Before they left Te Anau, they stopped at a pub for lunch. Jasper couldn't eat, but he paid for Serena's meal. She flirted with the barman, sticking strands of her hair into her wide red mouth, and licking them into dark, glossy tips. She told the barman that she was running away from home, that she was going to travel all the way around the world and just keep on going, that she liked New Zealand beer. She didn't say anything at all about Jasper who was standing at the bar right there beside her, but her hand had been curled in a comfortable way in his pocket, down under the counter.
They hadn't seen a single car since they'd left the main road and headed for the pass into Milford Sound. After enduring ominous weather reports all the way from Queenstown to Te Anau, he guessed it wasn't surprising. Alone, Jasper would have headed up the east coast to Dunedin, rather than making the long drive into the West and Fiordland, but Serena had a great desire to see Milford Sound and he was quickly learning that Serena was seldom thwarted in her great desires.
Two nights ago he had been sitting in bed, watching her sleep. Dust floated in the cold moon-lighted air and he sneezed. A piece of his tooth, a back molar, fell into his hand. In the morning when Serena woke up, she had put it in an airmail envelope, sealed the envelope, and written "Jasper's tooth" on it.
He had the envelope in his pocket now and every once in a while his tongue went up to touch the changed, broken place in his mouth. "I've never met anyone named Jasper before," Serena said, "It's old-fashioned."
Jasper looked at her. She looked back, smirking, black hair tucked into her mouth. She was doodling on the back of her own hand with a fountain pen, making thin jagged lines. It was an expensive pen. His name was engraved on it.
"So's Serena," he said carefully, around the tooth. "My grandmother's youngest brother's name was Jasper. He died in a war."
"I'm not named after anybody," Serena said. "In fact, I've always hated my name. It makes me sound like a lake or something. Lake Serena. Lake Placid. I don't even like to swim."
Jasper kept his eyes on the road. "I never learned how to swim," he said.
"Then hope that there will always be enough lifeboats," she said, and closed one eye slowly. He watched her in the rear-view mirror. It was not an altogether friendly wink. She put the pen down on the dashboard.
"My grandmother gave me that pen," he said. He'd lent it to Serena in the bar in Queenstown when they met. She hadn't given it back yet, although he had bought her a ballpoint at a chemist's the next day. He'd also bought her a bright red lipstick, which he had thought was funny for some reason, a bar of chocolate, and a tiny plastic dinosaur because she said she didn't like flowers. He wasn't really sure what you were supposed to buy for a girl you met in the bar, but she had liked the dinosaur.
"I never had a grandmother," Serena said, "Not a single one. Not a mother, not a brother, not a sister, not a cousin. In fact, there was a general drought of relatives where I was concerned. A long dry spell. Although once I brought home a kitten, and my father let me keep it for a while. That kitten was the only relative who ever purely loved me. Does your grandmother love you?"
"I guess," Jasper said. "We have the same ears. That's what everyone says. But I have my father's crummy teeth."
"My father's dead," Serena said, "and so is the kitten."
"I'm sorry," Jasper said, and Serena shrugged. She held her left hand away from her, examining her drawing. It looked like a map to Jasper – pointy stick-drawings of mountains, and lines for roads. She stuck a finger in her mouth and began to smudge the lines away carefully, one by one. "Your ears aren't so bad," she said.
The radio went on and off in a blur of static. Unseasonable weather… party of trekkers on the Milford Track… missing for nearly… between Dumpling and Doughboy Huts… rescue teams… Then nothing but static. Jasper turned off the radio.
"They might as well give up," Serena said. "They're all dead by now, buried under an avalanche somewhere. They'll find the bodies in a couple of weeks when the snow melts." She sounded almost cheerful.
There were tall drifts of snow on either side of the road. Every 500 meters they passed black-and-yellow signs reading: "Danger! Avalanche Area: Do Not Stop Vehicle!" Every sign said exactly the same thing, but Serena read them out loud anyway, in different voices – Elmer Fudd, Humphrey Bogart, the barman's flirty New Zealand sing-song.
"Danger, Will Robinson Crusoe!" she said, "Killer robots and tsunamis from Mars ahead. Also German tourists. Do not stop your vehicle. Do not roll down your window to feed the lions. Remain inside your vehicle at all times. Do not pass go. Do not pick up hitchhikers-oops, too late."
All day the sky had been the color of a blue china plate, flat and suspended upon the narrow teeth of the mountains. The road wound precariously between the mountains, and the car threaded the road. The sun was going down. Just where the road seemed about to lift over the broken mountain rim, where the sun was sliding down to meet them, a black pinprick marked the tunnel into Milford Sound. As Jasper drove, the pinprick became a door and the door became a mouth that ate up first the road and then the car.
Serena was reading out of Jasper's guidebook. "Started in 1935," she said. "Did you know it took twenty years to complete? It's almost a mile long. Four men died in rock falls during the blasting. You should always call a mountain Grandmother, to show respect. Did you know that? Turn on the headlights -"
They went from the pink-gray of the snowdrifts into sudden dark. The road went up at a 45-degree angle, the car laboring against the steep climb. The headlights were sullen and small reflecting off the greasy black swell of the tunnel walls. The walls were not smooth; they bulged and pressed against the tarmac road.
In the headlights, the walls ran with condensation. Over the noise of the car Jasper could hear the plink-plink of fat droplets falling down the black rock. He touched his tongue to his tooth.
"Why, Grandmother, what a big dark tunnel you have," he said. The terrible weight of the mountain above him, the white snow shrouding the black mountain, the stale wet air in the tunnel, all pressed down inexorably upon him in the dark. He felt strangely sad, he felt lost, he felt dizzy. He sank like a slow stone in a cold well.
"Hello sailor," Serena said. "Welcome to Grandmother's Tunnel of Love." She put her long white hand on his leg and looked at him sidelong. He sank down, was pressed down, heavy. His tooth whining like a dog. He couldn't bear the weight of Serena's black eyes, her thin shining face. "Are you all right?"
He shook his head. "Claustrophobic," he managed to say. He could hardly keep his foot on the gas pedal. He saw them spinning through the dark towards a black wall, a frozen door of ice.
And then he had to stop the car. "You drive," he said, and fumbled the door open and went stumbling over to the passenger's door. Serena shifted to the driver's side and he sat down in her warm seat. It took all his strength to shut the door again.