In the Fifth Season

  #

  After being with Toni for so long, Rob couldn't face home alone, and, besides, Oggi preferred the pet minder. He decided to go into the office to wait for dusk and a respectable drinking time. Hoping to connect with the open ocean once more, he asked the taxi driver to drive along the coast and into town through Brooklyn. He anticipated waves rolling in from the south and surfers bobbing like seals in the water, the white points of the Kaikoura ranges floating in the distance. But, ruffled by a northerly, it was an unsurfable rabble of a sea and the cloud had fallen low. Rob asked the driver to turn inland at Lyall Bay.

  The overhead trolley wires along Onepu Road resembled musical staves. If they did record a tune, with the connectors as semibreves, spaced so far apart, it would have to be the most miserable of dirges. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Nothing is more human than regret; nothing is more regretful than being human. Who said that? Maybe no one has before. Rob thought he might write it down and send it to Owen Huntly for his vade mecum.

  Downtown, Rob watched the home-going crowds on Lambton Quay, and looked up at the names of the long forgotten insurance companies that erected their grand buildings before disappearing along with their legal advisors. "Sic transit gloria," he said to himself.

  "Hey, man, did you say you're going to be sick?" The panicky taxi driver shouted.

  "No, mate. Never mind. Drop me here, please."

  Rob had spotted the Wolseley from the taxi and watched it splutter and shudder to a halt, one skinny wheel on the pavement. It had the same cream and lemon paint job as the old family car. Rob dodged across the street to look inside. There was the red leather bench seat where Chris had stretched out, inch by inch, until he was fully reclining, his comic spread wide, his feet pressing his little brother against the door and its chrome blade of a handle. Rob had fancied himself snatching the splayed Beano and scrunching it, but Chris was a strapping eight year old and Rob a mollycoddled five. Instead, he wriggled free and climbed between the seats to nestle on his mother's lap. Dad glanced his disapproval but said nothing.

  He must have dozed in the soft, floral embrace for hours. They were already by the ocean when he woke fully, and Dad was in full flow. "Now, that is a sign of the fifth season."

  Chris performed a push up on the backs of the front seats as he leant forward. The windscreen wipers flailed away the heavy rain, yet the sunlight was dazzling. Dad didn't take his eyes from the road for a moment as he reached into the glove box and clipped the shades onto his glasses.

  "But, Dad," Chris said, "Miss Bethell told us there are four seasons."

  "Ah, did she say there are only four seasons or did she only tell you about four? Because, if I'm not mistaken, when you have rain and sunshine together like this, it's a sign of the fifth season."

  Mum sighed. She continued to smooth Rob's hair but reached for Dad's bare knee with her free hand. Chris launched himself backwards, trampolining onto the seat but no matter how long he stared Rob couldn't tell whether or not Dad was smiling; he still didn't know.

  A tide of people was leaving Dependable House as Rob walked among the cubicles to his office. His departing colleagues greeted him like a man returned from a long sea journey. The warmth and familiarity of the organisation are at once comforting and stifling. On his desk, someone had neatly stacked five days' Dom Posts, files, and notes in different piles. Numerous requests were recorded on his voice mail, and the inbox of his e-mail was dark with new messages. He touched familiar things: the gilt letters on the spine of a well-used textbook, the inside right hand corner of his in-tray where only he knows the metal is sharp, and he can flirt with laceration.

  Rob picked up a message from his desk. He couldn't resist analysing and solving the problem in his head. He realised these things were part of him, and he of them. Comforted but restless, Rob prepared to leave. Just the weekend until he would see Toni again. He logged off his computer, snapped up the handle of his wheelie case, and, at the doorway, flicked the light switch. In the half darkness, he tried to picture her in his space. There was nothing, she'd not been part of his world at the Dependable – yet. He patted the phone in his jacket pocket. Compositions of lurid pixels, for sure, but he's got his treasured gallery – image after image of Toni, his new cause.