Tourists

The council had put the temporary crossing in exactly where nobody wanted it. Gemma Ritchie stood beside the orange mesh and watched three schoolchildren ignore the ramps, walk another twenty metres and step over a shallow trench instead. The contractor had laid a rubber mat across the cut for the morning, which made their route safe enough if they kept their feet, but that was hardly the point. She waited until they had disappeared past the bakery before saying, “There. That’s what I meant.” Matiu Ropata followed her line of sight. He had one boot on the kerb and a paper cup wedged into the crook of his elbow while he worked the lid loose. “They’ll use the proper crossing once the novelty wears off. Give them a day.” “The novelty of not using it?” Gemma glanced from the ramps to the bus stop, the bakery door and the line people had plainly been taking along that side of Haupapa Street for years. “Move it down. Otherwise we’re going to spend three weeks pretending pedestrians are the problem.” Matiu drank his coffee, considered the distance and gave a small shrug that meant he had already reached the same conclusion. “You know what I like about you? You always bring sunshine to temporary traffic management.” “It’s August. Sunshine would be suspicious, and I’ve got a meeting at eleven.” He laughed, took the radio from his belt and turned away to speak to one of his crew. The morning had the usual Rotorua mixture of cold air and warmth in the wrong places. Steam lifted beyond the roofs toward Kuirau Park, pale against a thin blue sky, and the sulphurous smell that had been obvious when Gemma got out of the car had already retreated into the background. Visitors noticed it for ten minutes. Locals tended to notice when it changed. She opened the works plan on her tablet and checked the next inspection point. The trench was for a routine services job, awkward rather than interesting, and her part in it mostly involved making sure the street still worked while somebody else opened it up. Contractors had their programme, utilities had theirs, shops wanted customers and deliveries, and pedestrians wanted the shortest route between two places. Most days, Gemma’s job amounted to standing where those interests collided and stopping anybody doing anything too ridiculous. A man on the far side of the road was photographing the trench. At first she assumed he was aiming beyond it at the steam. People photographed steam here constantly, including steam coming out of drains and steam that was doing nothing remotely photogenic. Then Matiu’s ute rolled forward and blocked the view. The man shifted two steps sideways and raised his phone again, now plainly aiming at the temporary barriers. Gemma watched him long enough to feel mildly intrusive herself. He was perhaps forty, maybe younger, wearing a dark green raincoat over jeans and trainers so clean they looked new. Nothing about him was memorable. If anything, the clothes gave her the odd impression of someone who had been shown examples of what a tourist ought to wear and had selected the pieces without ever acquiring an opinion about them. He took another photograph, lowering the phone only after he had captured a steel service cover in the footpath. When the traffic opened, Gemma crossed. “Morning,” she said, stopping far enough away that he could decide whether the conversation was happening. “If you’re after Kuirau Park, you’re heading the right way. Five minutes, roughly.” The phone came down. He smiled with a speed that felt rehearsed rather than especially friendly. “Thank you.” His accent was difficult to place: traces of something British, perhaps, but with vowels that wandered just enough to make Gemma stop trying. He made no move to go. She glanced at the service cover. “Not many people stop for that one.” The man followed her gaze as though only now realising that the object required an explanation. “I like infrastructure.” “Fair enough.” There were entire corners of the internet devoted to motorway junctions, drains and obsolete electrical substations. Somewhere, somebody probably had strong opinions about Rotorua service covers. Gemma was turning away when the man lifted his phone again. For a second she thought he was checking the screen, then saw that the lens was facing her. “Did you just take my photo?” His hand dropped. “No. I was just getting the site.” He looked past her toward the trench, as if the scene itself might support him. From where he was standing, Gemma had been between him and most of it. She did not bother arguing. “If you want pictures of the works, stay behind the barrier and don’t walk into the road. That’s all.” “Of course.” The same ready smile returned, and Gemma crossed back to Matiu. He had finished speaking to his crew and was pretending not to watch. “New friend?” “Infrastructure enthusiast.” Gemma picked up the tablet she had left on the bonnet of the ute. “You’ve found your people, then.” Matiu looked across the road before adding, more casually, “He take your picture?” Gemma glanced at him. “You saw that?” “Saw him point the phone. Didn’t know if you were posing.” He indicated her council-issued high-vis layer with his coffee cup. “Good jacket. Very flattering.” “You’re very easily impressed.” They went back to the inspection. By eleven, the temporary crossing had been moved, the bakery delivery access agreed and a contractor had promised, with the solemnity of a man taking an oath, not to stack barriers across the tactile paving again. Gemma signed off the visit and walked back toward the Civic Centre. Two tour groups passed her on the way. One followed a guide who was explaining geothermal activity with the confidence of somebody delivering the same account for the fourth time that morning. The other had stopped to photograph steam rising beyond the park. They wore bright jackets, carried backpacks, stood in each other’s way and behaved exactly as tourists were meant to behave. Gemma found herself checking for the dark green raincoat anyway. She did not see it. At lunchtime she crossed toward Tūtānekai Street and went to the café she used often enough that Leanne Fahey usually began making her coffee when she saw her through the window. “You’re late,” Leanne said as Gemma came in, already reaching for a cup. “I wasn’t aware I had an appointment.” “You didn’t. That’s why I can criticise you without consequences.” Leanne slid a flat white onto the counter and pointed Gemma out of the way of the next customer with two fingers. She was fifty-five and had owned the place for long enough to have become part of Gemma’s internal map of the city: café here, chemist there, loading bay that never stayed clear when it was supposed to. The room was narrow and warm. A couple by the window had spread a tourist map across two coffees, while somebody at the back attempted to steer a pushchair between tables plainly arranged by a person who had never tried it. Gemma paid and waited for a seat while Leanne observed that she looked as though she had been arguing with traffic cones. “They started it,” Gemma said. “They always do.” Leanne went back to the queue. Gemma almost mentioned the man with the phone, then decided there was nothing worth telling. Somebody had taken photographs near council works and possibly one of her. It barely qualified as an anecdote. When a table against the wall became free, she sat down, answered two emails and ignored a third for long enough to feel she had made a principled stand against it. Hamish Cole called halfway through her coffee and skipped the greeting entirely. “Tell me the temporary crossing has moved.” “Good afternoon to you too.” Gemma tucked the phone between shoulder and ear while opening the next job on her tablet. “It isn’t afternoon, and Matiu says you’ve rearranged his street.” “Matiu says many things when he’s trying to make basic competence sound like oppression.” Hamish laughed. “I’ve got Amohau after lunch. You still going? I’d hate to face resurfacing preparation without your legendary warmth.” “Yes, I’m going, and Matiu already used the warmth line. You two need separate material.” “He’s been stealing mine for years. I’ll meet you there.” By mid-afternoon Gemma had mostly forgotten the stranger. That was how odd encounters disappeared in a city that received visitors every day. People asked questions answered by the sign in front of them, walked into closed streets because a phone told them to, stood too close to steam, and occasionally photographed objects with no obvious claim to posterity. The Amohau job was resurfacing preparation rather than an excavation. Hamish was already there, talking to a traffic-management supervisor beside a row of cones. He had thick grey hair that weather had long since won an argument with, and his council lanyard was tucked inside his coat as though visible credentials offended him personally. “There she is,” he said when Gemma joined them. “Destroyer of crossings.” “It was one crossing, Hamish.” “That’s how it starts.” They walked the site. A delivery bay needed altering for the following week, one sign had been turned far enough that drivers would read it after passing the diversion, and Hamish spent five minutes arguing that a bus could make a particular turn until Gemma asked him to stand where the rear wheels would go. He moved without complaint, which was as close as Hamish usually came to conceding a point. At the far end of the works, Gemma saw a man beside a parked car and recognised the dark green raincoat before she saw his face. For a moment she wondered whether she had made the match only because she had been thinking about him earlier. Then he turned and she saw the same narrow features, the same carefully neutral clothes and another pair of very clean trainers. He was perhaps a kilometre and a half from Haupapa Street. That meant very little. Central Rotorua was not London; a visitor could cover the distance on foot without trying. What held Gemma’s attention was the fluorescent paint marking the edge of a future milling area. The man raised his phone and photographed that instead of the shops, the traffic or anything else a visitor might reasonably want to remember. Gemma slowed. Hamish went another few steps before realising she was no longer beside him and turned back. “What have you found now?” “Nothing. I think.” Across the road, the man looked up. His expression altered for a fraction of a second. It was not alarm, exactly; it was closer to the look of somebody encountering a person somewhere other than expected. He turned the phone over in his hand and started walking away. Hamish watched him go, then looked at the road marking. “Friend of yours?” “I don’t think so. He was at Haupapa this morning and told me he likes infrastructure.” Hamish considered the paint, which would probably be gone within a fortnight. “There are worse hobbies.” “Name three.” “I’ll email you.” They carried on with the inspection. Hamish returned to the delivery bay, and Gemma made herself attend to the site in front of her. She still had nothing useful to say about the photograph the man might have taken that morning, so she left it alone.