Teriyaki Sandwiches and the Girl with Sepia Hair by Nod Ghosh

Teriyaki Sandwiches and the Girl with Sepia Hair
 
The girl runs through a field of lavender.
   The weighted heads bend in sleepy rows. Their violent scent scours the space between my ear-bones.
   The music. There is always music, the anguish of a clarinet − the finality of violins.
   I wade towards the girl, but the flowers hold me back like a turning tide. The sound is close, so close it becomes clear the tones originate in my head. Flowers between flowers. Flesh between leaves.
   She wears a calla lily in her hair; her hair is the colour of old photographs. There is something brittle about her.
   She turns, smiles, and melts into the future.
   Bees hum around my face, the crescendo beat of their wings sleek with urgency. Butterfly courtship borders on pornography. The orphan cry of a bellbird blends with the orchestra's wail. In sleep there are infinite octaves.
   The daytime moon burns my eyes ...
 
Then I wake up.
 
That bloody dream again. A ghost refrain echoes through my mind. The girl slips − out − of − reach, like a bubble in a hurricane. The dream fades before I can tell anyone what it was.
   There's no one to tell anyway.
   There's a thump, thump in the distance, the semi-silent drone of plumbing from the flat next door, and the squirreling of wind through ill-fitting windows.
   I rub crusts of sleep from my eyes, salt-laden and heavy, and reach for my laptop. No new e-mails. Something sinks inside. Bozo or Alain haven't replied. The Wi-Fi is useless in this place.
   Maybe they’re busy.
   Perhaps they think I'm a loser.
   Kevin Napier. The guy who tries too hard.  
   There's nothing from Jonno in Colorado either. Bummer.
   I thump the refresh key twice, hope something will appear, but it doesn't.
   The TalkNZ chat-room is silent, but it's early, only five to six. I can stay cocooned in the warmth of my bed for a bit longer. Antarctic slivers of sky filter through the blinds. The occasional swish of early traffic through a layer of surface water reminds me I'm not alone. I'm not the only one awake at this hour. It's good to know there's something human near me, even if they're moving at 60 kph.
   I tap into a Christian chat-room. There's a discussion about James 1.5 and a Mormon prophet in 1830. Some arsehole spouts bullshit about superior versions of the New Testament, and a chorus of sycophantic affirmation follows. I don't engage with them.
   News sites report fatal road traffic accidents, revelling in the horror of it.
   Click. Someone's trolled the guys who enthused about Humbucking pickups wired in parallel on the BassWizz site. Really? How can they get emotional about bass guitar components?
   The girl in the lavender comes into my mind, but I make her disappear.
   Twitter.
  A million tweets from the randoms I follow: rock bands, radio stations. Jackie Turner (previously Sanders) from school has tweeted pictures of her kid, a bald-headed alien creature.
   Die maker and manufacturers association.nz have links to a health and safety forum.
   Christianity Today has posted about cutting ties with what they describe as a cult, following accusations of sexual abuse.
   There are posts from people whom I follow because they followed me. I should stop doing that. I've had a barrage of offers to organise my finances, have three-way sex, or build me an extension. In my rental? Yeah right. There are no personal notifications.
   I click onto a Buddhist discussion forum about the sanctity of life, but it becomes obtuse. They have started talking about bacteria.
   The sanctity of a microbe.
   Depressing posts on global warming.
   Facebook.
   Fifteen people 'like' my new profile picture. A yellow-bellied sea snake's features manipulated onto my shoulders. Snake-Kevin wearing my biking leathers. It's me, but it's not me.
   And fifteen people like it. What does that mean? I'd make a good snake?
   A clickjack promises me a chance to win an Audi R8. There's a picture of a dog that got burnt saving a family. One like equals a prayer. One share is ten. It's obviously a fake, but has thousands of likes. The dog has a piece of ham on its face. Irony or stupidity?
   Someone's scanned a school photo from 2007 and tagged me. I'm with Jackie Turner (previously Sanders). There's Bozo, Jonno, Corey Blake and Jasmine West too. Something about our hair and the pixilation shows it's old. I wish I were back in that hedonistic world, a decade ago.
 
I was dating Jackie Sanders; about the only time I've had a steady girlfriend. Jackie and I lasted another month before she gave me the flick. It's not you Kevin. It's me. 
   Jackie never wore calla lilies in her hair.
   The memory hurts. Was it the best time of my life, a time when people accepted me, at least for a while? There were parties and gigs. Drink and smokes. Cocaine if you had the cash. Sex. We were false idols, worshipping graven images of ourselves. I thought I'd seen the light until I watched it fade.
   They saw through me, a no-hoper mummy's boy who liked flowers. A guy who tried too hard. A nerd who played piano and only picked up a bass to join a rock band to be cool.
   I left school at the end of the year, with no idea of where I was going.
   I was so alone.
   I am so alone.
   Fuck. I'll e-mail Jonno anyway. Had hoped he'd have replied by now.
   I miss him.
   I want to read him ranting about the bassist in his band not being able to keep time. He used to say the same about me, but I know I was tight. Jonno complains about how small the apartments in the States are compared with the ones in Auckland, about how his parents are demons, about the lack of marmite. Shit, I'd love to open another of his whining e-mails right now. Fuckwit.
   Jonno sent me pictures of his flat when he moved in. Didn't look that small to me. The garage is nearly as large as my flat. He can park his station wagon in there, and have band practices in it. It's a town house, but he says the neighbours are deaf. I add another message to the chain, and notice there's one e-mail from him for every five or six of mine.
   Click, tap, tap, click.
 
   Hey Jonno,
   How's tricks? Done any gigs? Coming home for Christmas?
   Nothing new here. Work's a pain. The tool room's noisy as fuck, and I can't hear shit. Alfred, the bastard, gives everyone crap. I wish he'd retire or die. There's Jan in the office who's not a dick, but that's about it.
   I had a dream last night. The one I told you about before where I'm running through a field horny as fuck. I've dreamt it so many times.
What does it mean eh? Probably sod all.
   So, you still driving trucks, eh? Five to six hundred miles a day. What's that in k's? Sounds heavy.
   Chat again soon. 
   See ya.
 
   Kev.
 
I hit send and instantly regret it. Telling him my dreams? I sound like a fuckin' girl.
   Shit. It's seven twenty. I soak a flannel and wipe my pits, and lather on antiperspirant. There are no clean shirts in the drawer, so I grab something out of the wash basket. Stinks. Sift through three or four until I find one that won't kill anyone. Yesterday's boxers will do.
   It takes six goes to start my bike. The tyres cut a wide 'V' through the surface water, and I'm piss wet through because I didn't bring my waterproofs.
 
Someone's pinched my hardhat, so I have to borrow one. I'm fifteen minutes late starting.. Alfred, the prick, is on my case.
   You're late.
   Put that on your timesheet, Kevin.
   Don't do it like that, Kevin.
   If you get up from that station once more Kevin, I'll tie you to your chair.
 
Jan sips on a coffee in her office at morning tea.
   "Hey," she says. A vase of flowers sits on her desk. She runs her hand over the bell of a lily. There are sprigs of lavender. The scent hugs me like a blanket.
   I point at the vase with my forehead. "They're nice. From himself?"
   "Yeah." Her smile says more than her words. "Six years since Jason and I started dating."
   "Sweet." I swallow hard. Look at the wall.
   "Let's get out of here for lunch." This smile is different. Animated. Directed at me. "Walk by the river?"
   "Cool." My t-shirt is damp and wrinkled. I pull it taut over my belly, and hope Jan can't smell the fungal vinegar. I cross my arms to hold the whiff in.
   Jan is smartly turned out. She has a spiky tortoiseshell thing sticking out of her hair at an odd angle, like it's slipped.
   "You busy today?" she asks.
    I can't stop staring at the spiky thing. Jan's hair is the colour of charred wood.
   "Yeah," I scratch my chin and wonder if the stubble's long enough for it to look like a proper beard. "Arsewipe's been at me again." I re-cross my arms.
   "Alfred?"
   "The man's a waste of skin. And he's − "
   "Yes, and Coronation Street − " Jan rolls her eyes to the side, clicking away at her computer. Looking up, I see Alfred reflected in her window, standing behind me, arms akimbo.
   I grab my empty cup and walk out of the office. I'm entitled to a break, but with that creep standing there, I feel like a criminal. I breathe hard and inhale the exhilaration of lavender, the sorrow of lilies.
   I can talk to Jan.
   Most women my age make me want to swallow my tongue and die, but it's easy with her. I guess it's because she's married. She won't think I'm a knob, like I'm trying to chat her up or something. Jan's the nearest thing I have to a friend, though we never see each other outside work. She's always doing something with Jason.
   I don't talk to anyone else. Not in real life, anyway.
  Most of my so-called friends are people from school, or personas I meet on-line. Personas, not persons. I've joined music forums; I comment on support groups for chronically shy men, and instantly regret it. I FaceTime my mum in Christchurch, but she holds a wooden smile and her eyes flit from side to side as we speak. I get drawn into the comments section of stuff.co.nz and get fucked off if someone takes the piss out of my KevtheSnake1 posts.
   I write to God about how I'm the only person in the world who feels this way, so isolated, so alone in a sea of people.
   I don't have His e-mail address, so I delete the messages.
  A flash of sun bursts through the clouds, illuminating gobbets of rain on the glass as I pass wall length windows on my way back to my station.
   The girl from my dream is in my head again. Running. Running around my mind. She takes the lily from her hair, holds it out to me, and drops it. I almost reach her, when she turns into a shadow.
 
Lilies. I used to grow lilies with my mother. They had names like purple reign and arabesque. When Dad died we moved to Otahuhu. She dug up the rotting heap of a garden in our state house. I was nine. She bought me gardening gloves, and a trowel. We planted bulbs in the beds she'd made. As spring warmed through to summer, I'd fill the watering can, careful not to slosh water on the tiny kitchen floor, and I'd give the plants a drink, urge them to bloom. The lawn needed scarifying, there were rose bushes to prune, and lavender to trim.
   I hated my new school. Big kids called me gay and kicked me when I walked past because I was different. I learnt how to talk like the others, walk like them, care less like them, so I'd survive. But at home, I'd play piano.
   Mum struggled to send me for lessons, but she found a way. Greensleeves, Bach's minuet in G, Pachelbel's Canon in D. The piano hefted from our old place, and squeezed up against a wall, almost touching the dining table.
   We'd go to church on Sundays. No one from my new school ever went, so I was safe. I'd hold Mum's hand, proud to walk with her. She'd wear a mauve hat with silk flowers in the band. The scent of her English lavender eau de Cologne made me want to breathe harder and deeper. I stood on tiptoe, the leather of my shoes creaking when we stood to sing the hymns. I wanted to be tall, a man beside my mother, someone to look after her because Dad was gone.
   I still went to church with my mother when I grew older and cynical. I towered over her by the age of fifteen.
   My, my, you're a grown man now Kevin, the ladies from her flower arranging group would fuss over me.
Then I stopped going, because there was something new in my life.
I'd found a friend for the first time in Jonno Watkins. Someone who'd hang out with me at break time, so I wasn't the saddo loser skulking about, hands in pockets, talking to no one; someone who wanted to cruise the streets with me on weekends.
   Jonno and I got talking one afternoon. He was lying back on the grass in the searing sun.
   "Hey Napier," he called as I walked past.
   My hackles rose, preparing for a torrent of abuse. I ignored him at first.
   "Hey Kevin."
   Kevin? No one at school ever called me Kevin. It was Napier, or fuck-features, or gay-bastard.
   "Huh?" He'd caught me off guard. Jonno Watkins was one of the coolest guys in our year. Not unduly cruel to the low-lifes like myself, but aloof enough to let us know we weren't in his league.
   "C'mere a minute."
   I sat next to him.
   "Heard you know shit about music."
   And that's how it began. He really wanted to talk about music. I don't know how he'd got wind of the fact that I could play piano, flute, violin and guitar. But he knew.
   "Ever tried bass?"
   "What, double bass?"
   "No, you wanker, bass guitar."
   "I − I had guitar lessons for a while, but I − "
   Mum couldn't afford both guitar and piano, but I didn't want to say.
   "But then I stopped."
   "Wanna give the bass a go?"
   "Maybe."
   "I need someone who can fuckin' count and hold a tune." Jonno passed me a piece of gum, and we got chatting.
Our friendship grew. I went round to his place, grabbed his fretless bass, and picked up a tune within minutes. In the space of a month, I was the bassist for Mortal Infliction. Suddenly everyone knew who Kevin Napier was. Everyone cared who Kevin Napier was. Jonno got me to ditch the nerdy clothes mum bought, and I started seeing Jackie Sanders, one of the most sought after girls in our crowd.
   I was happy. I wasn't alone.
   Then I told Jackie I loved her, and my false world crumbled.
   It's not you Kevin. It's me.
 
"You gonna daydream all day, Kevin?" It's fuckin' Alfred. He's grinning with the grace of a crocodile. I grab some tools from the production machinist and get back to work. I don't speak to anyone else until lunch, when Jan comes in and taps me on the shoulder. I'm sweating underneath my hardhat, and my safety goggles are smeared. We go sit on a wall outside the factory near the river.
   "Where's your lunch?" she asks unwrapping a foil parcel of sandwiches.
   "Forgot."
   She passes me a sandwich. I'm too hungry to refuse. Teriyaki chicken with mayo and salad.
   "I'm looking for another job," I say. "This place stinks. I hate everything about it."
   A shadow crosses her face. "What will you do?"
   "Dunno. Maybe drive a truck."
   "Don't you need a special licence?"
   "Yeah. Maybe. Don't care. Just want to get away from here."
    Her fingers sink into the spongy bread.
 
It's still raining when I get home. I shower, and wash away all traces of work, of Alfred, of everything from that place. Almost everything. Massaging shampoo onto my scalp, I find myself wishing Jan's fingers were rubbing my head. I let the thought wash away down the plughole with the grey, tepid suds.
   There's an e-mail from Jonno when I log on.
 
   All right dude,
   Nah, I ain't coming back for Xmas.
   5 to 6 hundred miles, that's like abt 800 to 850 k.
   Google it you dullard!
   Trucking's a shit job anyway.
 
   J
 
   That's it.
   I'm a douchebag.
  Looking back at our e-mails, it's all him whining about all sorts of shit, and me pouring out crap about how sad my life is, and how I'm plagued by dreams about a woman I can never have.
   A woman with charcoal hair. A woman who shares teriyaki sandwiches. A woman whose husband gives her lavender and lilies on their anniversary.
 
I click onto a chat-room, read three messages of hope, one of despair, and log off for the last time.
   It's time for a change.
   It's time to engage in the real world.
   Maybe I'll reply to that ad I saw, someone looking for a keyboard player.
   I plug in my old Yamaha. The keys are covered in dust. I wipe them with a twist of my t-shirt, and clunk out a tune. It doesn't have the timbre of Mum's piano, but it feels good to have my fingers on a different sort of keyboard.
   It feels really good.
   It feels like change.

Bio: Nod Ghosh's work features in various New Zealand and international publications. Further details: http://www.nodghosh.com/about/

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