overheard

"There's a storm coming the size of Australia" she says, and smiles. "The whole country's going to blow away. Well, not away but we're going to be flooded out. There won't be any land visible above water anymore. All these nice houses and churches and schools and parliament buildings are gonna be like soggy crackers. That's it. No more New Zealand. The end. Buh-bye."

She smiles even bigger, so that her crooked teeth jut out.

"And best of all, no more people. Except for the ones that can afford sailing boats." She sticks out her bottom lip.

"That's a bit shit," he says. I tell you what, her pretty little smile slides right off her face then.

"What do you mean?" she pouts.

"Well it's those bastards that deserve to be flooded out the most, don't you think?"

"For your information, you jerk, my family owns a yacht."

His eyes look heavier all of a sudden.

"Exactly," he says. "That's exactly what I mean."

"Fuck you," she squints. "I would have let you on our boat but now you've gone and blown it. We had a spare life jacket and everything. But seeing as you're being a real jerk about it, I'll wave to you when I'm sitting up in the crow's nest and you're floating about like a shitty piece of seaweed."

He frowns a little. "I can swim alright anyway lady." He is facing square on to her. His body is a perfect straight line against her foul, crooked mouth.

"Look," he says, "if you come around to my house sometime I'll show you all my swimming trophies. Like I've got a whole cabinet full of them and medals too. My whole bedroom wall on one side, completely covered in medals from these swimming races I won. I'm telling you the honest truth. I can swim." His eyebrows venture up his forehead.

"Yeah well there's no time for that is there?" she says smartly. "Cuz soon - in a couple of hours - all your damn medals and trophies are gonna be floating around like some badly shaped fish and some poor whale is gonna get your stupid medal stuck in it's blow hole or something and gonna cark it right there in the ocean that wasn't even an ocean before but just some air above New Zealand. Don't you get it? I said, we're all gonna get flooded out. That means you don't own any trophies or medals. You don't own anything. It's all just deep sea treasure and so are your bones unless you find yourself a boat."

She looks at him for a bit. Reaches out and shoves his shoulder a bit. Not too hard though.

"Or, if you stop being so frikken smart and maybe I'll dig out that extra life jacket for you."

He just looks at her. He thinks about his trophies blocking up some filthy sewerage pipe at the bottom of the ocean. All the yellow gunk accumulating until the pressure builds up and the drain vomits out shit everywhere into the sea.

"I told you. For shit's sake. I can swim real good."

He walks away from her to the window. He opens it up and puts it on the widest catch. He unlocks the door and opens that out wide too. He takes off his shirt and puts it on the floor and sits down on it. Pulls his knees up to his bare chest and locks his hands together around his legs. His body isn't straight anymore. It's crooked like her teeth. He looks up at her from his small shape and holds onto his own hands tighter.

"Now piss off eh."