Military Madness (Nathan Graham)

Military Madness (Nathan Graham) – Woods(listen in new tab)

9:30, that Friday.

Brae closes her apartment door, locks it and drops her key into a green leather clutch. She’s ready to go out, dressed in tight dark jeans and a strategically fitted t-shirt.

The music in the hallway is muffled by the building’s yellowed wallpapered walls. Brae thinks to herself that those kids down the hall always play the worst music way too loud. She’s happy that the old building, thinned with age, still lets only a little through.

That no-fi or whatever is just not her cup of tea. Not enough sex; no groove.

Unperturbed, she bounces through the hall and bounds down the stairs, carried on the syrupy wings of a few well made rum and cokes.

Maura and she live in the same building. Brae on the third floor, back corner. Maura on the second floor in a small apartment stuck in the middle of two older couples. It’s probably the cheapest building in the city. It doesn’t hurt that Brae’s dad owns the place.

Brae passes a familiar stain on the stairwell wainscoting as she jumps the last few steps to the second floor landing. A light brown splotch, on the irregularly faded fake wood, washed out by decades of sun from the stairwell’s southern exposure.

It makes her think about when Maura moved in five years ago.

It was snowing; one of those early March days that threaten to paralyze the city with snow. Brae was coming back from some cloying grad seminar run by a vainglorious Proust scholar. She had felt battered by his appraisal of a recent paper; she was ready to sink into a meditative beer.

When she saw the white rental van parked out front, she ignored it. There was almost always someone moving in or out. Brae was used to it.

Brae literally crashed into Maura (on her way back down). Brae habitually blindly, tore up the three flights of stairs, and having gained some momentum collided with Maura. The two of them spun off each other, came to rest in orbit.

Maura was bronzed back then. Her skin had that legitimate brown that came only from long exposure. Her dark hair, longer than she ever keeps it now, was pulled back in a loose pony tail.

She wore track pants and a hoodie, slightly unzipped from the heat of running up and down the stairs. But she wasn’t sweating. She was fit, a creature of solid endurance encased in parsimonious skin.

Brae apologised for not looking. Maura smiled kindly, introduced herself as new to the place. Brae realized, hearing a lilt of fatigue, that she was moving in by herself. So, she offered to help.

As they ran up and down the stairs, they raced a blizzard that made each load increasingly treacherous. But, there wasn’t that much to move in: a sparse collection of boxes and some furniture with the tags still on them from thrift stores where she bought them.

When they were done, Brae brought down some wine and Maura produced some plastic glasses, cutting open a box with a jackknife. She wielded it readily, slicing the tape with judicious skill.

To Brae, Maura seemed a person of aplomb force. She exuded a tension, a practiced rigour that took years to dissipate, as over the years her skin whitened and her body softened. She relaxed into the city, letting herself expand as she grew used to its ambivalent comfort.

As they drank, the chill in the apartment lifted. Maura warmed by the wine, took off her sweater. She only wore a faded green tank top. She had no tan lines, except one. Brae never asked about the thin pale band on her left hand.

Over the next weeks as Maura settled in, Brae would visit. The apartment gradually became a home. But, some things were missing. There were no photos, no pictures of Maura and her ex, no family barbecues, no awkward photos of some summer vacation during high school.

Maura never talked about where she came from and why she moved to Toronto, though she mentioned she was from there originally. Brae enjoyed the mystery, happy to have something in her life that defied penetration and analysis, enjoyed the thickness of her life that her grad school friends didn’t offer. Maura, probably, liked the peace of Brae’s disinterest with her withdrawn past.

That tacit, palpable naturalness formed the foundation of their friendship. One night a year later, the two of them were falling down drunk, outside a night club. Maura leaned on the wall of a bus shelter, her body lit, a pallor in the white light of the perfume ad. She said quietly that she’d almost been married once.

Brae replied that she had guessed. And, Maura told her a story. It was something that seemed so constrained and edited that it hardly seemed accurate. But, it felt true. Brae was satisfied with that and never pressed for more. It was a breach in Maura that never really opened again. Until K. Since last winter, she seemed more in the world then ever.

Now, she raps her familiar three taps on her friend’s door. “Honey, it’s me! Let’s go out! K and G.T. are at V.I.’s and waiting for us!”

Maura takes her time coming to the door. Brae knocks again. The door opens quickly. Brae steps back. Maura’s eyes are red, ringed in dark sleepless holes. Her body hangs loosely on her shoulders. The sweet, stained smell of whiskey on her breath.

When Maura tries to say hello, she almost falls out of the door. Brae puts her hands on Maura shoulders to steady her.

Brae: “Whoa. Having a… are you ok?”

Maura, leans against the door frame. She fishes into her pocket, pulls out the ring. “Edmund. He…”