Run

I'm not a coward, I've got sense
When it comes to self-defence
I'd rather leave the scene than fight
But you can try, and you just might
You can succeed to make me bleed...
- Frenzal Rhomb, 1996

Outside, the night was split apart by agitated, indistinct shouting, and the sound of a turbocharged sewing machine turned up to Eleven accompanied by the machine-gun report of gravel spitting violently against the outside wall of the shed. I’d guessed what I’d see before I actually saw it, but I think anyone with half a brain and only two or three beers under their belts would have jumped to the same conclusions: two Porsche taillights disappearing very rapidly in the direction of Away, engine racing, roostertail spraying. Hollywood was clearly not in a mood for showing his hosts due respect for the state of their driveway. He was also, as I recalled it, far too pissed to be allowed anywhere near a motor vehicle.

Out by the fire, by my count, there were two less guests. The rest of the group were remonstrating animatedly amongst themselves, apart from one individual who’d either been banished from the group or had exiled himself to a distance, silhouetted by the fire’s flickering light, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. I jogged over to Bear, ignoring the askance looks I was getting. As I approached he turned slightly, and I could see he wasn’t stroking his stubble, but daubing an inquititive thumb against the corner of his mouth, which was dribbling red with claret. He had a bemused smirk on his face as he watched Hollywood and Savannah (which sounded like the address of a LA strip joint) disappearing down the dirt road back towards civilization, ignorant of the hordes waving and shouting after them.

“What have you been up to?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he remarked, with an innocent inflection. He sounded about as innocent as Pol Pot.

“Bastard hit you then?”

“Appears so,” he said with a laugh. “Then ran the fuck away.”

“What for?”

“Nothing!” he maintained. “Aw, well, I might have… called his girlfriend a self-absorbed, talentless, superficial, derivative, vacuous, brain-dead, Paris-Hilton-wannabe intellectual fuckin’ midget.”

“Which she is,” I said. There are some people who impress you with their intelligence, worldliness, life experience, open mind and warm heart. Then there are people like Savannah.

“Yeah… I thought so too. Thing is, seems he doesn’t.”

“Nah,” I said. “You don’t say?”

Bear half-laughed. “Yeah, bit of a turn-up for the books that one.”

I indicated in the direction of the two red pin-pricks in the distance. “He’s about as right to drive as… well, you.”

“I know,” Bear said. “But he’s fuckin’ stupid enough to get in that car, and she’s fuckin’ stupid enough to go with, so fuck the pair of them. Natural selection.” He laughed bitterly. “That was fucking it, funnily enough. She’s a creationist. Intelligent designist. Whatever the fuck they call themselves. ‘Oh but the natural world is far too complicated and perfect to be anything other than the product of an all-knowing designer…’” he mimicked.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, pretty much what I said. Busted out the old ‘Intelligent Falling’ theory, but it went straight over her fucking head. Her boy didn’t take kindly to me taking the piss out of her though. Progressed from there. I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding it at all, “but this is what happens when he lets his bits of fluff try to argue at the grown-ups’ table.”

“You right?” I queried, as he slid a quizzical finger around the inside of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, contemplating the scarlet colour of his sputum. “Prefect boy better keep fuckin’ running though.”

Bear had about the longest fuse of anyone I knew, but fuck me, you didn’t want to burn down to the end of it.

He wandered off in search of mouthwash – preferably alcoholic – while I squinted into the darkness trying to make out Hollywood on the main road back towards the junction with State Highway 85, the Outram-Middlemarch road. Nah, lost him. Nothing I could do about that. Maybe chase him down in the Hemi Pacer, that was maybe the only thing with a chance of hanging with a 911 Turbo. Even then it was fucking unlikely. Just as I thought that, the rolladoor to the shed shuttered up and a pair of square headlights loomed through the dust, the silhouette of a prominent Afro behind the driver’s door.

“Never catch him,” I shouted over the roar of the V8.

D nodded. “Once he wraps it around something,” he corrected me grimly, “yeah I will.” The fearsome orange beast took off with a NASCAR growl, a cloud of dust and a hearty hi-ho-Silver. All it needed was ‘01’ on the doors and the Confederate flag on the roof… yeah like that would have sat well with our resident racial equality activist at the wheel. The broad taillights of the Valiant bucked and bounced through the dust. ‘Sport’ mode on gravel equalled interesting handling, it seemed.

Beside me, I discovered, was Aroha. Not sure how long she’d been there in the background, but she’d been there a while. If looks could kill, they’d have been burying the rest of Hayabusa later tonight.

“Fucking pathetic, really,” I offered gently.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she remarked sourly. “Dan was going to leave that car to us, but I… I wasn’t into that. So he said if his first family didn’t want it, his second family would.”

I raised an eyebrow, to which she replied with a nod, to which I could only shake my head. Who says non-verbal communication doesn’t work in prose form.

“Families, eh?” I observed. “Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t punch ‘em in the face… oh yeah, that’s right. You can.”

Aroha directed a sharp punch into the point of my shoulder. It hurt. That made her quite happy.

Through a series of unfortunate events, better described as miserable, stupefying fuck-ups, that wasn’t the last of the irony ref. the Tractor’s snarling Hemi Pacer and him wanting to leave it to his ‘family’. The first was Hollywood turning up again, not long after he’d left, on a motorbike.
At least, it looked like a motorbike. It had one headlight, anyway. It wasn’t until he got close enough for the lights of Hamish’s farm to reach him that we figured out it wasn’t a motorbike, but a Guards Red Porsche 911 Turbo with the left-front corner stuffed in. This also explained his distinct lack of pace as he crabbed back up the drive with the left front wheel cocked at 45 degrees to the direction of travel and bright green coolant bleeding out of the crushed front end. Hollywood had apparently forgotten the sharp kink to the right immediately before Hamish’s driveway met the main road. He’d also forgotten the stand of young eucalypts which marked the property boundary there. He didn’t need reminding there was now one less of them.

That was Hollywood’s fuckup – based in arrogance and hubris. Mine had just been stupidity. Not sure what else you call booking flights on the internet while drunk, as I’d discovered I must have done several days ago when sorting my trip back to Australia for the fifteen minutes I’d be there before flying back over to Auckland on Thursday for the BDO show at the end of the week, along with the rest of the Gasket contingent. I’d like to claim it was my form of protest against the impracticality and obstinance of my management and the bullshit schedule they were imposing on me. It wasn’t. I’d just fucked up and booked a second Brisbane-Dunedin flight rather than a returning Dunedin-Brisbane one. And I couldn’t get a refund on it because it had already taken off two days ago.

We’d all come back out to the farm the next morning – other than those who’d simply crashed out in a paddock and were still on the premises (no prizes for guessing – in order to clean up and survey the damage. Including that to Hollywood’s precious 911, which wasn’t going anywhere without a flatbed truck. There was a small Porsche dealership in town with a service division, but Hollywood considered them nothing more than VW dealers with ideas above their station, and had organised for the immobilised device to be trucked to Archibalds Prestige in Christchurch, the only Porsche dealer in the South Island he was prepared to entrust his pride and joy to. Not that he had much pride or joy at this hour of the morning, having had to run Savannah out to the airport in one of the mud-spattered, dog-scented farm utes for her flight back to Auckland via Christchurch. Of course, if he hadn’t been such a ghey homosexual he’d have been man enough to get on the plane himself and fly back with her, but he wasn’t and he hadn’t.

Now what normally happened in these situations was that Bear and Hollywood would circle each other like dogs for a while, before they would have a confrontation, argue over who’d been the biggest cockhead in traditional ‘I’m Spartacus’ fashion – ‘I have.’ ‘No fuck off, I have’ – shake hands and Get The Fuck Over It. However it was usually Tractor threatening to give the pair of them a smack to the back of the head which precipitated the getting over of it, and that motivation wasn’t there any more. So they kept sulking. And so we all stood around, the five of us – the three surviving Hayabusans, Aroha and myself – and looked grumpy at each other.

To be fair, I was mainly grumpy with myself, plus being grumpy in advance with Maddy and her minions for the bollocking I was likely to receive ref. the flights fuck-up. Hollywood was fucked off at Bear for slagging off his missus, Bear with Hollywood for giving him a fat lip, D with the pair of them for carrying on like such fucking cocks at Tractor’s wake, Hollywood with D for barrelling up behind him in the Genital Lee (his derisory name for the Pacer) and scaring him into the scenery with a flick of the high beams, and Bear with D for not backing Bear’s side of the argument with Hollywood. Aroha was fucked off with all of the above for all of the above and I just pretty much wanted to go home. I was considering stowing aboard the crashed 911 when it was freighted back to Christchurch later this morning, given there were no direct flights back to Brisbane out of Dunedin for days. Maybe they could kick me out as they went past the airport.

D broke the silence, which in itself was surprising. “Gonna take the beast back to Wellington with me, if it’s all right with you boys.”

Bear’s brow furrowed. “You got anywhere to store it there?”

D shook his head. “Only gonna stay a couple days, get shit straight. Cruise up north afterwards.”

“There’s space at my joint in Raglan,” Bear offered.

“For me or the car?”

“Both,” Bear replied.

Hollywood coughed. “It’s better off in Auckland,” he declared.

“Yeah, but where are you gonna…”

“Closer to the mechanics for when it breaks down,” Hollywood finished. Generally, he’d tried to hide his disdain for Barry’s ‘back shed engineering’ projects which Tractor so loved, but that effort had apparently died with Tractor. “Plus, it’s going to be easier to find a buyer there.”

“We’re not selling it,” Bear replied.

“You what?”

“That’s Tractor’s car. We’re not selling it.”

“Sorry, how long did he drive it for? Fuck me. Listen to yourself. What the fuck use is that old heap of shit to any of us?”

“Would you like your fucking teeth kicked in, Nick?”

“No need to bring macho bullshit into it, Queenslander...”

“Hey hey,” I interceded. “Enough of that crap or I’ll fully bash youse both ay.”

A snort of laughter, which was the response I’d hoped for. Jesus Christ, what was this fucking crap we were going on with?

“Not selling the fucking thing, end of.” Bear was adamant.

“Oh come on, Bear, get a grip.”

“Why sell it? What the fuck did it cost us?”

“It cost Aroha.”

“And you were gonna give all the money back to her then were you Nick? Or just stick it up your fucking nose with Sierra Cosworth and your fuckwit scenester pals…”

“I’m fucking warning you…”

“Mate, bring it. You’re all talk, prefect boy.”

“D, for God’s sake, explain to this hysterical fuckwit why we’re selling the bloody car.”

D weighed up the two seething individuals who were looking to him as a referee.

“We are selling that car,” D said.

“See?” Hollywood snarled.

“For charity,” D finished.

“Yeah… hang on a sec,” Hollywood muttered.

“Or we’re not selling it at all,” D declared.

I could see Bear weighing this up. I could also see Hollywood trying to come up with a counter-argument as to why this was a lousy idea, without sounding like all he was concerned about was his share of the cash.

“This is Aroha and Dan’s money,” he argued. “It’s not yours that paid for this, it’s not mine, it’s theirs. Haven’t they given enough to the cause already, without robbing them again?”

Yup, with rhetoric like that he’d be minister in a National government one day, for sure.

“Uh, Nick,” Aroha said softly. “Barry gave it to us for next to nothing, after Dan got sick.”

As it was, I knew that Tractor paid quite a bit less than retail for his cars from Barry, being effectively rolling R&D test beds. It also meant Barry was on 24-hour call if and when they showed signs of trouble – while Barry’s warranty service for his regular customers was usually good, it wasn’t that good.

“Then all the more reason to…” And then Hollywood tailed off, realising he was about to torpedo his own argument.

“Boys,” repeated D, “I’m taking the beast to Wellington. Any problems with that?”

Bear and Hollywood stared at their shoes.

“No mate, there’s not,” Bear said. “But like I say, given we have nowhere to store the thing in either Wellington OR Auckland, and there’s a secure lock-up garage at my place at Raglan…”

“Seaspray city.”

“Oh so where would you store it, Crash fucking Bandicoot?”

“Store it. You want to fucking drive it, that’s what this is about…”

“Have a look at my garage, mate. Do you see any ostentacious cock extensions like that piece of shit?” Bear waved an angry hand in the direction of the crippled 911, still bleeding coolant over Hamish’s drive. “All I want is what Dan would have wanted. He put it in his fucking will that we were to get that thing and look after it. Went out of his way to put that in there. And you want to cash it in for casino money and blow. Fuck you’re a charmer Nick.”

“This getting us anywhere, Bear?” inquired D.

Bear shrugged. “Always about the fucking money with this one. Always.”

“Yeah,” Hollywood replied. “It’s why I HAVE SOME.”

“Well you don’t fucking need any more, now do ya.”

We’d long outstayed our welcome here. It was Time To Go, Us. Fuck’s sake, I just wanted a lift to the airport. Wasn’t even picky about which one.

“D, you’re going to Wellington, yeah?” I said.

He nodded.

“Bear, you’re off to Raglan?”

“Yeah, eventually.”

“Hollywood, you need a lift back to Auckland?”

“Well, I…”

“Or were you planning to take the train?” I deadpanned.

Bear chuckled. “The underlings couldn’t just bring the boat down from the sounds, Nicko? You could just sail on back to Viaduct Basin…”

“What’s your point, Angus?” D had already guessed, but presumably wanted it verbalised.

“My point, lads, is that my NZ geography might not be that flash, but as far as I was aware, all those places are on the same fucking highway.” I pointed at the orange Pacer. “So get in, shut up, grow up, sort this pathetic fucking shit out, and get on your way. Seems obvious as hell to me. Instead of carrying on like a pack of whinging fucking schoolkids fighting over your Hot Wheels collections, and continuing to fucking embarrass yourselves.” Jesus Christ, suddenly I was in full-spec Rant Mode, foam-speckled spittle and all. “You think Tractor would be impressed with this display of infantile bullshit? You think anyone is?”

It wasn’t a rant I expected to be listened to, let alone taken seriously. I wasn’t taking the idea seriously myself. Those three in a car together, in this mood, even just as far as the ferry at Picton? Double homicide. Not sure who’d be the survivor, but that’d be the result. Might make a good reality TV show actually. My point was to highlight in big fuck-off Headline Bold what a pack of ridiculous prima donnas they were all being. They all went quiet, suggesting either (a) they’d got the point or (b) they were waiting for me to shut up.

Hollywood cleared his throat.

“I have a vehicle booking on the Interislander for 6am tomorrow morning,” he said. “Intended for this, of course…” He indicated the bent Porsche. It wouldn’t be making it anywhere near Picton for many moons. He looked at D and D looked at Bear. Bear and Hollywood weren’t looking at each other, but that was pretty standard for the past couple of days.

“You heard the man,” D observed grimly. “Let’s do this thing.”

There was a price to pay for my angry, rabid rant back at the farm. Since it was my idea and all, I’d been strongly encouraged by Aroha and D to strap on the powder-blue UN peacekeeper stackhat and ride shotgun, just to make sure everyone played nice. At least as far as Christchurch anyway, where I was hoping to jack up a flight back across the Tasman. Wouldn’t have to sit on the back of a flatbed truck in that busted-arse 911 choking on the residue of Hollywood’s punishing cologne, anyway. He was in the back for the first leg, so nominally downwind. Bear was on the other side, with my overnight bag in between them – a buffering tactic pioneered by my parents on long car trips with the Jeff and I (Matt was in reclusive angsty teenager mode by then and usually stayed home.) It wasn’t that the Pacer lacked for bootspace – although the spare alloy wheel and the race-spec fuel tank ate into the available space – just that Hollywood’s astonishing volume of clothes and toiletries for what was only a couple of days’ absence from Fashionista HQ seemed to take up most of it. I was bailing first so my bag went on the back seat in between the warring factions.

D was steering, since he’d been the least marinated of the three Hayabusans overnight, or at least could carry it better – the other two were still arguing amongst themselves as to which of them was or wasn’t right to drive – and I was shotgun, as observed. Hayabusa had the same road rules as we did, and probably a lot of bands who’d spent heavy duty time in vehicles together: everyone had a position, and every position had a role. Driver had command of the bridge, control of the vehicle, and most importantly, choice and veto over music. His 2IC was the bloke in the passenger seat, navigator and co-driver, who was his eyes and his hands. His hands, for driving the stereo, operating the aircon and answering his phone if the fucker interceded; and his eyes for reading maps and scoping for patrolling coppers, radar units and hot blondes in white hatchbacks - the basis of Hollywood’s White Hatchback theory being that hotties usually drove white hatchbacks, and as a corolla-ry (see what I did there?) white hatchbacks were usually driven by hotties. His theory was at least as effective as homeopathy, meaning it was next to useless no matter how desperately one might have wanted to believe in it, but it made you feel good to think it was working.

The other role of the 2IC was company. The back seats were for R&R – on the long overnighters with Gasket we’d run a rota, such that ex-drivers would be napping in the back after their stint at the wheel – but an unspoken part of the 2IC’s role, as the next in line for a steer, was to keep the driver on the ball and keep an eye on their fatigue situation. Not so much of an issue for a 360km weekday sprint up NZ’s State Highway 1 in daylight hours, but barrelling back down the Bruce overnight from Airlie Beach to Lismore in the postie van, somewhat more so. Back seat driving was thinly tolerated. Even when it was useful advice.

“Better fill up before we leave,” Hollywood had said. He was trying to be helpful – having donated his Interislander booking to the cause, and (more reluctantly) the use of his boat in the sounds just out of Picton as an overnight crashpad, he’d began rattling off the locations of all the BP service centres between here and the top end of the south island. He only used BP, not through any misguided sense of loyalty to the remnants of Empire (BP being British Petroleum and all – don’t let that ‘Beyond Petroleum’ crap fool you), but because their 98-octane Ultimate stuff was all he’d allow his Porsches to dine on, and Barry had recommended it for Hell’s Own Hemi Pacer as well. Hollywood seemed to use their 24-hour service centres as navigational waypoints on his early-hours sorties across the country, aiming to set and beat his own record times between them. He was rattling his times off as well, much to Bear’s annoyance.

So, with a tankful of gas, D’s MP3 player nestled in the USB cradle, a round of reasonable flat whites in the cupholders (except for Hollywood, living the JAFA cliché with a large trim latte), a cheap pair of sunnies dampening the glare off the recently wet road and a Foo Fighters live DVD on the back-seat screens to keep the kids quiet – amazing what stuff you can pick up these days from the servo – we rolled out of the BP on the south side of Dunedin city, turned onto State Highway One northbound, and thundered away on our mission.

Then went back to retrieve Hollywood’s iPhone and keys which he’d left on the counter.

Special Stage 1, Dunedin City to Rolleston, just south of Christchurch. Distance: 330km. Stage record: NP Holland (Ponsonby), Porsche 911 Turbo, 2h32m, in the middle of the fucking night. Likelihood of us getting near that at this hour of the morning: Threefold. None, Buckley’s and fuck-all.

The run from Dunedin to Christchurch is excrementally dull. Look on a map. It’s a straight fucking line for most of it, running across the flat, featureless Canterbury Plains. Except for the first bit, between Dunedin and Oamaru. That’s kinda fun. There’s hills in them thar… hills. Which means undulations, corners, overtaking zones and a bunch of other stuff markedly absent from the rest of the trip. The Pacer set the tone by charging up the Kilmog, the fearsomely long and steep hill about halfway from Dunedin to Palmerston, like its long-lost Charger cousins would have attacked the run up Mountain Straight at Bathurst. As the road got steeper, and the crawling B-doubles in the left lane seemed to be reversing towards us at ever-increasing rates of warp, D just held the thing in gear and leant on the throttle a little more firmly, and the Pacer just poured on more pace until it topped out over the summit at a generous 140 or so, the wheels going light over the crest, the ‘comfort’-setting suspension still firm enough to have the fat Bridgestones losing contact with the tarmac, likewise the contents of the backseat passengers’ breakfasts. Bear wasn’t a fabulous passenger after a heavy night on it. Hollywood wasn’t a fabulous passenger full stop.

D tapered it back after that brief exploration of the Pacer’s capabilities; he was all about the cruise. He had his seat back, arms draped over the old-school thin-rimmed tiller, nodding along to the Fat Freddy’s and Black Seeds on his ‘cruising’ playlist – no reference intended to attempting to pick up men for sex – and it was a surprisingly laid-back atmosphere in the low-slung Valiant given (a) the road was still doing its best impersonation of the top of Mount Panorama and (b) the kids in the back were still bickering with each other. Things started to iron themselves out as we reached Palmerston, about fifty kays up the road. With the war memorial hill on our right and the far-off Southern Alps on our left, we headed back towards the coast. There’s a memorable section just out of Palmerston where you crest a rise after a long straight across flat farmland, squeeze out between rows of pine trees, and suddenly you’re racing along the beachfront, carving between the sand and the ridge overlooking it. A freight train was powering along the main trunk line which ran parallel to the highway, seeming to sway towards and away from us on our curving path relative to it. D picked out a flotilla of dolphins surfing the left-handers peeling off the point (Shag Point, since you asked. Tiny rustic fishing village with comedy name. Ideal setting for some sort of dodgy sitcom I reckon.) Bear piped up.

“Favourite bit of the drive, this,” he remarked with a grin.

“Section around Kaikoura shits on it,” Hollywood offered.

“That’s between here and Christchurch is it mate?” Bear chided. “No wonder you’re fuckin’ lost without sat-nav.”

Hollywood couldn’t win that argument, because he was. It’d been proven by experiment.

“Between here and Picton, obviously.” He won that argument, because noone else had a better suggestion. And to be fair, the section of SH1 around Kaikoura was pretty epic. On the same page as the legendary Great Ocean Road in southern Victoria – and that was choked with tourist traffic most of the time anyway. Most of the distance to Oamaru was spent riffing on great driving roads around New Zealand – Central Otago, the Catlins, the Coromandel, the Rimutakas – a conversation to which I had bugger all to contribute but threw in my ten cents’ worth anyway. In the Intercom days Gasket had once had to make an early-morning dash from Queenstown to Christchurch after a communication fuck-up re flights (deja vu all over again), with McCarthy and myself thoroughly testing the handling capabilities of a BA Falcon rentacar over the sweeping, undulating corners of State Highway 8, which carved through the Lindis Pass and the foothills of the Southern Alps to meet up with SH1 between Timaru and Ashburton. Dull as fuck after that, but that wasn’t the point.

“I reckon,” I proposed, “that the mark of a good driving road is that it turns whatever you’re driving into a weapon. Made that shitbox Falcon feel like a Bathurst winner. Even McCarthy reckoned so, and he was a grumpy bugger who bled Holden-red.”

I knew Hollywood would hate that theory, which was kind-of why I’d proposed it in the first place. The problem with Hollywood was that he made it just too much fun to wind him up.

“That’s crap, Angus,” he declared. “What’s the point in trying to flatter the shallow capabilities of a generic bucket of shite taxi? Waste of time, when you could be maxxing out something that was designed for the purpose. Built to be a driver’s car from the start, spliced into its DNA…”

“Like your Vee Dub tractor you mean?”

It took a second for me to realise Bear was referring to Hollywood’s other pride-and-joy, his Porsche Cayenne 4WD. Technically the 911 Turbo was also 4WD, though technically it was now a 3WD.

“It’s a Porsche,” he growled. “It was designed as a Porsche.”

“It’s a Vee-Dub Toe Rag that’s been hit with the ugly stick until the ugly stick broke. And then they shoved the ugly stick up its arse, along with a straw, and blew hard.”

“Bear’s got you there Hol',” I reminded him. “It’s a Touareg with a 911 nose.”

“Fucking isn’t,” he sulked, but everyone had stopped listening. “Still better than dragging some ‘70s wrecking yard special off the heap and trying to make it into something decent in your fucking shed…”

“Fuck, here we go,” Bear muttered.

“Any day, any stretch of road,” he declared belligerently. “This, or anything Barry’s ever made, against my 911.”

“Any day?” I queried. “Today, for instance?”

“You know what I mean,” he grumbled. “Proper engineering. Millions of dollars’ worth of R&D, thousands of laps of the Nurburgring…”

“Versus forty years of collective race engineering experience,” I replied. “The amount of development that’s gone into the setup of this underneath, you could probably take the plates and the back seat out of this and have a decent dig at winning historic touring car races.”

“If it was in any way legal to run a 392 cubic inch Hemi Pacer in historic touring car races.”

“Yeah, there is that,” I conceded with a grin. “Central Muscle Car series perhaps? Give the boys in the Boss Mustangs a serious going over…”

“What’s it matter?” observed D. “So long as the quality of experience is the same, does it matter if you’re in a three hundred thousand dollar Porsche or an old beat-up Kingswood?”

“Or a Valiant?” sneered Hollywood. “Look, if you’re happy to think that, good luck to you.”

Bear grinned. “So you won’t mind if I take the run through Kaikoura then?”

Fuck, thought Hollywood, backpedalling desperately. He used to be called Teflon, because nothing stuck to him, but times like this he was so transparent you could have called him Perspex.