PIP ADAM is a prose writer who lives in Aro Valley, Wellington. She has recently completed the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University. Previously, her work has been published in Hue & Cry, Turbine and Glottis.



WE DRIVE into town and I say ‘I hate this city’ – over and over and with increasing venom. Everything I see I remember another reason to hate it. When we get to the car-park we see some people I don’t like the look of and that’s it; their tiny heads, their red necks. I say, ‘It’s so cold here no one leaves their family home to breed,’ and you sigh and I get the message and finish by saying, ‘I lived here for five years and that was four and half years too long.’ We find a park on the third floor. There are 150 parks left in the building and it costs $1.10 for every half hour and you say, ‘Does that change your mind?’ and I say ‘Nah.’ We get the push-chair out of the boot. I have cold feet. It’s been years since I’ve had cold feet. You say your legs are cold. I put the baby’s jacket on over the top of the pushchair straps. She can’t move so I have to take it off and put it on all over again. As we walk to the lift I look at the hills stretched out to breaking and I say, ‘Hard to beat those hills though.’ You look out over them and say, ‘Yeah – the sky goes on forever.’ You’ve hit the nail on the head – the birds don’t disappear here. You can watch them all the way to the Alps. Washing takes all day to dry if it doesn’t freeze solid on the line. People stay here and the river runs beside them staying.
We see women getting out of European cars wearing fur and Italian boots. It’s like someone’s set it up just for me to hate and I say, ‘Told you so.’ You laugh at me. I say, ‘What?’ You say, ‘Just you.’ It feels like that here. I try to point it out – the rich and white. ‘Where are the brown people?’ I say and you point to someone and I say, ‘What about the Chinese people? Huh? Huh?’ You laugh again and it’s still just me. The baby’s kicking off her boots – over and over. I end up putting them on the handles of the push-chair. Nothing’s changed. People are dead and they’ve been replaced by more and more people just like them. It’s like a video game based on a zombie film.
We have lunch at a cafe and they serve us a huge pile of mashed potatoes and mushrooms. You look at it and say, ‘It’s not a meal you’d cook yourself.’ They put whipped cream in cups of filtered coffee and call it a Vienna. The baby eats last night’s dinner. She sneaks up on a businessman in a suit and tries to steal his ID card which is on a retractable cord. It retracts. I say sorry and he says, ‘Do you want to work at Telecom?’ He’s talking to the baby. I say I am sure she would work hard and he looks at me like I’m trying to find her a job. I remind him he brought it up. He smiles. The baby walks away and finds an expensive fur coat on the back of a chair. She thinks it’s alive which it was once. ‘Like everything else in this stinking city,’ I say to her – she pretends not to understand.



JIMMY AND I are lying in bed, in the dark on the verge of sleep – he might already be asleep. I say, ‘I read a story today about this guy, and his wife is late home.’ He says, ‘Mmm,’ to show he’s listening. I can’t stand it when he isn’t listening. Sometimes I say, ‘Are you listening?’ and he says, ‘I’m listening,’ and I say, ‘You’re not doing anything that would give me any clue you’re listening. How am I supposed to know you’re listening?’
Jimmy says, ‘Mmm,’ again and he could already be asleep and doing it in his sleep for all I know. I say, ‘And he gets upset because she’s not home and he starts to think she’s having an affair. He starts to imagine his wife in the bed of another man – in the arms of another man, in his bed. So he calls his best friend for some support. His best friends answers and says, “It’s late,” and is short with him and tells him not be stupid, she’ll be home soon. “Pull yourself together,” that sort of thing,’ Jimmy moves his shoulders like he’s trying to get out of something, or into a small hole.
‘What the guy doesn’t know, the first guy, is that his wife is in his best friend’s bed. As he’s talking to his friend on the phone, his wife is in the bed. The best friend is talking to him from the bed his wife is in – having her affair.’
Jimmy says, ‘Mmm,’ like he wants me to think he can’t believe a best friend could do that to his best friend, to show he’s listening.
‘When he gets off the phone – the husband, not the best friend – he thinks for a minute and then he rings his best friend back and says, “Oh, you were right, she’s home now, sorry for ringing so late.”’
There’s quiet for a minute. Dark quiet and some people go past outside our window, saying, ‘Oh yeah, you did it,’ and ‘Oh, no I didn’t,’ and laughing. Then Jimmy says, ‘That showed him.’ Half his face is in the pillow so it sounds like someone is pulling his cheek back while he’s speaking.
I say, ‘What?’
Jimmy says, ‘That showed the best friend.’
I say, ‘What?’ again and get up on an elbow to see if he’s really listening.
‘That showed the best friend that the guy knew he was sleeping with his best friend.’
‘His wife,’ I say.
‘His wife,’ says Jimmy.
‘No it doesn’t,’ I say. Jimmy rubs his face in the pillow like he’s burrowing – like a star-nosed mole. ‘It doesn’t do anything of the sort,’ I say, ‘it’s humiliating. The husband is humiliated and that’s what’s sad about it. Don’t you think it’s sad?’
Jimmy pulls the blanket over his shoulder like he’s going somewhere. ‘Mmm,’ he says, ‘It’s sad, that man’s wife was sleeping with his best friend and that man didn’t know. That poor man.’
‘Cuckolded,’ I say.
‘Mmm,’ says Jimmy, ‘Like a cuckoo.’