CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The entirety of the staff are standing round the printer which is spitting out pages at a fearsome rate. They're spilling onto the floor. A4 pages of...penises.

No - picking up a few pages and looking closer - it looks like one close up penis from different angles. And, because I know my fucking penises, I'm placing it as belonging to a 40 to 50 year old.

What the fuck is going on? I put my glare on the Coffee Underling. Might as well make the only male in the room feel some heat.

- It's not mine, he squeaks. - They just started coming out the printer.

Somebody must have hit print on a computer. Who was it?

They all put their hands up like I'm the police asking them to put them in the air.

- It wasn't any of us, the dowdy one looks affronted.

- It's coming through as a fax, says Coffee Underling, jabbing buttons on the machine.

A fucking what? What century are we in?

Underling again, - The printer can work as a fax machine. Someone must have got our fax number from the website.

Why the fuck do we have a fax number on the...never mind. Who the fuck is it from?

Underling briefly pauses his jabbing. - There should be a cover sheet amongst these.

Everyone looks down at the realms of penises spilling across the floor. Nobody wants to touch a single paper. They're still spitting out of the machine.

Why haven't they stopped?

Underling has given up the jabbing. - Whoever sent them has sent on repeat. There's 34 jobs stacked in the control panel.

We'll switch it off at the bloody wall then.

- If we do that they'll just come through when we turn it on again.

- And I need to print the run sheet for tonight's fundraiser event, says the dowdy one, completely unable to read the room's priorities.

We stand motionless, watching the 34 sets of dick pics spread their way across the office floor.

Alix saunters through the door. Hold on girl, how did I get here before you? Have you been for a cheeky pint or a very long toilet trip?

She looks at the spread of papers in amusement and then starts throwing them in the air like confetti. As they reign down upon her she finds the cover page and peers into the sender's details.

- It says it is from Mrs G. S----.

The Party Secretary from the 1990s?

The Best-dressed bitch shrugs.

Of course she would be the only person in the Party to still have a fax machine. Get her on the phone.

The dowdy one looks startled at my request. Get into the database. No don't look at the filing cabinet. Go into the online database and get her contact details. Even if Mrs G--- would rather be dealing with telegrams we will have a contact number for her.

As I'm wading through the paper phalluses, the Press Sec rings. - Where's the Party President?

I don’t know. At his real job? Playing golf? Wanking in the shower somewhere?

- You need to find him. Graeme is getting distressed calls from the women’s network.

Who is Graeme?

- The Chief of staff.

Oh yes, so inconsequential that even though I saw him a few hours ago and I’ve had sex with him twice, I barely remember his name. What's Graeme done to upset the women's network. The majority of members are drawing super so I very much doubt he's been putting his wad anywhere we need to worry about.

- He's not the issue. It's the calls we've been fielding from the network we need the President to sort out.

Hold on. Alix is doubled up with laughter, almost on the floor. What's going on?

Mrs G--- was emailed some dick pics by an unknown sender. She tried to forward them to her husband Wolsey, but instead she sent them to the women’s network email list. All three thousand members in the Party. So then she didn’t know what to do and didn’t want to use the internet again so she turned off the router and decided to fax the President to see if he could help. She wasn’t sure if it was working - in her own words she hasn't used the fax machine since she sent documents to the IRD last century - so she kept trying. She says, Alix's tears of mirth about to turn her blouse into a wet t-shirt contest, she's very sorry and she'll hold off sending anymore.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Well there you go Ms Press Sec; that's your source of three thousand shocked and petrified women's network members. Although, I'll put money on a few hundred of the oldies having a good old clit rub right now and thanking the lord their network membership finally gives back.

Get a woman on the phones responding, not some fucktit like Graeme. We are extremely sorry, we are all outraged to hear this has happened, we have our best data security experts already on it, we will get to the bottom of this and take immediate action, yadayadayada. And make sure they understand the need for confidentiality. Not a word of this can get out.

- You don't want Minister Coley to tie this into one of the Ministry for Women announcements? Show how vulnerable women are in the digital age?

Ms Press Sec? You are far shrewder than this. This is not the election of vulnerability. This is the election of strength, masculinity, pride - not in the gay sense - pulling bootstraps up, not fainting at the slightest whiff of flesh.

Get down to the press gallery and lock it down. Let them know what it is and tell them that even a whiff of reporting on it will seriously breach privacy concerns.

- I don't see how that will fly.

Use your bloody relationships. Show some tits and teeth. Tell them that their advertisers will be having some words when they find out the reporting on this matter has retraumatised a fragile elderly lady and provoked a health event which is unrecoverable. You are paid enough to be able to HANDLE this.

I can hear the Press Sec inhale through her teeth. The silence tells me she is computing whether she wants a cat fight now or will wait for an opportune moment to stab me in the back. She hangs up.

Alix, compose an email for the President. He's going to have to find budget for three thousand newly designed special network pins as a sorry present. Get Mrs G---- to send you the email address of whoever sent the penis to her.

- Hold on. She says her router is still off. Should she fax it to you?

God no. Just get her to read it out to you and write it down. On a piece of paper. Not your fucking phone.

I take the email address into my office. Rummage in the drawer and pull out the Talisker. No record of the penis' email in any of the Party databases. Ring the Press Sec to see what she can find.

- You know parliamentary service have been issuing stern warnings about the privacy issues of sharing information from the register.

Whatevs. I'm reading it out to you so it's not OIAable. Just tell me if it's in your records.

Another inhale through the teeth. I might need to buy her a handbag. A spa voucher won’t cut it this time. She keeps me waiting on the phone for far longer than I know it will be taking her to run the address through the register.

No matches there either. I better not have to bring in Geordie from the Youth Wing with his technicolour keyboard.

I'm layers deep in hyperlinks and partial name matches and the Talisker is gone by the time I find a registration for a domain name, for a website, for a construction company that has been out of business for a decade, who has a co-owner, who has a first name that is wedged in the email address, who has a company director listing for another company, that has an address, which is a residential address, and I am absolutely sure it is him. I look at his Facebook pictures. A hollowed out man gawps at me. He is aging out of having any use for a larger than average dick; the sallow resentment in his cheekbones that nobody is paying heed to his biological superiority.

I phone the Party's designated Investigation Support Liaison in the police. Can you please thank you very much send a couple of your officers round to have a word about the Harmful Digital Communications Act?

The fuck? Yes of course I understand that the PMs’ directive to get as many police on the streets for maximum visibility in the run up to the election means that your officers are no longer making domestic house calls. And now I understand that this is becoming a political phone call about the need for adequate resourcing but, surely one house call?

Yes of course, the union and their perception. Well thank you very fucking not.

Alix, we're going on a road trip. And by this I mean in an actual car, on some roads.

- Right now? Where?

Hamilton.

- We won't get there until at least two in the morning.

With my knowledge of the speed cameras let's call it one am.

- Do I need to hire a car? I don't have a driving licence.

No, we'll go to my father's garage. We'll take the Audi. Grab a folder for some of those penises. Get Coffee Underling to shred the rest. Actually, hide one under the dowdy one's mouse mat. That will show her for clocking off before penis gate is over.

Once we've glided over the Transmission Gully ascent, sticking two fingers up at the tired looking hatchbacks trundling up the slow lane, Alix looks like she's going to try and hunker down for a kip. Not a fucking chance girl.

- Can I ask you a question?

As long as it's not about fecundity interest. The fucking Finance Minister keeps trying to set up a policy announcement and it's bloody whack-a-mole chasing his staff to give them different reasons to postpone it. Nobody cares about fiscal responsibility. They just want the treats so that they can feel like the miserable Briscoes sale weekend isn't the only upcoming highlight as they sit in immobile traffic while their kids screech in the background.

- What did you want to be when you grew up?

Free.

- Because your childhood was under a dictatorship?

Because I didn't want to get married. Didn't want to only ever be introduced as Mr Fuckface's other half, wife of twat that said he was staying late at the rugby club when everyone knew he was really screwing his secretary. At home looking after the kids while he’s drinking whisky in the hotel bars on his international business trips. And who the fuck brings up children in this world? I didn't want to have the life sucked out of me for a decade only to have to tell them, when they can finally comprehend more than Peppa Pig and Bluey, that the world is one Great Male Leader's temper tantrum away from a nuclear weapon drop, they're never going to see the baboons in the Amazon jungle because the palm oil in their lollies has put a stop to that, and we're such fucking cunts that we'd shoot our neighbours in the face because a video on YouTube told us to.

- So just scared of anyone actually loving you?

Shut up and take that nap. I'll wake you up when we get to the outskirts of Hamilton.

State Highway One but there's barely a car on the road. Just the occasional red taillights swallowed into the blackness of agricultural solitude and the ever lurking bush. The car easily glides past the freight trucks lit up like Christmas trees. Train tracks to the side unused; out of site out of fucking mind. It's long past the moment when we should have disestablished them and put down some decent tarmac to skim those painful minutes off the commute.

For a girl so little, Alix is snoring like a fucking trooper. No wonder she doesn't stick around once she's had her leg over. She doesn't wake up when I pull into a service station shortly after midnight. Let's me slide two Krispy Kremes down the gullet without fear of reproach.

I turn the knob on RNZ Concert and blast Vivaldi when I turn off the highway and into the burrow of single story properties and endless mowed berms on the outskirts of Hamilton. Alix startles and looks through gummed eyelids at the empty streets.

Shine the torch from your phone on that mailbox. Is it number 74?

She nods and I pull up the concrete driveway to the red brick villa. Those roses need some fucking pruning. Slap some colour into your face Alix – time to look like the boss woman that we are.

I reach into the back seat for the overly expensive padded folder in a different colour from the Party colour and brush the donut crumbs from my blazer. By the time we arrive at the door we are looking sharp as starlight. There is a doorbell – an abnormality in this backsticks country – and it rings through the house until it provokes the yaps of what can only be a lapdog. It’s not long until the door opens and the middle aged woman - in her nightgown and expensive night cream that she knows will not do anything to reduce the crow lines but is the one last step before accepting she needs an HRT patch - looks at us with the face of someone who has not slept soundly for many years. Not a flicker of surprise as she looks from our hard-edged postures to the folder resting like a rifle under my arm.

Is this the residence of Mr D--- W-----?

- He’s asleep.

He always sleeps soundly, doesn’t he, no matter the fucking drama. I assume this is familiar to you, I say, as I pull the first sheaf out from the folder and thrust the pecker under the porch light. The bags under her eyes sag a little lower as she succumbs to the realisation she will be cleaning up another vulgar mess.

Do you know why Mrs G. S---- was the recipient of this image?

Her eyes flicker away from us as she works her way through the back catalogue of simmering fuck ups held within the brick walls of the villa.

- Does she live on the other side of the croquet club?

I have no idea where the fuck that is. Let’s assume so.

- It will be because of the opposition to one of the consents. I think she might have started a petition.

I almost feel sorry for her. I look at the state of her toenails. I would never let mine get that way. She probably has bunions.

Alix here…

Alix displays a tabby cat grin.

Alix here has the phone numbers and personal contacts for everyone in the news room at RNZ, the Herald, Stuff, 1News, and ThreeNews. I don’t think you want any of them running pixelated pictures of your husband’s dick. I have a copy of the Harmful Digital Communications Act, which you may keep. I also have some court records and news articles on what has happened to some of the people prosecuted to date under the Act. A surprisingly large number of them have subsequently been prosecuted under other legislation or have otherwise had their reputation dragged ragged through the media.

I hand over the rest of the papers, keeping the folder to myself. There’s no way my favourite padded folder isn’t coming back to Wellington to be reunited with its elegant, ink-free, fountain pen.

Is there any more information we can furnish you with?

She sighs and shakes her head.

Splendid. Once Mrs G. S---- has received a heartfelt apology, a very expensive ‘I’m sorry’ gift, and is left alone to do whatever she wants with her petitions, we look forward to never hearing about your husband or his schlong ever again. We bid you good evening.

Sharp turn Alix. There is just enough space between this porch and the Audi to stride like a boss.

Car revs. Alix asks me - Why didn’t we get her husband out of bed?

If you want something done properly you get women to do it. You are learning very slowly Alix.

I’m still gloopy eyed from the drive back to Wellington when the Chief of Staff says he has some papers I need to look at in the caucus room. Isn't it almost your bedtime junior?

I throw face into the sink with some ice at the bottom, pink the cheeks, rouge the lips, pluck a grey thread and plump the tits. I don't need sleep. I walk like a fucking Queen through the precinct.

It's eerily quiet through the wood panelling of the corridor to the caucus room. Push the door and,

What the fuck?

Cheap foil letters spell out Happy Birthday across the portraits of dead leaders of the past. A handful of balloons - not helium filled - are tied to the light fixtures. Some kind of crepe paper monstrosity forming a five and a zero is propped against the far wall. A ton of woman hours have been spent on making sure it looks like the least expense possible has been disbursed on this gathering.

- Happy fiftieth birthday, shriek the room's inhabitants with as much emphasis on the fiftieth as they can deliver without spilling the bubbles in their plastic champagne flutes. The Press Sec smirks as she waves the microphone of a karaoke machine. Geriatric ministers are clearly third glass in and look like they have no intention of leaving until the night cleaners come round while the junior backbenchers are hovering near the door and mentally calculating how long they will need to keep their face in view. The Chief of Staff better not be thinking this warrants another fuck in the toilets.

- How does the big five o feel Rebecca? Chirrups the Press Sec.

She must have raided the old HR files to find the date. Well, jokes on you fuck faces. I'm not fifty until next year. My dear mother faked my birth certificate when we were in Hong Kong so she could get me into the international school a year early. You don't even have the right month.

Why is there a gigantic cheese on the table with 5 and 0 candles jammed lopsided into the top?

- Is it cheese or is it cake? the PM says gleefully, stepping through the ministers.

The fuck?

- You have to guess. It looks like cheese but is it cunningly disguised cake, or is it really cheese?

I don't give a fuck. There's no way I'm eating anything for the next 48 hours after those two Krispy Kremes. But there are a surprising number of faces who look like they have been stuck on precinct without afternoon tea and desperately want any calories they can get their hands on.

I'll go with cheese. It does indeed look like it’s entirely dairy.

The PM is wielding what looks like a carving knife before I know it. I assume we're skipping the requisite candle blowing. No wishes for me.

She takes a samurai swipe and - It is cake!

Who would have known.

My car tired brain is starting to crash and it can't do the mental calculations on which drinks I need to top up to get the old timers to the requisite level of trollied so I can engineer an exit. The PM is already blowing air kisses as she walks towards the door; her five minute daily ration of enjoyable activity expended.

- Rebecca, have you met Sinead Cunningham, our candidate for Tamaki? The Press Sec has tapped my elbow and is adeptly doing the comms dance steps to move the three of us into a quieter corner.

Sinead's face is pinned to the campaign office wall with a green post-it note of no-fuck-ups-so-far, but we have not yet been in the same location.

- Named young business leader of the year by Deloitte - all categories, not just female. Earlier this month was the first New Zealand leader of a trans Pacific trade delegation to Latin America. Is co-host of the Women in Business podcast.

I raise an eyebrow with the question of, you couldn't possibly could you Press Sec?