ‘Between consent and the Health and Disability Commissioner who’s just an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff all we’ve got is each other.’

  ‘And family complaints.’

  ‘And this new reporting system which who knows what they’ll say.’

  ‘They’ll scream half of all surgeons are below average.’

  ‘That’s not funny, Liz.’

  ‘No but there’s the virtue of it being a fact. Anyway what we don’t know is what the press will do with it.’

  ‘Just ridiculous. It’s unethical what they write.’

  Elizabeth looked at her then. ‘Look, how well known is this?’

  ‘It’s about, I can’t lie.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Mary smiled. ‘But as you say it’ll blow over. Look I’ll be honest, most of the workload is orthopaedic at present anyway. There’s a huge backlog of hips and knees. Spillover from public. They can’t keep up. The numbers, Liz, are—’ She shook her head, awestruck, moved and smiling, and laughed.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I hear—I hear Robin’s been moved.’

  Elizabeth looked at her.

  ‘To Hutt, yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They sat in silence. Out the window on the abandoned Tip Top bread factory by the Countdown there was graffiti that had reached the highest floor where there was seemingly nothing to grasp, nowhere to stand. The old sign still read It’s a Tip Top way of life.

  ‘Did he really eat something, Mary?’ Elizabeth said.

  Mary looked at her and smiled.

  ‘That’s what I’m told. Some spag bol from the fridge in the middle of the night. There’s just nothing else we can use you for today. I’m so sorry to waste your time.’

  Elizabeth smiled back.

  Out into the sun. She checked her phone. There was nothing and it was half past nine and she walked home through emptied Newtown. Passing some of the frequent fliers who turn up at A&E limping along Riddiford Street. The gout. The bone spurs. The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The ankle broken for who knows how long and the old brown skin under the caked-on socks sloughing off in her hands. The impaired, limping, addicted, reeking of meths and smoking the butt, BO and sickly and goatish, trans-3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid: the scent of schizophrenia. All of the plight and the damaged out after rush hour. Past Moon Bar, two mothers in big sunglasses with their young. The old wrecks outside the Newtown Bakery & Coffee Shoppe. The man in camouflage who always wears his bandanna and his reflective sunglasses even at night. The tall pale man with the tattooed skull who walks slowly, who likes camouflage too. After 9 a.m. all the Newtown unemployed out in the sun with her and the long day and the looping silences ahead.

  She crossed to the shady side of the street by the McDonald’s to take the alley up to Rintoul and on the traffic island she looked up at a sound.

  In a break in the traffic came a young girl riding an old-fashioned bicycle with a basket, towing a boy on a skateboard behind her down the middle of the road.

  They were maybe 20, 20-something. The girl serious and blond and pretty, leaning forward on her handlebars and frowning. The boy behind her young and cute and hairy and hanging on to some torn blanket tied around the seatpole. He was swerving to avoid the manhole covers. They were Lisa’s age, really. Nothing to hide and nothing to lose and Elizabeth stopped dead on the traffic island and stood there like an idiot to watch them pass and leave her behind and cross the Constable Street intersection against the lights where they disappeared into the cars.

  When she got home the house was sleepy and stuffy and hot. Baking in the sun all morning with the curtains open and the windows closed.

  She went into the kitchen. She stood and stared at the skeleton of the stripped wall. The faint stench of the borer dust. She opened her laptop, booked a ticket on the 50-minute JetStar to Auckland mid-afternoon, shut it down. She put the laptop and the powerpack and her phone charger in a tote bag. She packed a single change of clothes into a carry-on suitcase and draped her navy cotton travel blazer over the extended handle and left it with the tote bag by the front door. Certain errors by staff. Errors. She went back to the kitchen. The borer bombs were sitting on the bench in the milky old Four Square bag. There were five. They looked like small paint tins and the brand on the faded paper labels read Borer Bomb. Irregardless. She opened the third drawer down and scraped around in the bottom through the string and the used-up Vivids and rubber bands and found some matches. Yes, or no. Go, don’t go. There is not a level. At one point she said, ‘You fucker,’ out loud. She levered the cap off one of the bug bombs with a dinner knife and examined it. A powder like ash inside. She read the instructions on the side of the can. If there was an expiry date she couldn’t find it. She lit the first one and it fizzed and made a hollow hiss and began to smoke immediately. I’m not a toy. I’m not an employee. She carried it over and put the lid down on the ground upside down and placed the bomb on the lid in front of the stripped wall. I am the team leader. I save them with my skills. With all I am and have become. A stinging white gas, clean like steam yet opaque, that rose quickly and did not thin. She held her breath and went to the French doors at the back to check the lock and the deadbolt, then she took the bag of bombs and the dinner knife and the matches into the hall. I am the lead surgeon. I’m God, I’m fate. She lit one there, and one in the bathroom, which was the wrong way around as she had to step through the smoke over the one in the hall to get to her bedroom. I’ll rise above you. Burst you. She lit one of the bombs at the door and she slid it across the smooth, polyurethaned kauri to the foot of the bed, and pulled the door to. She lit the last one in the middle of the guest room and the house was fairly full of the insecticide already when she took up her blazer, her suitcase and the tote, shut the front door on it all, and headed down to Riddiford to find a taxi to take her to the airport.

  At about 73 seconds in, the solid rocket boosters emerge from the fireball and corkscrew wildly high into the atmosphere out of control. The shuttle itself is pushed sideways at Mach 2 into G-forces at an angle it was not designed to withstand. It breaks into several parts. The tail and engines fall on fire. The nose and reinforced crew cabin with the seven astronauts inside continues to climb, a further 5 kilometres into the sky, before it peaks. The cabin is found later on camera, a tiny white cube falling across a contrail.

  It falls to the ocean for two minutes and 45 seconds, long enough for three astronauts to open the lever locks and activate the switches for emergency air packs as the cabin slowly decompresses.

  Nature cannot be fooled

  She bought some shoes and a little black silk dress with a deep décolletage off the rack at Karen Walker on Ponsonby Road. In the Airbnb on O’Neill Street she charged her phone and drank two whiskies as she showered and dressed and did her make-up. Then she went out in the warm Auckland night with a clutch in which there was nothing else but her phone, $500 in $100 notes and two cards: credit and birthday.

  The shoes were killing her by Hepburn Street and she took them off and walked barefoot on the grass of Western Park but had to put them back on when she ran out of park after Hopetoun Street and by the time she got to the end of K Road she was hobbling.

  She flagged down a taxi at the Mobil and the driver was an Iraqi with a crucifix hang
ing from his rearview.

  ‘Coco’s, just down K Road.’

  ‘Too short.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Too short.’ He shrugged. ‘Too short distance.’

  She opened the clasp and pulled out a hundred dollar bill and dropped it on the passenger seat beside him and he looked at her in the rearview and picked it up and put the car into drive and as they drove the 400 metres down K Road and across the motorway she stared out at the skeletons of the high rises going up above Freemans Bay and the chains from the cranes above them swaying in the warm winds off the Gulf.

  She ran barefoot through the traffic across K Road and Renee herself, one of the owners, was serving at the tables out front.

  ‘Oh hello,’ Elizabeth said, smiling and smiling, ‘I’m looking for Peter Petrides’ function, if you don’t mind.’

  The woman looked at her briefly and at her feet and said, ‘It’s upstairs but there is a limit on numbers for the kitchen, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not eating,’ Elizabeth said, and smiled and smiled.

  The Mana Room upstairs was close and hot and not nearly big enough. The surgeons were seated and halfway through their meal and already drunk and she was late. Michael Garvin was sitting at the far end and she had to squeeze past them all, all the ones she didn’t know, to get to him, who she didn’t know either, between the wall and the backs of their chairs and she didn’t introduce herself or say excuse me to any of them.

  The man beside Michael looked up at her as she squeezed past and he said, as if it was funny but also horribly dank, ‘Oh just feel your way through.’ Michael was sitting next to a Chinese woman in her 30s who was leaning on him. He looked up, bleary and red-faced and happy. His smile just barely changed when he saw her.

  ‘Oh Lizzy Loo. You came.’

  ‘Michael,’ she said, and she leaned down and kissed him on the lips a second too long.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. Liz Taylor everyone. Everyone, Liz.’ He flapped his hands disinterestedly down the table but they’d lost interest too.

  She stood there beside him a moment. ‘So, where’s Peter?’ she said.