Opportunity Read Online Free

water-blasted his roof. It
was so loud I couldn't shut it out of any part of my house. I
couldn't work. I couldn't read. At the end of the second day
he'd scoured the paint off half his roof. He stopped work and
took the generator away. Months later, the roof is still half
scoured and half covered in old paint. The walls of the house
are also half painted. At the front a set of windows is covered
in black polythene, half fixed. He has a homemade security
gate, half of which is broken.
    Under the house is Ron's workshop. This neon-lit, cobwebby
basement, full of dead machinery, is where he and his son
Blake apply themselves to their most serious passion: tinkering
with cars. I have sometimes sat here working while Blake and
his dad have sawed a car in half. When they stop work I can
hear the murmur of their earnest talk. Something like: 'Yeah,
the fuggin. Yeah. The wrench. The fuggin wrench. Yeah. The
fuggin.'
    They have the usual trouble with their tools. Whole days
are devoted to fixing the dodgy saw they've borrowed to cut
the car in half. In the evenings young Blake, an apprentice
mechanic, likes to invite his friends over. After the traffic has
died down in the street, after the long and stressful day, I relax
to the sound of Blake's engine, with its souped-up oversized
exhaust being revved into a scream, until it sounds as if it's
begging for mercy. The youths cluster around the open bonnet,
humourlessly smoking. In the lull after the screaming the car
steams, its guts splayed — the tortured corpse. Blake's face is
intent, white, tiny-eyed. Sometimes he breaks into a sharp-toothed
grin: 'Eh! Look a' that!' As he might have done when
the kitten exploded that time, when the puppy sighed and
died, when the helpless thing he was fucking with finally gave
up the ghost, and whimpered no more, and hung limp from
the clothesline . . .
    Oddly, I don't hate Blake. (I do hate his parents. I do.) Once,
when I'd been in the paper and on TV, Blake went through a
phase of greeting me in the street. He did a sort of wave —
ceremonious. It was my being on TV that did it. I'm sure TV
is the ultimate reality for Blake. Reading and writing are not
his thing. Once he put a sign on an old car he'd dumped
outside my house: 'Some FCKWIT stole my plates. Please
RETURE.' He has a large tattoo on one arm and clumsy, boyish
hands. It's hard to hate a boy. It's hard to hate a boy who can't
spell 'return'.
    Anyway, you'd think from all this that I live somewhere a
bit scruffy, wouldn't you? Somewhere out west, or quite far
south? Henderson, Mangere. But no. The Cassidys live in
Remuera. We live in Remuera. It's not supposed to be like
this.
    So we have words. I'm no shrinking violet. I'm a writer, and
I need quiet. (I've had a reasonably successful career. I'm old
now, and a few people know my name.) Like Ron Cassidy, I
need to be home all day. Unlike him, I like getting a bit of
work done. And I've done a fair bit of raging out into the drive
and telling them to turn down or off whatever machine they're
operating.
    But the thing about the Cassidys, apart from their living in
Remuera and being so disreputable, is that they're fantastically
paranoid and aggressive. If you complain, they do not
apologise. They rear up and fight back. And if I've ever taken
any direct action (sometimes I write angry letters; once,
despairing, I threw two large tomatoes at the revving youths)
they're not slow to take revenge. My car has been attacked
with a brick, my windscreen wipers stolen. My tomatoes
arrived back on my doorstep soon after, accompanied by a
mountain of rubbish.
    Mrs Cassidy — Glenda — who works in a bank, is as sharp
and stringy as her husband is flabby and dull. She's not above
leaning over the fence and giving me what for, when I've been
cramping Ron and Blake's style with some mean-minded
complaint. She stands by her men. She has a great sense of
drama, and is always scurrying out to see what I've done to
Ron and Blake this time. Sometimes I