vanillabean

Meris sat cross-legged, sweating into the dusty straw of the tatami mats. The knee high electric floor fan next to her churned rather than cooled the moist air. Sweat trickled from places on her body where she could not remember sweating before, the creases of flesh beneath her breasts and behind her knees, the hollow in the small of her back. She momentarily contemplated the tiny room in which she sat, crammed with the detritus of someone else’s life. Once again, Brendan had left early this morning and was not yet back. Might not be back for hours. She could go out but the world beyond the doorstep was an incomprehensible maze, requiring immense effort on her part to navigate. Even if she could have faced that, the sweltering sun made a virtual prisoner of her through the daytime hours.

Dragging herself to the minute bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair looked duller than before and her skin paler. Twisting around she could see that the ink of the tattoo on her shoulder seemed to have faded and the expression of the fish now seemed somewhat mournful. Even in that windowless room the sun pressed down, pressed down, constraining her breaths and reducing her vision to a muted two dimensions.

She watched the suited salary men through the balcony window, hitting ball after white ball at the golf-driving range next door. Her head filled with the repetitive clink, clink but she could make no sense of these sounds.

As she sinks into the water, her fish seems so vivid that she can imagine it swimming right off her skin. The tattoo is splashed against her back with the tail flicking her right shoulder. The scales are haunting shades of blue and green ink. In her mind she can see it jerking and flaring its delicate fins. It’s gills quiver then it makes a dart for freedom, mingling with the nearby schools of kahawai and tarakihi. Within seconds the fish is swimming, strong and free in the infinite expanse of blue-green liquid.


Meris leaned dreamily against the counter and traced a finger down the shiny metal of the espresso machine. With one hand she flicked the portafilter, thumped it hard against the bin and heard the soggy, spent grinds hit the bottom. Simple and sometimes menial as it was, she loved her job. Each step of coffee-making held for her an intense aesthetic pleasure. The click, gurgle, whir of the machine. The pouring of dark liquid into bone-white cups. Spooning out the warm milk, frothed with air. Sometimes the queue overflowed to the street and she had to run the espresso machine like an endless conveyer belt. Losing herself in a twisting thumping dance.

Now it was the hour after the lunch rush and the café was almost empty. She felt a cool caress against her cheek as the door was thrown open and a gust of wind entered from the street, billowing the forest of flatmate-wanted notices taped to the wall. A tall, straight-backed figure emerged from the gloom, striding the length of the floor to the counter. The strange man smiled down at her, his face shining as if with delight.

“Hi, I was wondering if Meris Farr was around?”
“Yeah. I’m Meris.”
“Hi My name’s Brendan. Brendan Freeman.”
“Oh right.” She felt a punch of nervous energy from the centre of her stomach, erasing the dreamy contentment of a moment ago. “The interview.” She set two cups and saucers on the grid of the machine then fixed her gaze on the countertop, wiping a wide thoughtful swath through the spilled grounds. “I wasn’t sure exactly when you were coming.” They stood silently as the espresso machine shuddered and rumbled. She slid the two flat-whites across the counter and untied her apron, slinging it in the cupboard under the till. In that moment she hated to leave the space behind the counter and walk onto the café floor.

They settled at one of the free tables and Brendan pulled out a spiral bound note pad and pen. “So, your brother tells me you’re a free diving addict.” He gazed at her with the same enthusiastic smile as before. “How would you describe the experience of free diving.”
“It’s difficult to explain.” She paused. “It’s like floating but under the water instead of on top. Kind of like knowing you can go anywhere, in any direction. Maybe it’s like flying. I don’t know.”
His pen scratched hieroglyphs over the paper. “Can you tell me how it’s different from, say, scuba diving?”
“You’re much lighter, because you’re not carrying tanks, but you move faster. And it’s quieter. No air bubbles.”
His blue eyes looked into hers, gleaming with curiosity. “It’s kind of a dangerous sport, right? Why do you do it?”
“I guess…” She considered. “I get to be part of a whole other world. A world most people don’t ever see. ”


With the snorkel in her mouth she descends, the only sound her own throbbing pulse. With each second an extra foot of water accumulates above her like liquid glass. Now she is where she belongs. She once read an article about two divers who set up home on the sea floor for ten days. A grainy underwater photo showed them perched on garden furniture as though preparing to drink coffee on some inner city apartment balcony. The journalist asked one of the divers what she would miss the most. The diver replied “The ground and the air”. Meris is not sure that she would miss these things. When she is in the air, she spends her time vaguely missing her other life, floating among fish and forests of kelp. As she sinks further and further into the deep, she can see secret gardens on the ocean floor.


Meris had been stacking dishes in the café kitchen when the phone rang. It was Brendan ringing to tell her that Asphalt had decided to print the article. He had really enjoyed talking to her the other day and would she perhaps like to see him tonight. Her stomach hummed.

He arrived as she finished her shift, pulling off a motorbike helmet and grinning at her. “I thought we could go for a ride on the bike and then maybe get something to eat.” She thought his eyes looked like miniature suns.
She looked at the bike. “Okay. I always kinda wondered what it was like.”
He held the bike steady and showed her how to step up onto the footrest and swing one leg over. “The important thing is to lean with me in the corners and hang on.” He handed her a second helmet and adjusted it under her chin. The bike roared and throbbed down the street.

They left the CBD and started down the serpentine curves of the road that wove through the bays. Meris pressed herself against Brendan’s leather-clad back and breathed onto his neck, in the gap between the helmet and his jacket collar. The noise of the engine was too loud to speak over and the vibration sang through her flesh. At each curve the bike dipped low to the road. At first she felt awkward, scared that the bike would tip and they would tumble on the black bitumen. But by the fifth or six corner, she could feel her body moving with Brendan’s. Pressing, shifting, leaning together like an old fashioned slow dance.

He pulled up the bike at Breaker Bay. In the first few moments after the engine stopped, Meris felt like she was still in motion. As they strolled across the shingled beach, she could feel the bike thrumming in her ears. The waves sucked and sighed across the shingle and the sea spread out towards the South Island in a heart-breaking shade of blue.

She smiled at him. “I live near here. At Owhiro Bay.”
“So do I. Live near here. Really near.” His voice had a teasing tone.
“Really?” She looked around. There were no houses for a few hundred feet in either direction. “Where?”
“Um.” He gestured to the small dirt car park and the teal coloured Kombi-van he had parked his bike next to. “There.”
“You live in a van?”
“Yep.”
“How come?”
“I travel a lot. I got sick of having to find a new flat every time I came back to Wellington.” He cleared his throat. “I think I’ve got some wine or something in there. I’ll go see.”

They sat on the shore. As the tide lazily came in, the early autumn sun sank behind the hills. Brendan ordered pizza by cell phone. The delivery guy, who Brendan seemed to be on first name basis with, brought the pizza out to them on the beach. They had one of those conversations that begins at the neck of one bottle of wine and continues down to the glassy green base of another. Where the night gets blurry and slow truths start to spill out. At first, with the wine warming their veins, they couldn’t feel the chill creeping in the air. Later, they moved into the kombi, sitting close together. He traced a finger slowly down her cheekbone. “I like you. You’re different.” Meris laid one hand upon his where he was touching her and he kissed her gently. As he drew one hand down the side of her neck from earlobe to collar bone, she thought, maybe this is how it would feel if sugar could be melted to liquid and injected directly into a vein.

That night she dreamed she was walking with Brendan hand in hand across the sea floor. At their feet delicate clusters of weed flowed with each eddy of the deep. She found that no longer needed air; she could draw the cool clean water in and out of her lungs like a fish. The surge of joy was ecstatic. Then she saw that Brendan was not breathing the water like her. He let go of her hand and swam fluidly upwards, away from her, towards the light-crinkled surface above her head.

Meris woke the next morning, squashed next to Brendan on the narrow foldout bed. The dim morning light was filtered through dark curtains hung in the kombi’s back windows. She turned to face him, smiling shyly, and he raised himself on one arm and stroked the tattoo on her shoulder. For the first time his smile was subdued. “I’m going to Japan soon.” He said softly. “For six months.”


Brendan’s never-ending quest for stories to write about took him out of Wellington every few days. For Meris his frequent absences were both a pain and a relief. Being with him set her in a turmoil, pulled her out of herself but being apart from him was little better. She no longer fell into a rapt trance over the coffee machine, instead her head was filled with images of him. The timbre of his voice, the gleaming quality of his eyes. The openness of his face as he slept. The fervid joy he took in the bright shifting craziness of the world. Always she was aware of the diminishing hoard of days before he was to leave.

“Why Japan?” They lay entwined beneath her patchwork quilt.
“I’ve always felt like it’s one of the only really alive places left.”
She lay her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder.
“I stopped over at Tokyo once. There were so many colours and people and neon lights and it was just wild. Every little space had a noodle shop tucked into it.”
It seemed so distant to Meris, like she was flicking through someone else’s album of faded holiday snaps. It was hard for a person who lived in the stunning emptiness of New Zealand, she thought, to imagine a place that was so full.
“I wish you weren’t going so soon.”


She turned the wheel of her battered Nissan Bluebird toward the sign that said, DEPARTURES. Salt tears brimming against her lower eyelids, salt blood flowing in an never-ending circuit through the chambers of her heart. She slowly eased the car into a narrow park and wrenched the hand brake. A few stars were still visible in the dawning sky.
“This is hard.” She said.
There will be phone calls, there will be emails, she thought, but he will be across an ocean, on the other side of the planet from her. He is about to flit away from me like a beautiful migrating bird.
“I got you something.” He said, passing her a small gift-wrapped package. “When you wear it, it’ll be like I’m with you.”
She carefully peeled back two layers of paper to find a beautiful necklace made with pieces of jagged paua.
The joy still glowed in his eyes. “It will be amazing. I’ll miss you but when I come back, we’ll see each other again.”
“Yes”. She said.


Meris bobs in the light surf. She takes the deep breaths needed to slow down her heart before sliding into the world beneath. Today it takes longer than usual. Finally, she jackknifes and arrows downwards, pushed along by the long, stiff flippers she is wearing. Although she has dived this stretch of beach many times before, the terrain seems unfamiliar. Momentarily, she loses her sense of direction and feels a surge of adrenaline through her veins.

When she surfaces, the waves have suddenly stilled and the water is an oily green, meandering lazily around her. She has a sudden feeling there is something important she has to do. With an urgency she strikes back towards the shore.


“I want to come and see you.” She heard strange music and voices talking. Some in English and some in a language with an odd stop-start rhythm, like a stilt walker.
“Hang on.” The noises became muffled. “How’re you?”
“I want to come and be with you.” Silence. “For a couple of weeks or so.” Silence. Almost. She could hear his faint breathing and suddenly realised he had been drinking.
“It’d be great to see you.” Pause. His voice grew warmer. “Really great. I’ve got a heap of stuff ongoing on right now. Shane’s been setting me up with some amazing contacts. Did I tell you I’m living in the Yakuza headquarters of Japan? The town I’m living in, I mean.”
“Um. No, you didn’t. I’ve looked at some flights. I can be there next week”
“If you want to come, I’d love to see you.”

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It is never too late to be who you could have been.

bobwriter

Oh my goodness! Your graceful narrative and evocative use of the language we all so love takes my breath away. I'm sure there are some 'technical' issues in there somewhere, but I couldn't stop reading long enough to take any note of them. Thank you for sharing this, post the second half soon, and for heaven's sake...don't stop writing. You have a real gift here.

K-P

Wow, you have quite the way with metaphors. Absolutely gorgeous story.

I get the feeling that Brandon really isn't too keen on her coming to Japan.

bobwriter

Just one minor observation upon re-reading. Fans, by definition, just move air around. Air conditioners actually cool the air. You might add the word uselessly and delete cooling, or re-phrase along the lines of The knee-high electric floor fan next to her churned the stifling, humid air uselessly.

mjk

oh wow, i was so lost in your writing! your descriptions are breath-taking. beautiful, beautiful images in this, especially related to such emotion. you're a great writer, and i hope you keep posting. now i'm dashing off to read the second part to this!

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"Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality." -Edgar Allan Poe
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