I have known Whetu for a long time. Longer than anticipated and, on reflection, longer than desired. In the time I have known him I have moved house three times and on none of these have I given him my home address. Yet he crops up. He finds me. It is uncanny. The only times he has granted me a hiatus is when he is in prison, which are, admittedly, frequent. His crimes are petty, mostly involving the theft of cars, a couple of burglaries and shoplifting. As far as I know, he has never been convicted of a major crime involving violence or being a member of the Labour Party. I personally have nothing against Whetu. In fact, I admire him for being the entrepreneur he is. And the ruses he adopts and adapts to extort money from me are genuinely creative; but he is an intrusion, an unwelcome visitor, and a penetrator of my comfort zone—I do not like being penetrated. So, it was with some displeasure today that I opened my door to find Whetu on my doorstep. The exchange went like this:
HE: Kia Ora, Bro.
ME: Whetu.
HE: You gots new home?
ME: Yes.
HE: You didn’t tell me.
ME: It slipped my mind.
HE: But I found you.
ME: Obviously. Look, Whetu, what is it this time? And how much?
HE: How much?
ME: How much money do you want? Or, to put it more accurately, how much money are you NOT going to get from me?
HE: I don’t want no money from you.
ME: Really?
HE: I got plenty of money. I gotta new job.
ME: Really? With who…whom?
HE: Pacifica University.
ME: Never heard of it.
HE: It’s new. I am their epdi…epid…epri…bug doctor.
ME: Bug doctor.
HE: I tells them how much covid cases to expect. I models for them.
ME: And what does modelling mean?
HE: Standing around and looking good.
ME: What on earth do you know about Covid?
HE: Nothing.
ME: Nothing.
HE: I makes it up. Television comes to me because I am at university, asks me how much covid cases there are going to be next week, and I tells them.
ME: And how do you know?
HE: I looks it up.
ME: Looks…Look it up, where?
HE: First three numbers of last week’s Lotto draw.
ME: That’s not very scientific.
HE: Well, if you want to get scie…scia…
ME: Scientific.
HE: Yeah, that. I sometimes gives them the first four numbers—scares the shits out of them.
ME: So, what have you come to see me for?
HE: Next week there are going to be 8,433 covid cases.
ME: So?
HE: Want to buy a mask?
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