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Sport 41: 2013

Melissa Day Reid — Dinner at Alison’s

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Melissa Day Reid

Dinner at Alison’s

Ben hadn’t seen Alison for six years, but he knew her the instant she walked into the shop, still with her smudgy dark eye make-up, child-sized clothes and sailor’s tats. She knew him, too. Walked right up to the counter, rapped her tattooed knuckles upon it and cried, ‘Ben!’

‘Hey!’ said Ben. ‘Alison?’

‘Come ’ere, you.’

She leaned across the counter, reached her arms around him, and poked her fingers into his shoulder blades to herd him into her hug. She kissed the air beside his ear. The intimacy and proximity of the sound gave Ben the feeling he got whenever he looked at a wound, an unpleasant thrill that started in his bones and hit the inside walls of his skin. He hadn’t expected a kiss. The hug was weird enough. He and Alison had been friendly at teachers’ college, but in a limited way. Friendly, but not friends, and not beyond graduation. They hadn’t even pretended that they might keep in touch. They hadn’t hugged goodbye.

But now they had hugged hello. Ben felt studied as Alison withdrew and lowered herself back down to stand in front of his shop counter. Maybe the false note in their greeting struck her, too, because for a beat she seemed not to know what to do next. Then she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her undersized hoodie, pressed her bent elbows into her sides and bounced on her heels like she was excited about something. About seeing him, Ben guessed. That was nice of her.

‘The buggers got to you, too, I see,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Teaching.’ Alison’s tongue fell out of her mouth and she pretended to gag herself with one finger. ‘I got out too. You are looking at one of the Ministry of Education’s finest Senior Policy Analysts.’ She made a self-deprecating snort, but ruined the effect when she looked around page 218 his shop, at the celestial ceiling and the spangled shelves of toys. There was a touch of charity in her cheerfulness. ‘And you work—’ she looked around the shop again—‘here! Nice. I get it. When I left Onlsow I worked in a cafe—you know Fidel’s?—until I figured out my next move. It was good to just, you know—’ she sprinkled her fingertips across her forehead—‘not use my brain for a while.’

Ben sort of grinned. ‘Don’t feel too bad for me,’ he said. ‘It’s my shop. I inherited it from my Uncle Charlie.’ He folded up the gesture that suggested this was the beginning of a story (the bittersweet inheritance, the torturous choice, the stressful move, the strain that endured long after they’d unpacked the last box). With his hands clasped and awkward, he shrugged. ‘A few months ago.’

‘Wow,’ Alison said, and this time she sounded genuine. ‘This place is yours? Lucky you!’

‘Yep,’ said Ben. He shrugged again. ‘So. Are you looking for something in particular?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Though I am not using my brain some other part of me has deduced that you are toy shopping.’

Alison laughed a little and pawed the air. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that you, well, you know what I meant. Anyway, you’re not some sad retail monkey, are you? You’re the boss!’

‘And you’re a customer?’

Alison laughed again. ‘My niece has a birthday coming up.’

‘Okay.’ Ben lifted the hinged section of the counter and stepped out onto the shop floor. ‘How old is she?’

‘Um, twelve?’ Alison’s eyes flicked around as she calculated. There were lighter creases on her eyelids where the day had eaten into her eye shadow. ‘No, thirteen.’

‘Thirteen,’ said Ben.

As they walked up and down the rows, Alison politely touched things, held some up, declared her love for them. For a moment it looked like she’d settled on a piece of silk intended for use as a body of water or slice of sky. She said it would make a lovely scarf, but then she wasn’t sure about the colour and hung it back up on its hook. Finally, when they’d returned to the area in front of the counter, she asked Ben what he would recommend.

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Ben leaned back against the counter, but the accidental pose felt pseudo-seductive and he straightened up again. ‘I think she might be beyond my age range, your niece.’

Alison puffed out a little breath of relief. ‘I know!’ She pivoted on one heel and looked around the shop once more. ‘Great stuff, but what was I thinking? Sorry to waste your time.’

‘Not at all,’ Ben replied. And then, feeling the truth in this as he said it: ‘It’s nice to see you.’

He felt studied again as Alison absorbed the sincerity of what should have been a mere pleasantry between people who had once been friendly-but-not-friends. ‘It’s nice to see you, too,’ she replied. A second later, she reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘You should come for dinner.’

This surprised Ben as much as the kiss. He‘d expected maybe an exchange of numbers that led to nothing, or an invitation to have coffee sometime.

‘Sure.’

‘What are you doing this Saturday? I’ll invite some other friends too. What do you say?’ Without waiting to hear what he said, Alison reached around him and tore a square of paper off his memo cube.

‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘We could use some socialising.’

‘We?’ Alison helped herself to the pencil tucked behind Ben’s ear. ‘You dark horse. What’s her name?’

Ben felt the empty place where the pencil had been. ‘Cassie.’

Alison talked as she wrote down her address and phone number, information like what time to arrive, and unimportant stuff, the same kind of patter she’d kept up the entire time they’d walked around the shop. Ben remembered that she’d been like this at college: a tireless hostess wherever she was, taking care of the talking so that no one else had to go to any trouble. When she had finished writing she stopped talking. She folded the paper into a smaller square and held it out to him.

As Ben took the paper, the loneliness that had snagged at him lately removed a barb or two from his skin. ‘What should we bring?’

‘Um. Nibbles?’ said Alison, and Ben saw himself on Saturday night inside a house that could only be hers, opening his jacket and reaching into his inside pocket for a mouse with that name and a nut clutched page 220 in her forepaws, releasing her to nibble and piddle on the luxe-kitsch furnishings, and what snagged at him then was the sense that there might be worse things than loneliness.

*

Cassie made tight little nori rolls, refrigerated them for two hours, and then sliced them into exact rounds with a wet knife. She arranged them in a spiral on her favourite plate, sprinkled them with toasted sesame seeds, and then covered the plate with cling wrap. On the bus to town, Ben took the plate and held it on his lap. He tapped the taut edges of the plastic with his fingertips. Cassie looked out the window to stop herself from saying something sharp, but it was Wellington out the window and Cassie had spent the afternoon at an interview, the kind where can tell by the end that you aren’t first or even second choice, and she was even more pissed off with Wellington than usual. In Christchurch she’d been headhunted by one of the top firms and groomed for greatness, but up here she went to so many failed interviews she had begun to suspect that she was failing them on purpose to punish herself. She had encouraged Ben to choose the shop over teaching, over their entire lives, but this encouragement had been insincere. She’d wanted to mean it, but hadn’t meant it at all.

Cassie tugged on Ben’s sleeve. ‘Stop,’ she said. She should have just hit his little rhythm’s backbeat with her heels against the floor of the bus. She wrapped her hand around one of his hyperactive fingers. ‘Please stop.’

At the bus stop she took back the plate and carried it to the door of Alison’s first storey flat in Mt Victoria. There she stood still with the plate resting against her ribs, her fingers curled around its outer rim, and let Ben ring the bell.

Footsteps ran to the door in response to his ring. The door rushed open and there, with her hand on the inner doorknob, stood a tall, lean, lethal-looking woman, the type that Hollywood liked to arm with a big gun. Despite the winter chill, she wore a short denim apron over a white singlet and a pair of pink shorts that only half-concealed the man’s ruin tattooed on the front of each of her thighs. Cassie, in her down jacket and mohair scarf, felt both lumpen and wispy.

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‘Hi kids,’ said Alison, as if to real children. ‘You must be Cassie.’

Cassie felt her cheeks push up into her dark circles as she smiled like a scared chimp. She forced her face to relax and her hand to shake Alison’s and her voice to express gladness that they were meeting. It had been too long and not long enough since she’d needed to use her nicest manners in someone’s house.

Ben and Alison exchanged kisses in a way that looked natural for Alison and all kinds of awkward for Ben. Her kiss floated off into the air beside his head. ‘Oh!’ She straightened up. It was unfair how tall she was. ‘The polenta! Come in!’ She turned and scurried back into her flat and gestured that they should follow. ‘Sorry! I need to stir! Why do I insist on not making instant? There’s a nice syrah there on the coffee table. Make yourselves at home.’

Alison’s Mid-Century coffee table was easy to find, bracketed by her Mid-Century couches in a room they shared with the front door and the Mid-Century cocktail cabinet, dining table and chairs. The kitchen was just past the dining table and partially open to the room. From the one couch they chose to share, Ben and Cassie could see Alison stir and stir the contents of a large pot with a long-handled wooden spoon. With the extractor fan running they couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, but her face went through friendly contortions as she said it.

Ben touched one of Cassie’s hands and she looked down at the plate she still held. She ripped the cling wrap off the plate and clunked the plate onto the table. She doffed her jacket and shoved the balled up cling wrap into the pocket of her cardigan.

‘Everything alright?’ asked Ben.

‘Yes, fine.’ Cassie poured herself a glass of wine. She poured one for Ben. She transferred the tub of soy sauce and the tube of wasabi from her jacket pocket to the coffee table and then stood up. ‘I’ll just see if Alison needs any help.’

Ben swallowed a generous mouthful of wine. ‘Your mother would be proud.’

‘Kuh,’ said Cassie. She took her wine and ducked into the kitchen, into the humidity and the hum of the extractor fan.

Alison looked up and kept stirring. ‘Hi there, darl.’

‘Hi,’ said Cassie. ‘Smells great.’

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Alison shrugged, but instead of looking modest, she looked like she agreed with Cassie. ‘I love to cook,’ she said. ‘Especially for other people.’ She looked like she only cooked for other people, unless steaming vegetables and grilling some kind of lean white meat counted as cooking.

‘That’s obvious,’ said Cassie. ‘And I’m sure you have everything under control. But do you need a hand?’

‘Always!’ Alison opened a drawer. ‘Pick a paring knife,’ she said, and then picked one out herself, a short blade with a handle of rough green plastic. ‘And then attack that pile there for me. Otherwise there will be no salad. Our salad is in your hands!’

‘God.’ Cassie kind of laughed. ‘I’m not sure if I can handle the pressure.’

‘I have complete confidence in you.’

‘That’s incredibly reassuring.’ Cassie selected an orange pepper from the large pile of bright, moist, fresh produce and stuck the little knife into it. She watched the two sides of the halved pepper wobble on the cutting board. ‘Ben says you work at the Ministry of Education?’

‘He speaks the boring truth.’ Alison stirred quietly for a moment. ‘He’s a sweet guy, Ben.’

Cassie made a hmm noise that maybe represented assent. She couldn’t disagree. He was sweet. Everyone thought so.

Alison clanged the spoon against the side of the pot to dislodge a clinging mass of polenta, and then carried on. Round and round went the spoon. ‘You been together long?’ Cassie looked from the pepper out into Alison’s lounge. Ben sat there with a piece of sushi in his hand. Cassie knew what was going to happen. Though she made her rolls small enough to be bite-sized, Ben would insist on eating this piece in two or even three bites. He would bite into the thing and pull at the nori with his teeth and spill rice on himself. Cassie had to look away before he did this. She started slicing the pepper into strips.

‘We met at varsity. Another boring truth. Bio 203.’

‘So you were together when he was at T-Coll,’ said Alison.

‘Kind of. We took one of our breaks that year. Then he finished college and we decided to stop taking breaks and get married.’

‘You’re romantics, then,’ Alison teased.

‘We used to be,’ Cassie told the cutting board.

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‘What was that, darl? This bloody fan.’ Cassie didn’t have to repeat herself though, because someone rang the doorbell and Alison went, ‘Ooh! That’ll be Ange and Dave. And my ciggies.’

*

From the way Alison stood in the kitchen and moved her mouth and gestured at him with the spoon, Ben gathered she was asking him to get the door. He obliged.

The woman on Alison’s doormat was small and round. Her skin and hair looked like they were reflecting candlelight. Warm, Ben thought, without having tried to think.

‘Hi there,’ he said. ‘I’m Ben.’

‘Hi.’ The woman stuck out her hand and gave his a good, firm shake. ‘I’m Ange.’

Ben sort of salaamed. ‘Welcome.’

The salaam was dumb, but Ange laughed and said thanks as she stepped past his bowed body. Ben followed her into the kitchen. Alison wrapped her swimmer’s arm around Ange’s warm neck and kissed the air by her ear. Ange worked hard to make her kiss connect with Alison’s cheek. Alison made a great show of returning the kiss.

‘Mwah to you, too,’ she said. ‘Ben and Ange, you’ve introduced yourselves, I trust? And my sous chef here, this is Cassie.’

Cassie waved the paring knife she was using to slice an orange pepper into strips. She greeted Ange pleasantly but looked her over sharply before going back to slicing the pepper.

Alison looked past Ange into the lounge. ‘Where’s our Dave?’

Ange bent right in half and scratched her ankle. ‘Knackered,’ she said. ‘I left him half-asleep on the couch.’ She stood up and her hair slipped back over her shoulders. ‘He said to tell you sorry.’

‘Dave does amazing things with metal,’ Alison told Ben and Cassie. Before either could ask what kind of things, Alison continued. ‘We’re almost finished in here,’ she said of herself and her sous chef. ‘Why don’t the two of you go through and host each other?’

‘Shit,’ said Cassie. She dropped her knife and examined her middle finger. ‘Huh. False alarm.’

‘You’re sure?’ Alison looked concerned. ‘We can’t have you bleeding into the salad. Jokes. You’re okay?’

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‘A-okay.’ Cassie turned to Ange. ‘There’s some pretty average sushi out there. Why don’t you two tuck in?’

‘Yes,’ said Alison. She waved her spoon like a magic wand. It was claggy with yellow mush. ‘Enjoy! We won’t be long.’

Ben smiled at Ange. He halfway swept an arm towards the lounge but dropped it when he remembered the stupid salaam. ‘Shall we?’

‘Why not?’ Ange led him out of the kitchen, away from the buzz of Alison’s extractor fan, over to her paired couches. They each sat on one with the sushi plate on the table between them. Ben picked up the tube of wasabi and squeezed a bright green line onto the plate. Ange seemed to be waiting for him to go first, as if the sushi was a board game and whoever went first would lose. He went first.

After he had chewed and swallowed, he asked Ange how she knew Alison.

Ange swallowed hard, like she’d given up ever working the hardened rice and rubbery nori down into bits. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said.

‘Okay.’ Ben sat back. His neck was awkward against the back of the couch.

‘I know how you know her, though. I love your shop!’

Ben sat up. ‘I’ve never seen you come in?’

‘Oh, I haven’t. Not for ages. Not since I was a kid. But I walk past all the time.’

‘Do you remember a kid who used to play in the window?’

‘Was that you? Oh my God, you were that kid! I used to want to be you! I still want to be you. You work in a toy shop. I work for the IRD.’

‘Every morning I wake up and I can’t wait to be there,’ said Ben. ‘I mean, I’m not in any rush to leave home or anything.’ He took a piece of sushi but just held it. ‘Like you said though, I work in a toy shop.’

‘Not just any toy shop. Yours. Your very own completely amazing toy shop. Who wouldn’t love that?’

‘I know.’ Ben said.

Ange grabbed piece of sushi, too, an act of solidarity. ‘I met Alison on a crab cannery boat in Alaska.’

‘When was this?’

‘’99? Yeah. Our winter.’

‘You and the tattooed lady met at sea?’

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‘She wasn’t so tattooed, then. Just that flower on her right ankle.’

‘That does sound like a long story.’

‘Oh, sorry about that before.’ Ange reached for the bottle of wine. ‘It’s just, I always kind of feel like it isn’t my story to tell.’

Alison swanned out of the kitchen with a large, shallow bowl in each hand. Cassie, small behind her, also carried two bowls.

‘Come on, you two,’ said Alison. ‘Dinner is served.’

*

So Dave was knackered from doing amazing things with metal all day. What kinds of things, Cassie was about to ask, but Ange tapped the back of her hand against Alison’s elbow as they moved into their seats at the table: Cassie and Ben opposite Alison and Ange.

‘Ben here was asking me how we met,’ Ange told Alison. ‘While we were hosting each other.’

Alison sat down. She lifted her glass but stopped before it reached her mouth. ‘What version did you give him?’

‘The bare bones. Date and location.’

‘A crab cannery boat,’ Ben told Cassie, and she felt left out instead of included. ‘Alaska. Northern summer, 1999.’

Alison’s glass was now empty. ‘It’s your story, too, darl,’ she said. ‘You go.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ said Cassie. ‘Someone tell it.’

‘God, Cass,’ Ben said, but Ange and Alison laughed.

‘Yeah,’ said Alison. ‘Where is this coyness coming from anyway?’

‘Um?’ said Ange.

‘Oh, him,’ said Alison. She’d filled her glass again, and Cassie’s. ‘He was only trying it on.’ Then, despite having given the story to Ange, Alison began it. ‘We were the only two women on board.’

They had shared a small cabin, Alison said, but they worked opposite shifts to begin with and were rarely in the cabin at the same time. They wouldn’t have had the chance to become friends, but the prevailing mood on the boat was—Ange chimed in here—batshit crazy. Porn played in the mess, even at breakfast. People cut each other. Nothing too serious, but still, knives drew blood. The captain was a silent man who seemed to keep order with the power page 226 of his mind. If he walked into the middle of something bad it stopped instantly, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once.

Ange, Alison explained, had been one of the youngest kids in a giant abusive family: parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents all piled into a collection of crap houses. It was no fun, but it gave a girl everything she needed to handle batshit crazy.

‘I didn’t have any of that,’ said Alison.

‘She looked like she’d been raised by ballet dancers,’ said Ange.

It was the deck boss who’d tried it on with Alison, backed her into her cabin and, well, luckily Ange walked in on them. Damp from the shower after coming off shift, desperate for the lapse in consciousness that stood in for sleep on that boat, she read the scene instantly and laid out the deck boss with a haymaker that split the skin on three of her knuckles. She helped Alison to sit on her bunk, and then dragged the deck boss out into the companionway. She told Alison to lock the door after she had gone and not to open it for anyone else. She’d be back in five.

She went off with her hair still up in a towel. Found the captain on the bridge and informed him that she and Alison would work together from then on. He looked at her bleeding hand and nodded and went back to his instruments and the waves. When Ange returned to the companionway, the deck boss was gone.

‘I hauled her into the cabin,’ said Alison, ‘and gave her a swig of vodka straight from the bottle.’

‘We passed it back and forth until it was gone.’

‘And we’ve been best friends ever since.’

‘Neither of us turned up for our next shift.’

‘Miraculously no one fired us.’

‘An admission of guilt, right there,’ said Ben. Though it was Alison who had just spoken, he was looking at Ange.

‘Totally,’ Cassie agreed. Her tongue had been loosened since she’d last used it, and it had been quite loose then. ‘You’re so brave,’ she told Ange. ‘Both of you were so brave to board that savage vessel. I could never do anything like that. Just moving to civilised Wellington has proved way beyond me.’

Ange smiled, and Alison touched Cassie on the forearm. Cassie looked down into the bowl in front of her. The polenta looked page 227 delectable, very yellow and grainy. She was pretty sure instant would have looked the same, but what did she know? She wouldn’t have known to put the leeks on to caramelise the instant she’d come home from work, she wouldn’t have made a special trip to Moore Wilson’s for real gorgonzola. The dish was a triumph: coarse, creamy, sweet, and sharp. She felt honoured to be eating it. How much wine had she drunk?

Alison rapped on the table and asked if for god’s sake she was going to have to wait all night for a smoke.

Ange laughed. ‘Ali, you pathetic addict. Not till the dishes are done. You know the rules.’

After dinner, Ange and Alison washed the dishes, smoking with their sudsy fingers and laughing and dropping their cigarettes on a saucer on the kitchen windowsill. Cassie and Ben remained at the table. Everyone drank more wine, and Cassie’s fourth glass made her apologise to Ben.

He said, ‘What for?’ like he did whenever she apologised.

Cassie found the cling wrap in her cardigan pocket and started smoothing it out over the green linen napkin on her lap. ‘You know. Lately. My failure to adjust.’

‘I’m sorry, too.’

‘What for?’ Cassie smiled at him. ‘Seriously, what?’

She stood up and the cling wrap and the napkin fell on the floor. She left them both where they fell, and wavered for a moment between sitting down beside Ben or going out into the kitchen. She smiled at him again, made a promise with that smile, and chose the kitchen.

Ange and Ali greeted her like a lost comrade. She grabbed a tea towel off the oven door and pointed at the cigarettes smouldering on the saucer. ‘Can I have one of those bad boys?’ she asked.

Ali laughed and hugged her around the neck with one arm. Ange put a damp-ended cigarette between Cassie’s lips and lit it.

*

Two days after he’d met her at Alison’s, Ange appeared outside Ben’s shop, obscured from the shoulders up by the hot air balloon in his Around the World in 80 Days window display. Ben was pleased to see page 228 her, and alarmed by how pleased, and by the way he had recognised her from a distant view of her torso.

She stood outside his shop and he stood behind the counter inside it. He waited for her to come inside but she walked up and down the frontage instead.

Finally, she moved towards the entrance but it was Cassie’s voice that Ben heard after the door opened.

‘Hello!’ she called out.

‘Surprise!’ said Alison.

‘We’re taking you to lunch,’ said Ange.

‘You’re lucky,’ said Cassie. She tugged at his sleeve. ‘We decided at the last minute to include you. Hang up your Back in an Hour sign.’

‘Sure,’ Ben said, ‘great.’ He jabbed a thumb towards the storeroom. ‘Let me get my coat.’

Out in front of the shop the four of them stood for a moment, adjusting their collars and scarves to the angle of the wind and drizzle. As they set off, Cassie took Ben’s hand. She took his hand, and she held it as they walked down to the end of the lane, where the Cuba Street wind blew the skirt of Ange’s bright red coat against Ben’s body and a strand of Ange’s hair against his mouth, and Cassie walked downwind of them with her hand around his like the mouth of a bear.

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