“Right,” he said, kneeling over the outside manhole. “Let’s see what the old girl’s eaten.”
A month later, a storm hit. Rain lashed the villa. Lena braced for the gurgle, the backup, the swamp. Nothing happened. The drains drank the rain like a thirsty god. She smiled, washed her dinner dishes, and listened to the quiet rush of water leaving her home, clean and unafraid. drain unblocking grey lynn
In Grey Lynn, a good drain is invisible. A bad one is a neighbourhood legend. And Frank was somewhere in between. “Right,” he said, kneeling over the outside manhole
“That’s the thing about Grey Lynn,” Frank said, wiping his hands on a rag that was mostly grease. “Under all this gentrification and fair-trade coffee, the bones are still 1920s. You have to respect the bones.” Lena braced for the gurgle, the backup, the swamp
Frank smiled. “We reline. No dig. No wreck your lemon tree.”
Lena panicked. “Do we dig up the whole garden?”