Bombs Bomb Away – Elephant Stone (listen in new tab)
Claire called a general staff meeting for Monday night. Café Ulysses had never had one before. For the auspicious occasion, she closed a little early and had Danielle push four tables together to form a sort of larger round table.
Claire stands by the door. It’s 9:00. She flips the sign from Open to Closed as K walks up. She opens the door for him.
K: “This is gonna be fun, isn’t it.”
Claire: “I’m excited.” She genuinely is.
Since Saturday, she’d turned the store inside out. She had pulled two old floppy pink notebooks out of her closet and then filled one, penning in list after list. Diagrams. Quick math. Contact ideas and numbers. Shift restructuring. Anything that she thought she might help.
By the time she was done, she had dismantled the ligaments of Esther’s Ulysses. After the gutting, Claire inscribed the first faded Hilroy with a new anatomy of the café’s future. The second is for the proceedings of tonight.
Zoe slouches in. She’s in her PJs. “I’ve been studying. Will this take long?”
And then Camille, the international student, saunters in with his usual cavalier smile. He sits, draping himself over a chair, calls out to Danielle to make him an espresso.
Danielle snorts at him, hands on hips. “The machine’s clean. You can make one, if you want to clean it.”
Camille: “Well.”
Claire: “There’s some fresh drip if you’re desperate.”
Camille: “Desperate times, indeed.” He pulls himself up and heads around the counter.
Lucile arrives next. She has been around since Claire started. She’s older, but shuns any responsibility. She’s married with two kids under four. She comes here to escape.
When Annette (she’s a veteran, too) arrives, she stumbles on the bottom of the door frame. She smiles coyly, tries to laugh it off. Lucile shoots her a cruel smile. They’ve never gotten along. Claire has to schedule them on opposite shifts.
Lucile: “At the bar?”
Annette: “Yeah. They’re waiting for me around the corner. Wanna come, mom?”
Claire has always imagined that they’re each jealous of the other.
Last to come is Hera. She bends over outside the door, hand to her chest. Her face is flushed. She ran from the subway stop to be close to on time. She comes in, locking the door behind her.
Claire waits in her chair for everyone to get a coffee and settle in. They make small talk. Hera and Danielle trade jokes. Camille slides in beside Annette, tries to chat her up. Lucile talks to Zoe about the cats out back. Claire looks from face to face. She doesn’t know if they’ve ever all been in one room.
K sits down at her right, pulling his chair awkwardly in, bumping the table with his knees. He looks down at the two notebooks she’s produced from her purse. He moves the grab one. Claire smacks his hand.
Claire opens the blank notebook to the first page. Places a pen beside it. She clears her throat. Stands up. “Ok. Let’s get started. I’m sure we all want to get home sometime tonight.”
Nervous laughter.
Her whole life, she’d never been much of a public speaker. She can talk to any one, one to one, customers, boys, anyone, but get up to make a speech and her throat starts to close in around her words.
She opens her mouth expecting no sound. She knows the facts that matter. “I don’t want this store to close. I’m sure that we all feel the same. But, we all know Ulysses hasn’t been doing as well lately.”
She is interrupted by a loud rap on the door. Without looking, Danielle, her arm hanging callously over the back of her chair, yells loudly: “We’re closed.”
But, K is out of his chair (making a loud scraping sound that causes Zoe to cover her ears in annoyance) and unlocking the door. G.T. comes in, sits at one of the tables against the windows.
Claire: “Do you want to join us?”
G.T. waves his hand as if to bat the idea away. “Ah, no. I’m not a voting member.” He gives her a reassuring smile.
Claire’s mind flits back to Saturday morning. She composes herself once more. Deep breath. “Ok. Like I was saying…” Her talk goes well. Well enough. She knew everyone wouldn’t be on board for all the changes right away. But, it’s a place to start, at least.
At the end, she asks for any last suggestions. Hera’s hand shoots up. Camille laughs.
Danielle: “You don’t have to raise your hand, dear.”
Hera drops her arm. “It’s just that I have a pretty good idea. You didn’t like it before, Claire. But, I really think it’ll help.” She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a folded photocopied flyer. She flattens it quickly on the table. “Seriously, everyone, two words: Café Olympics.”
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Fair Verona
Fair Verona – Dan Mangan (listen in new tab)
Monday morning and the neighbourhood library branch is a slow crawl. The usuals are less frequent now that the weather’s nice. Though, by summer the heat will bake the city and drive them back. Outside the glass doors, Toronto grinds forward into the week, like always.
Ten o'clock. The library is all but empty. K and a co-op student from the Western’s Librarian program, Leslie (who thinks she knows everything, has boundless energy, and makes a lot less money doing K’s job) are the only staff on duty.
Leslie is done in a few weeks. K doesn’t hate her, but he will be happy to see her alacrity back on the streets of Ontario’s flimflam London. The boss, Eleanor, the “lets shake things up around here” replacement, is at a community outreach meeting. K doesn’t remember where or with whom. There will be a memo, assuredly.
Leslie completes some busy work on a promotional display about gardening. She wanders over to the reference desk, where K stands looking at his hands, palms up, fingers spread on the counter. He doesn’t know how long he’s been doing this.
Leslie: “Did someone ask about palmistry?”
K furrows his brow in soft mockery, but doesn’t look up. “No one’s here.”
Leslie: “I can see that. I was just… well. Nevermind. Do you know anything about palm reading?”
K: “Not a bit. I was just seeing if anything has changed.”
Leslie: “And?”
K thinks for a moment. He wishes he’d kept better track, maybe made a photocopy for future comparison. “I’m not sure I’d be able to tell.”
Leslie sticks her left hand under his face. “This is my life line. And this is my love line. And this is the number of kids I’ll have.” She traces along her palm with her index finger, pausing briefly at each landmark.
K: “Where did you learn that?”
Leslie: “Some woman in Grand Bend read my future once.”
K looks from her hands back to his, squinting, trying to drag an image from his memory: “And?”
Leslie shrugs. “She said it’d be a mixed bag.”
K: “A conservative gamble.” And why not, he thinks. Who’s got anything figured out? Three days ago, he felt like he was running smooth. But, it was a long weekend.
Leslie turns as the door opens. An older woman with a cane walks in. She smiles at Leslie and wanders into the fiction stacks. Seeing an opportunity to do some good, Leslie pushes off the counter and heads after her.
A few moments later, K hears her say: “Can I help you?” He can’t make out the reply.
He leans on his elbows. He doesn’t want to be here today. He wishes he could go see Maura. He’s desperate to speak to her again. But, she made it clear she needed a couple days’ space. She will call him. He must hold his imperturbation.
He showed up at her place Saturday morning. He was nursing a hangover, and found her wracked by a worse one. He started to make her breakfast. At first, she sat silently, head down, turning a cup of coffee in her hands. He started to tell her about the party. After all, he had shown up with more than one story he wanted to tell. Her absence from his last few days needed correcting through exposition.
His back was turned when she started. It was quiet, a shaky preamble. As she spoke, she gradually got louder. It took K a few moments to realize that she wasn’t going to wait for him to stop talking. Her words plowed through his chain of thought, a rogue wave of regret, fear, and uncertainty he didn’t know she possessed.
He turned around. She told him everything about the island and Edmund. What she remembered about the bodies. The years of wandering and nightmares. As she spoke, she looked straight through him, the cabinets, the wall, the city. Straight out, ignoring the curve of the planet. Out into space. And when she was done, she cried.
Maura felt beyond him, and K was at a loss.
He didn’t know much about real tragedies, only the minor sins and infelicities that had typified his life. Well mostly. He felt like maybe he has at worst one life’s blood on his hands. He was an accessory… involved by tacit collusion.
The thought made him drag Maura up into his arms. She sobbed into his shoulders. He held her to him. His hand on the back of her head. His fingers dove under her black hair.
Then she pushed herself away. She said quiet thanks and kissed him on the lips. “You should go, ok? I just need a few days. I’ll call you.”
She looks in him eyes through her smudged glasses, slightly askew from being pressed into him. “Ok. Call, ok?”, he said. She smiled weakly. He found it almost impossible to force himself out the door, but eventually he left her with the half cooked breakfast.
He didn't realize at first that he was waiting by the phone. Saturday afternoon, G.T. called. He went on about Claire. It sounded like he was finally going to break up with Brae. Later, K’s parents called. He listened absently about the garden, and the city ripping them off over garbage removal. His baby nephew was sick, but is better now. Reminders to make calls to grandparents.
That night, he sat on the couch and drank ginger tea as he watched old movies on TVO. In one, two now-dead stars tried to fall in love again. K regretted that he hadn’t told Maura that Shannon had come to see him. Instead he’d been forced him to file it under “Some Other Time, if Maybe it Matters." The idea seemed complicated, and he wanted to keep things simple.
Sunday, was indolent and overwrought. His feet up on the couch, he tried to parse everything. This new Maura. Shannon. Claire and the threat to Ulysses. He read. Watched old TV shows on DVD. Went for a walk. Ordered Thai food. No one called.
And now he stands in the library, studying his hands when Leslie comes back.
K: “What did she want?”
Leslie: “Books where cats are the detectives. People are weird.”
K examines his palms one last time, before shoving them in his pocket: “I suppose our lives don’t bear much scrutiny.”
Leslie scratches her forehead. “Ummm. I just meant that…”
K: “It’s ok. You don’t really get used to the stuff that people bring up around here.”
Monday morning and the neighbourhood library branch is a slow crawl. The usuals are less frequent now that the weather’s nice. Though, by summer the heat will bake the city and drive them back. Outside the glass doors, Toronto grinds forward into the week, like always.
Ten o'clock. The library is all but empty. K and a co-op student from the Western’s Librarian program, Leslie (who thinks she knows everything, has boundless energy, and makes a lot less money doing K’s job) are the only staff on duty.
Leslie is done in a few weeks. K doesn’t hate her, but he will be happy to see her alacrity back on the streets of Ontario’s flimflam London. The boss, Eleanor, the “lets shake things up around here” replacement, is at a community outreach meeting. K doesn’t remember where or with whom. There will be a memo, assuredly.
Leslie completes some busy work on a promotional display about gardening. She wanders over to the reference desk, where K stands looking at his hands, palms up, fingers spread on the counter. He doesn’t know how long he’s been doing this.
Leslie: “Did someone ask about palmistry?”
K furrows his brow in soft mockery, but doesn’t look up. “No one’s here.”
Leslie: “I can see that. I was just… well. Nevermind. Do you know anything about palm reading?”
K: “Not a bit. I was just seeing if anything has changed.”
Leslie: “And?”
K thinks for a moment. He wishes he’d kept better track, maybe made a photocopy for future comparison. “I’m not sure I’d be able to tell.”
Leslie sticks her left hand under his face. “This is my life line. And this is my love line. And this is the number of kids I’ll have.” She traces along her palm with her index finger, pausing briefly at each landmark.
K: “Where did you learn that?”
Leslie: “Some woman in Grand Bend read my future once.”
K looks from her hands back to his, squinting, trying to drag an image from his memory: “And?”
Leslie shrugs. “She said it’d be a mixed bag.”
K: “A conservative gamble.” And why not, he thinks. Who’s got anything figured out? Three days ago, he felt like he was running smooth. But, it was a long weekend.
Leslie turns as the door opens. An older woman with a cane walks in. She smiles at Leslie and wanders into the fiction stacks. Seeing an opportunity to do some good, Leslie pushes off the counter and heads after her.
A few moments later, K hears her say: “Can I help you?” He can’t make out the reply.
He leans on his elbows. He doesn’t want to be here today. He wishes he could go see Maura. He’s desperate to speak to her again. But, she made it clear she needed a couple days’ space. She will call him. He must hold his imperturbation.
He showed up at her place Saturday morning. He was nursing a hangover, and found her wracked by a worse one. He started to make her breakfast. At first, she sat silently, head down, turning a cup of coffee in her hands. He started to tell her about the party. After all, he had shown up with more than one story he wanted to tell. Her absence from his last few days needed correcting through exposition.
His back was turned when she started. It was quiet, a shaky preamble. As she spoke, she gradually got louder. It took K a few moments to realize that she wasn’t going to wait for him to stop talking. Her words plowed through his chain of thought, a rogue wave of regret, fear, and uncertainty he didn’t know she possessed.
He turned around. She told him everything about the island and Edmund. What she remembered about the bodies. The years of wandering and nightmares. As she spoke, she looked straight through him, the cabinets, the wall, the city. Straight out, ignoring the curve of the planet. Out into space. And when she was done, she cried.
Maura felt beyond him, and K was at a loss.
He didn’t know much about real tragedies, only the minor sins and infelicities that had typified his life. Well mostly. He felt like maybe he has at worst one life’s blood on his hands. He was an accessory… involved by tacit collusion.
The thought made him drag Maura up into his arms. She sobbed into his shoulders. He held her to him. His hand on the back of her head. His fingers dove under her black hair.
Then she pushed herself away. She said quiet thanks and kissed him on the lips. “You should go, ok? I just need a few days. I’ll call you.”
She looks in him eyes through her smudged glasses, slightly askew from being pressed into him. “Ok. Call, ok?”, he said. She smiled weakly. He found it almost impossible to force himself out the door, but eventually he left her with the half cooked breakfast.
He didn't realize at first that he was waiting by the phone. Saturday afternoon, G.T. called. He went on about Claire. It sounded like he was finally going to break up with Brae. Later, K’s parents called. He listened absently about the garden, and the city ripping them off over garbage removal. His baby nephew was sick, but is better now. Reminders to make calls to grandparents.
That night, he sat on the couch and drank ginger tea as he watched old movies on TVO. In one, two now-dead stars tried to fall in love again. K regretted that he hadn’t told Maura that Shannon had come to see him. Instead he’d been forced him to file it under “Some Other Time, if Maybe it Matters." The idea seemed complicated, and he wanted to keep things simple.
Sunday, was indolent and overwrought. His feet up on the couch, he tried to parse everything. This new Maura. Shannon. Claire and the threat to Ulysses. He read. Watched old TV shows on DVD. Went for a walk. Ordered Thai food. No one called.
And now he stands in the library, studying his hands when Leslie comes back.
K: “What did she want?”
Leslie: “Books where cats are the detectives. People are weird.”
K examines his palms one last time, before shoving them in his pocket: “I suppose our lives don’t bear much scrutiny.”
Leslie scratches her forehead. “Ummm. I just meant that…”
K: “It’s ok. You don’t really get used to the stuff that people bring up around here.”
Monday, April 19, 2010
On Directing
On Directing – Tegan & Sara (listen in new tab)
Her feet drive hard into the sidewalk and spring her away from the earth with each stride. She imagines herself making small craters in the concrete. She’s found her pace as her skin begins to glaze with sweat; her shirt and running shorts cling to her skin, damp with the early morning spring air.
She breathes out. In. Her lungs fill with cool wet air from last night’s rain. Her mouth forms the words: “I don’t know what I’m doing.” They sound thin, harsh with exertion. The sentence collapses. Each word collides into the other, a Doppler pile-up against her lips, before they slide across her reddened, runner’s blushed cheeks. They curve and roll over the headphones stuck to her ear by sweat. Then they are lost in the vortexes created by her bobbing pony tail.
Shannon started running after she moved in with her parents. The doctor told her the exercise would help. Give her something to focus on, something to pull her out of her head. Before the abortion, she’d been a creature of infinite terrifying density, and after too. But now, right now, she feels like she can shake that off each time she bites hard on the cliché: harder, faster, push yourself. She wants to be a current, an article of flow and flux.
Today will be a long run. She’s training for the coming gauntlet of charity 10k races. Maybe a 20k later in the summer.
Really: she has a lot to purge from her mind. Each stride, each cycle of breath, her mind spins. She wants to lose herself in her repetitious body, but it’s too early in her run for that.
Later. Don’t think about it.
She counts footsteps out loud, repeats mantras, encouragements. But between each assertion of not thinking about it, her thoughts wedge in.
Why see K now? What did you expect?
She wanted to see him the moment Claire told her about K and Maura being together. Claire had waited a long time to say anything about it. She is a good friend that way. How is her store doing? Shannon hasn’t been since Claire bought it.
She turns a corner, heads through an empty suburban park. No one is out this early on a Saturday. The isolation helps.
Over the last few days she dissected her visit with K. Everything he said about his life, the library, Ulysses’s. The sparse way he discussed Maura. His body language as he listened to Shannon’s account of slow improvements. The old jokes. The new ones.
He’s the same; the same scattered goofball, holding onto a few too many threads. The same irresistible way he makes connections between everything.
It doesn’t matter. She can’t interpret any one thing’s importance.
Except: as he walked her back to the subway they held hands (for like 45 seconds). Unconscious habit? Where does that come from? When he realized, he let go and apologized, scratching absently at the back of his head (as he always does). She liked the shaky familiarity of having K near her - of the casual firmness of his hand holding hers, their fingers knitted. Even for those brief moments.
The intimacy is a tempting, well-tread path, now neglected and overgrown with peregrine change. He said to call him sometime. She wants to and doesn't want to. She utters a curse on the static pull of this indecisiveness.
She passes a faded plastic and metal play structure that sits where the park path forks (or reconnects). She's happy she doesn't have to make a decision right now.
Her feet drive hard into the sidewalk and spring her away from the earth with each stride. She imagines herself making small craters in the concrete. She’s found her pace as her skin begins to glaze with sweat; her shirt and running shorts cling to her skin, damp with the early morning spring air.
She breathes out. In. Her lungs fill with cool wet air from last night’s rain. Her mouth forms the words: “I don’t know what I’m doing.” They sound thin, harsh with exertion. The sentence collapses. Each word collides into the other, a Doppler pile-up against her lips, before they slide across her reddened, runner’s blushed cheeks. They curve and roll over the headphones stuck to her ear by sweat. Then they are lost in the vortexes created by her bobbing pony tail.
Shannon started running after she moved in with her parents. The doctor told her the exercise would help. Give her something to focus on, something to pull her out of her head. Before the abortion, she’d been a creature of infinite terrifying density, and after too. But now, right now, she feels like she can shake that off each time she bites hard on the cliché: harder, faster, push yourself. She wants to be a current, an article of flow and flux.
Today will be a long run. She’s training for the coming gauntlet of charity 10k races. Maybe a 20k later in the summer.
Really: she has a lot to purge from her mind. Each stride, each cycle of breath, her mind spins. She wants to lose herself in her repetitious body, but it’s too early in her run for that.
Later. Don’t think about it.
She counts footsteps out loud, repeats mantras, encouragements. But between each assertion of not thinking about it, her thoughts wedge in.
Why see K now? What did you expect?
She wanted to see him the moment Claire told her about K and Maura being together. Claire had waited a long time to say anything about it. She is a good friend that way. How is her store doing? Shannon hasn’t been since Claire bought it.
She turns a corner, heads through an empty suburban park. No one is out this early on a Saturday. The isolation helps.
Over the last few days she dissected her visit with K. Everything he said about his life, the library, Ulysses’s. The sparse way he discussed Maura. His body language as he listened to Shannon’s account of slow improvements. The old jokes. The new ones.
He’s the same; the same scattered goofball, holding onto a few too many threads. The same irresistible way he makes connections between everything.
It doesn’t matter. She can’t interpret any one thing’s importance.
Except: as he walked her back to the subway they held hands (for like 45 seconds). Unconscious habit? Where does that come from? When he realized, he let go and apologized, scratching absently at the back of his head (as he always does). She liked the shaky familiarity of having K near her - of the casual firmness of his hand holding hers, their fingers knitted. Even for those brief moments.
The intimacy is a tempting, well-tread path, now neglected and overgrown with peregrine change. He said to call him sometime. She wants to and doesn't want to. She utters a curse on the static pull of this indecisiveness.
She passes a faded plastic and metal play structure that sits where the park path forks (or reconnects). She's happy she doesn't have to make a decision right now.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Hello It’s Me
Hello It’s Me – Todd Rundgren (listen in new tab)
The old clock radio crackles alive, doing its best to make its low, muffled and dispersed noise, drawing in the weak, aging oscillations of the AM band.
It’s a familiar and lonely sound. Like visits to old age homes; music sitting almost quiet, almost in stillness. Songs we all know the words to, but would never ask to hear. Like memories we wish we could shoot into space, but instead they just bounce around the stratosphere of our brains.
Maura’s mouth is pasty, dry. Her nose is crusted, smells faintly of vomit. Her stomach is scratched bare, suddenly cavernous and empty. She puts a hand to her forehead, finding that her arm is surprisingly weak and that her forehead throbs ungratefully when she touches it.
The world is blurry. She fumbles for her glasses, finding them with relief in one of their three usual spots. She looks at the dusty, browned garage sale clock radio, slapping uselessly at it to turn it off. The button appears to be jammed. “Stupid thing.” She regrets the one dollar she’d paid for it.
It’s 8:30, Saturday. The drapes are closed. A crack of sun sneaks in, making a line across the floor. Over the bed and her almost naked body, before disappearing in shadows. She must have slept over the covers.
She tries not to smell her own breath. The taste of stale rye and sick mix uncomfortably. She wonders what she had been thinking. Maybe she hoped she’d wake up with more resolve, a sense of strength. But, really she just wanted to sleep. She wanted to sleep so soundly and securely, so surely cupped in the cold hands of dreamlessness.
But her dreams were warm with hurt and too familiar. Three days since she realized Edmund was in Toronto. Two restless nights during which she tortured herself and twisted the knife further for doing this to herself. The third night she flattened herself with whiskey.
Brae watched her get drunk, offered her consolation. But Maura couldn’t tell her everything. She wanted to. But the words still choked in her throat and cruelly pooled in her mind at night.
And like the last two nights, she dreamt (Are they dreams if they happened?) about a pacific island.
She was fresh out of school, then. The O’Baird family was a legacy of seafarers and travelers that fueled her blood. She wanted an adventure.
At 22, she signed on with a company that worked with indigenous peoples in those places the multinational companies caress with their wet mouths and sharp claws. She was sent to some far flung island to help people fight forced relocation by oil companies.
Exotic locales, peoples in need, the endless battle of the righteous. It was eye-opening.
And then she fell in love. Mr. Edmund Gloucester walked up to her, unstrugglingly handsome in the tropical heat. But even then his eyes were clouds, behind which a hotter sun burned. They met in a bar on a beach, one of those shacks that leaned against the forest, your feet sinking into alabaster sand as you got drunk.
Two months on the island and she was swept away by him. One day after a few weeks, he stopped her on the road, made her come back to his hotel room and he confessed his heart. He worked for one of the oil concerns, Agravaine International, and he was risking his job by seeing her. She realized she was, too.
When she kissed him, pressing her body up against his, it didn’t matter. They were on fire for each other. They were in love. It was bigger than everything. It didn’t matter.
But, it did. Soon, she was spending less time on the job, less time paying attention to the white men and their translators sent by the oil men.
And then Edmund suggested they head to Sydney for a weekend. He had the time off and would foot the bill if she couldn’t afford it (she couldn’t, not on her pitiful martyrs salary). Her colleagues were off island to help coordinate a different project, and she hadn’t left the island in four months. She went. He proposed to her in the nicest restaurant she’d ever seen. The ring slid on with casual care. It fit snug with somnolescent weight.
Years later, she still isn’t sure that Edmund wasn’t in love with her. Maybe Agravaine played him, too. It’s irrelevant now, indistinguishable from the fact that while she was in Sydney (on a trip that was unblinkingly extended three days), the oil company undid all the work she and her colleagues had done.
When she got back. They were loading people on busses. Bull-dozers were standing ready. Some of the community elders stood their ground with their wives and children. They were unprepared to leave. As the buses rocked and rumbled away, these people stood, staring down tractors and armed men.
Maura stood helplessly with her colleagues, cordoned by angry company men with rifles. It looked like it would stay static and angry forever, but there was a scuffle and a young man from the village grabbed a gun and fired. The bullet bounced harmlessly off a bulldozer’s blade, disappearing in a puff of sand.
It was a cue. The men with guns fired back. Thus, their problem with the locals was solved. The village had been there for over a hundred years, maybe more. And it was gone in a little under an hour.
That night she went to see Edmund. He said he didn’t know anything about it. Maura’s mind was torn with rage. She couldn’t hear him, his eyes and his words didn’t match. She threw his ring at him hoping the diamond would gouge a hole through him. Instead, it bounced off his shirt, landing heavy and small on the floor.
Then she quit the aid agency and went to teach English in Taiwan and then Africa. The faces of the dead villagers followed her night and day and then stopped once they felt satisfied with the weight of her guilt. It took three years. The next week she moved back to Toronto.
In three days, Edmund had unraveled everything she tried to put back together.
She listens, prostrate in bed, to the song the radio offers. It is an old jukebox favourite of Edmund's. They slow danced to it once. She quickly puts that aside.
There is a familiar knock on her door. She knows it’s K.
The old clock radio crackles alive, doing its best to make its low, muffled and dispersed noise, drawing in the weak, aging oscillations of the AM band.
It’s a familiar and lonely sound. Like visits to old age homes; music sitting almost quiet, almost in stillness. Songs we all know the words to, but would never ask to hear. Like memories we wish we could shoot into space, but instead they just bounce around the stratosphere of our brains.
Maura’s mouth is pasty, dry. Her nose is crusted, smells faintly of vomit. Her stomach is scratched bare, suddenly cavernous and empty. She puts a hand to her forehead, finding that her arm is surprisingly weak and that her forehead throbs ungratefully when she touches it.
The world is blurry. She fumbles for her glasses, finding them with relief in one of their three usual spots. She looks at the dusty, browned garage sale clock radio, slapping uselessly at it to turn it off. The button appears to be jammed. “Stupid thing.” She regrets the one dollar she’d paid for it.
It’s 8:30, Saturday. The drapes are closed. A crack of sun sneaks in, making a line across the floor. Over the bed and her almost naked body, before disappearing in shadows. She must have slept over the covers.
She tries not to smell her own breath. The taste of stale rye and sick mix uncomfortably. She wonders what she had been thinking. Maybe she hoped she’d wake up with more resolve, a sense of strength. But, really she just wanted to sleep. She wanted to sleep so soundly and securely, so surely cupped in the cold hands of dreamlessness.
But her dreams were warm with hurt and too familiar. Three days since she realized Edmund was in Toronto. Two restless nights during which she tortured herself and twisted the knife further for doing this to herself. The third night she flattened herself with whiskey.
Brae watched her get drunk, offered her consolation. But Maura couldn’t tell her everything. She wanted to. But the words still choked in her throat and cruelly pooled in her mind at night.
And like the last two nights, she dreamt (Are they dreams if they happened?) about a pacific island.
She was fresh out of school, then. The O’Baird family was a legacy of seafarers and travelers that fueled her blood. She wanted an adventure.
At 22, she signed on with a company that worked with indigenous peoples in those places the multinational companies caress with their wet mouths and sharp claws. She was sent to some far flung island to help people fight forced relocation by oil companies.
Exotic locales, peoples in need, the endless battle of the righteous. It was eye-opening.
And then she fell in love. Mr. Edmund Gloucester walked up to her, unstrugglingly handsome in the tropical heat. But even then his eyes were clouds, behind which a hotter sun burned. They met in a bar on a beach, one of those shacks that leaned against the forest, your feet sinking into alabaster sand as you got drunk.
Two months on the island and she was swept away by him. One day after a few weeks, he stopped her on the road, made her come back to his hotel room and he confessed his heart. He worked for one of the oil concerns, Agravaine International, and he was risking his job by seeing her. She realized she was, too.
When she kissed him, pressing her body up against his, it didn’t matter. They were on fire for each other. They were in love. It was bigger than everything. It didn’t matter.
But, it did. Soon, she was spending less time on the job, less time paying attention to the white men and their translators sent by the oil men.
And then Edmund suggested they head to Sydney for a weekend. He had the time off and would foot the bill if she couldn’t afford it (she couldn’t, not on her pitiful martyrs salary). Her colleagues were off island to help coordinate a different project, and she hadn’t left the island in four months. She went. He proposed to her in the nicest restaurant she’d ever seen. The ring slid on with casual care. It fit snug with somnolescent weight.
Years later, she still isn’t sure that Edmund wasn’t in love with her. Maybe Agravaine played him, too. It’s irrelevant now, indistinguishable from the fact that while she was in Sydney (on a trip that was unblinkingly extended three days), the oil company undid all the work she and her colleagues had done.
When she got back. They were loading people on busses. Bull-dozers were standing ready. Some of the community elders stood their ground with their wives and children. They were unprepared to leave. As the buses rocked and rumbled away, these people stood, staring down tractors and armed men.
Maura stood helplessly with her colleagues, cordoned by angry company men with rifles. It looked like it would stay static and angry forever, but there was a scuffle and a young man from the village grabbed a gun and fired. The bullet bounced harmlessly off a bulldozer’s blade, disappearing in a puff of sand.
It was a cue. The men with guns fired back. Thus, their problem with the locals was solved. The village had been there for over a hundred years, maybe more. And it was gone in a little under an hour.
That night she went to see Edmund. He said he didn’t know anything about it. Maura’s mind was torn with rage. She couldn’t hear him, his eyes and his words didn’t match. She threw his ring at him hoping the diamond would gouge a hole through him. Instead, it bounced off his shirt, landing heavy and small on the floor.
Then she quit the aid agency and went to teach English in Taiwan and then Africa. The faces of the dead villagers followed her night and day and then stopped once they felt satisfied with the weight of her guilt. It took three years. The next week she moved back to Toronto.
In three days, Edmund had unraveled everything she tried to put back together.
She listens, prostrate in bed, to the song the radio offers. It is an old jukebox favourite of Edmund's. They slow danced to it once. She quickly puts that aside.
There is a familiar knock on her door. She knows it’s K.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Lua
Lua – Conor Oberst + Gillian Welsh [listen in new tab]
Claire is dreaming. She always dreams about things cobbled and chipped from the confusing, ossified flow of her past. Not like K, who has complicated messianic-conspiracy dreams, or G.T., who says lately he only dreams of airport washrooms he can’t escape.
This time, she’s eight or nine, sitting in the new seats of a summer night’s SkyDome. Claire had never been anywhere so big. There was nothing like it in Cobalt, up north. Her class had won an essay contest and the province paid for their trip and seats at the gluttonous Stadium’s grand opening.
No one on the rattling school bus believed Claire that it was her first trip ever to Toronto.
In her dream, she remembers walking around putting her hand on the concrete and limestone buildings. The city whirred and roared. People bumped her slender pre-adolescent frame around as she tried to look into all the windows. She fell in love with the city that June weekend and spent the rest of her adolescence trying to get back there.
And then she dreams about the Fisher King. The empty bar. It was late. K and Shannon were getting up to leave. G.T. leans back slackly, watches his friend and his new girl make an excuse to go home together. Claire and G.T. had argued all night. Their transcript rattles off pointless, sharp disagreements.
G.T.’s a good guy, despite how much he irritates her, and walks her home. She talks endlessly on the way about how she wants a stake in the city’s life, not just wage-slave her heart away. He listens politely, talks about how he hates the endless drag of the 9-to-5. Claire doesn’t remember what he did to make her pull him in and up to her apartment.
She wishes she could remember. She’d ask him to do it again. All the other time after that were about getting him to do whatever it was again.
When she wakes up she is happy to find herself in her bed, caught comfortably under the weight of the duvet. Through her closed eyes, she can tell the sun is up. Light bleeds through her eyelids, making slow congealing constellations.
Her legs move easily under the cover, and she realizes that Sbeckett didn’t sleep-in with her. She keeps her eyes closed. She wants to be in the dark for a little longer, but her other senses are awake – she smells waffles and hears the low wave of music from the kitchen.
She feels Sbeckett jump onto the mattress, moving with slow paws along the duvet, coming up to poke his flat, brown and grey face close to hers. She feels his small breaths on her cheek. After a moment she opens her eyes. The edges of the cat’s head are aurulent white in the sun.
Claire reaches out with her hand and rubs the cat’s forehead apologetically. “I know. I just woke up. You’ve been up forever, I bet.”
The door creaks. Sbeckett shrugs himself up on all four and jumps down from the mattress. She lifts her head up a little. G.T. leans against the door frame, wearing a white undershirt and yesterday’s rumpled slacks. His belt is undone. The hanging buckle reflects an unsteady shard of sun into her eyes.
“Are you hung-over, Claire?”
Claire rubs her temples lightly. “No. I’m fine. Are you making breakfast?”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“Gregory, how’s your eye?”
He touches the side of his face, tapping the edge of the tender purple bruise wrapped around his left eye. “Fine. Sore. Honestly, I can’t believe you were on a date with a guy who has hired goons.”
Claire: “Well, it’s not like I went home with him.”
G.T. knocks lightly on the door. “No. I suppose not.” Despite the bruise, the night’s drama has washed off him. “Anyways, if you’re hungry, I’ve made waffles.”
“Yeah. That sounds good.” She looks at her faded, digital alarm clock. “I gotta get to the café soon, anyways.”
“You know that if you had a straight job, you wouldn’t have to work on Saturdays.” He laughs a small laugh, shrugs himself off the doorframe and heads back towards the kitchen.
Claire slides out of bed. She’s naked and glows for a moment in the morning sun before she slides into her bathrobe and knots the terrycloth belt around her. Sbeckett reappears and mews plaintively. She reaches down, picks him up, holds his warm squirming body to her chest. “I know, I know. He feeds me, but never you. How will you survive?”
Last night was a fine enough mess. But, it doesn’t matter that G.T. ended up fighting her date, or that G.T. isn’t much of a fighter, or that Edmund’s friends stepped in. Dates go poorly sometimes. The dust settles.
K had gone to a store to get some ice, and G.T sat beside her on the curb explaining everything. At first she thought it was a drunken, jealous rage. But it wasn’t that or just that.
It boiled down to this: G.T. ran into a junior partner from Percy, Bors, and Galahad. He said that Edmund’s company was a big new client and that Edmund was buying up or trying to buy properties in some “hipster neighbourhood” to “turn them around.”
The partner listed a few streets as an example, his voice dripping with casual disdain. “Like Ithica St. Not much there but some oddball stores and a couple desperate coffee shops. Have you ever been to Ulysses? Exactly like that place. Desperate. Off brand. Edmund’s on track to own all of it in a year. Then he’ll knock it all down. He’s a killer. Lines them up - knocks them down”
G.T. confronted Edmund, asked him basically what the hell he was doing. Edmund pushed. G.T. pushed back and was about to punch when some bigger guy caught him across the side of his face. G.T. fell back. K pulled him out the door. Claire followed them. Old ties beat new guys, as she says sometimes.
As G.T. told her all this, it felt like when she was sitting in those uncomfortable plastic seats in the SkyDome or riding a subway for the first time or standing in front of the Sam’s Record Store lights, just like on the Degrassi High.
She’d been drifting a little. Now she wasn’t. She wants to save her store.
Sitting in her little kitchen, at a table she’d rightly placed by the bay window, G.T. gives her a small stack of waffles. The chipped plate makes a small clink as he puts it down.
She pours out some of the maple syrup her mom sometimes mails to her in brown paper wrapped care packages. It’s the good stuff from the guy out on Telemachus Road.
As she cut in to her breakfast, she watches G.T. He is looking out the window, his roughed up eye squinting in the light. “How come you never took on the other guys?”
“Like Who?” He reaches across the table for the syrup and begins carefully filling each of the little indents in his waffles.
“Like Desmond. He was a total douche to me?”
“Johnny Dreads? That loser hippy wasn’t worth my time. And besides, Edmund pushed me first.” He taps his swollen left eye. “This is from one of his goons.”
“I don’t think he really has goons.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It was a lame party. There were a couple partners from my work there. I’m sure I’m gonna have to tell a story on Monday. Hell, maybe they’ll fire me.” He cuts a corner off and puts it in his mouth. “That’s fine by me.”
“Well. Thanks.”
Later, as G.T. is leaving he stops in the door way, sticks his foot out to block Sbeckett as he tries to make a run down the stairwell.
He reaches out and puts his hand on the side of Claire’s arm. “Johnny Dreads was an idiot. Edmund knew he’d hurt you the whole time.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Call me later?”
“I will.”
As he bounds down the stairs, she doesn’t realize her hand has found where his had been on her arm. She stands like that at the top of her stairs, even after G.T. has closed the door and gone. After a while, her cat wanders up beside her, curling his tail around her bare leg.
“Sbeckett, I had a really weird night last night.”
Claire is dreaming. She always dreams about things cobbled and chipped from the confusing, ossified flow of her past. Not like K, who has complicated messianic-conspiracy dreams, or G.T., who says lately he only dreams of airport washrooms he can’t escape.
This time, she’s eight or nine, sitting in the new seats of a summer night’s SkyDome. Claire had never been anywhere so big. There was nothing like it in Cobalt, up north. Her class had won an essay contest and the province paid for their trip and seats at the gluttonous Stadium’s grand opening.
No one on the rattling school bus believed Claire that it was her first trip ever to Toronto.
In her dream, she remembers walking around putting her hand on the concrete and limestone buildings. The city whirred and roared. People bumped her slender pre-adolescent frame around as she tried to look into all the windows. She fell in love with the city that June weekend and spent the rest of her adolescence trying to get back there.
And then she dreams about the Fisher King. The empty bar. It was late. K and Shannon were getting up to leave. G.T. leans back slackly, watches his friend and his new girl make an excuse to go home together. Claire and G.T. had argued all night. Their transcript rattles off pointless, sharp disagreements.
G.T.’s a good guy, despite how much he irritates her, and walks her home. She talks endlessly on the way about how she wants a stake in the city’s life, not just wage-slave her heart away. He listens politely, talks about how he hates the endless drag of the 9-to-5. Claire doesn’t remember what he did to make her pull him in and up to her apartment.
She wishes she could remember. She’d ask him to do it again. All the other time after that were about getting him to do whatever it was again.
When she wakes up she is happy to find herself in her bed, caught comfortably under the weight of the duvet. Through her closed eyes, she can tell the sun is up. Light bleeds through her eyelids, making slow congealing constellations.
Her legs move easily under the cover, and she realizes that Sbeckett didn’t sleep-in with her. She keeps her eyes closed. She wants to be in the dark for a little longer, but her other senses are awake – she smells waffles and hears the low wave of music from the kitchen.
She feels Sbeckett jump onto the mattress, moving with slow paws along the duvet, coming up to poke his flat, brown and grey face close to hers. She feels his small breaths on her cheek. After a moment she opens her eyes. The edges of the cat’s head are aurulent white in the sun.
Claire reaches out with her hand and rubs the cat’s forehead apologetically. “I know. I just woke up. You’ve been up forever, I bet.”
The door creaks. Sbeckett shrugs himself up on all four and jumps down from the mattress. She lifts her head up a little. G.T. leans against the door frame, wearing a white undershirt and yesterday’s rumpled slacks. His belt is undone. The hanging buckle reflects an unsteady shard of sun into her eyes.
“Are you hung-over, Claire?”
Claire rubs her temples lightly. “No. I’m fine. Are you making breakfast?”
“It’s the least I could do.”
“Gregory, how’s your eye?”
He touches the side of his face, tapping the edge of the tender purple bruise wrapped around his left eye. “Fine. Sore. Honestly, I can’t believe you were on a date with a guy who has hired goons.”
Claire: “Well, it’s not like I went home with him.”
G.T. knocks lightly on the door. “No. I suppose not.” Despite the bruise, the night’s drama has washed off him. “Anyways, if you’re hungry, I’ve made waffles.”
“Yeah. That sounds good.” She looks at her faded, digital alarm clock. “I gotta get to the café soon, anyways.”
“You know that if you had a straight job, you wouldn’t have to work on Saturdays.” He laughs a small laugh, shrugs himself off the doorframe and heads back towards the kitchen.
Claire slides out of bed. She’s naked and glows for a moment in the morning sun before she slides into her bathrobe and knots the terrycloth belt around her. Sbeckett reappears and mews plaintively. She reaches down, picks him up, holds his warm squirming body to her chest. “I know, I know. He feeds me, but never you. How will you survive?”
Last night was a fine enough mess. But, it doesn’t matter that G.T. ended up fighting her date, or that G.T. isn’t much of a fighter, or that Edmund’s friends stepped in. Dates go poorly sometimes. The dust settles.
K had gone to a store to get some ice, and G.T sat beside her on the curb explaining everything. At first she thought it was a drunken, jealous rage. But it wasn’t that or just that.
It boiled down to this: G.T. ran into a junior partner from Percy, Bors, and Galahad. He said that Edmund’s company was a big new client and that Edmund was buying up or trying to buy properties in some “hipster neighbourhood” to “turn them around.”
The partner listed a few streets as an example, his voice dripping with casual disdain. “Like Ithica St. Not much there but some oddball stores and a couple desperate coffee shops. Have you ever been to Ulysses? Exactly like that place. Desperate. Off brand. Edmund’s on track to own all of it in a year. Then he’ll knock it all down. He’s a killer. Lines them up - knocks them down”
G.T. confronted Edmund, asked him basically what the hell he was doing. Edmund pushed. G.T. pushed back and was about to punch when some bigger guy caught him across the side of his face. G.T. fell back. K pulled him out the door. Claire followed them. Old ties beat new guys, as she says sometimes.
As G.T. told her all this, it felt like when she was sitting in those uncomfortable plastic seats in the SkyDome or riding a subway for the first time or standing in front of the Sam’s Record Store lights, just like on the Degrassi High.
She’d been drifting a little. Now she wasn’t. She wants to save her store.
Sitting in her little kitchen, at a table she’d rightly placed by the bay window, G.T. gives her a small stack of waffles. The chipped plate makes a small clink as he puts it down.
She pours out some of the maple syrup her mom sometimes mails to her in brown paper wrapped care packages. It’s the good stuff from the guy out on Telemachus Road.
As she cut in to her breakfast, she watches G.T. He is looking out the window, his roughed up eye squinting in the light. “How come you never took on the other guys?”
“Like Who?” He reaches across the table for the syrup and begins carefully filling each of the little indents in his waffles.
“Like Desmond. He was a total douche to me?”
“Johnny Dreads? That loser hippy wasn’t worth my time. And besides, Edmund pushed me first.” He taps his swollen left eye. “This is from one of his goons.”
“I don’t think he really has goons.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It was a lame party. There were a couple partners from my work there. I’m sure I’m gonna have to tell a story on Monday. Hell, maybe they’ll fire me.” He cuts a corner off and puts it in his mouth. “That’s fine by me.”
“Well. Thanks.”
Later, as G.T. is leaving he stops in the door way, sticks his foot out to block Sbeckett as he tries to make a run down the stairwell.
He reaches out and puts his hand on the side of Claire’s arm. “Johnny Dreads was an idiot. Edmund knew he’d hurt you the whole time.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Call me later?”
“I will.”
As he bounds down the stairs, she doesn’t realize her hand has found where his had been on her arm. She stands like that at the top of her stairs, even after G.T. has closed the door and gone. After a while, her cat wanders up beside her, curling his tail around her bare leg.
“Sbeckett, I had a really weird night last night.”
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Baby Britain
Baby Britain – Elliot Smith (listen in new tab)
K sits across from G.T. on the subway. G.T. stares into space across from him. His eyes shift left-right subtly, following lazily the passing lights of the tunnel. They’re headed south, rounding the cape of Union station, on the way to King.
The rumble, the air crushed and sliding between the train and the tunnel walls. The thin metal and windows rattle loose, as if every piece of the train can’t decide if it loves or hates the piece next to it. The rivets play match maker.
K can hear the tinny hiss and whisper from the white earbuds hanging from the ears of the teenager next to him. She bobs her head slightly. Her jet black hair (dyed) falls in a 45 degree angle across her forehead. Thickly applied eyeliner makes her look sullen as she texts someone somewhere. Her thumb moves with blind practice.
K knows what song it is. Later, when they’re up on the surface, K still hums it. He do-do-do-de-doos along in his head; his hands shoved deep into his windbreaker’s pockets. The thin red nylon catches in the wind. The sky is dark on dark, lit by the city from below.
The street they’re on is almost empty, except for a few small groups of people waiting for cabs to take them to higher end clubs and slow couples walking expensive dogs with cups from expensive coffee chains.
As they walk, they talk. The bar had been too loud, and the fresh air had loosened their tongues. Maura’s been weird and distant. She didn’t return his calls today. And yesterday. And Shannon. He hadn’t expected to see her, hadn’t expected to ever have his sense of “overness” tested. And how the hell do you know that anyways? And work. Oh, and the library. His contract is almost up with no signs of renewal. And Ulysses’ and where is that headed. It is K’s litany for the night.
His friend’s response is supportive, but not clarifying. He is not pro-relationship tonight. It doesn’t help that Brae had ditched him, too. Everyone has their own problems.
Claire will help. She’s better at this sort of thing. When she’s around.
G.T. shrugs: “I dunno. I guess she’s seeing some rich guy.”
K: “Hence the party.” He points down the road to a large warehouse-cum-condo. Full of what looks like two story lofts. One corner, high up looks brighter, fuller than it’s neighbours.
G.T.: “Hence the party.”
They now walk along quietly.
Nothing in K’s mind feels discrete. Everything is cross-referenced ambivalently. A crammed drawer of ramshackle links between memories, feelings, and on-going debates.
He thinks about his first kiss with Maura, but then he thinks about his about first kiss with Shannon. The sad part about first kisses is that they are always so full of promise that subsequent hurt, lies, or whatever cannot wholly overwrite them. The memories live on, like erased pencil in the margins of old books. The dark grey smudges always outlast the words themselves.
He remembers kissing Claire once. Outside the Fisher King, while waiting for a ride. They were standing beside his Cavalier. The poor car had broken down outside the bar. When their lips met, it was awkward, dry, cut off quickly as Shannon rolled up in her parents’ car (that old grey VW).
K rode in the back. Watching Shannon’s green eyes in the rear-view mirror, he made a joke about his Cavalier giving up its ghost (happily, it would be revived the next day), and Claire laughed. Shannon suggested he get a better job so he could afford a car that worked every time. It seemed to be reasonable advice.
This was what Shannon was like back then. Everything about her when they started dating was reasonable, measured, locked down against some imagined storm always coming. His chest hurt slightly with a familiar welling disappointment that his most emotive, open time with her was after she came back from Paris.
Now he wondered about this new Shannon that had met him outside the library. He runs downs the details in his mind. She was not someone better. Maybe someone who so herself better. But, not someone he was sure he could be attracted to or not attracted to.
They went for drinks after the library. And they talked for a long time, mostly about people they knew and old times. The recent past felt like a mine field. Except, Shannon let slip that she had heard about Maura from Claire. K didn’t dodge the topic, but he was cursory, found himself scaling back his feelings.
Out of consideration for Shannon’s? He hoped.
Shannon didn’t try anything when K hugged her before she went down to the subway. Her body, her chest against his chest, his arms crossed around her, hands flat on her sides feeling the soft cotton of her hoodie. Her arms around him warm on his back. Lucently familiar and inscrutably new.
He tried to call Maura the next day. But, she apparently wasn’t taking calls.
The trees rustle in the wind. Their new leaves flittering light and dark in the street lights. K could tell they were turning over, opening their underside for what was on the rising breeze.
K: “It’s gonna rain.” He stops out side the condo. In the lights that some of the original façade had been preserved. He can barely make out the faded white paint. “O’Baird Shipping Co.?” He read it out loud without meaning to. “Is this the place?”
G.T.: “Looks hoity-toity enough.”
K: “Oh, totally.” He walks ahead, runs his fingers along the list of names in the foyer. “What’s the name we’re looking for?”
G.T.: “Gloucester. Got your gaiters on?”
K sits across from G.T. on the subway. G.T. stares into space across from him. His eyes shift left-right subtly, following lazily the passing lights of the tunnel. They’re headed south, rounding the cape of Union station, on the way to King.
The rumble, the air crushed and sliding between the train and the tunnel walls. The thin metal and windows rattle loose, as if every piece of the train can’t decide if it loves or hates the piece next to it. The rivets play match maker.
K can hear the tinny hiss and whisper from the white earbuds hanging from the ears of the teenager next to him. She bobs her head slightly. Her jet black hair (dyed) falls in a 45 degree angle across her forehead. Thickly applied eyeliner makes her look sullen as she texts someone somewhere. Her thumb moves with blind practice.
K knows what song it is. Later, when they’re up on the surface, K still hums it. He do-do-do-de-doos along in his head; his hands shoved deep into his windbreaker’s pockets. The thin red nylon catches in the wind. The sky is dark on dark, lit by the city from below.
The street they’re on is almost empty, except for a few small groups of people waiting for cabs to take them to higher end clubs and slow couples walking expensive dogs with cups from expensive coffee chains.
As they walk, they talk. The bar had been too loud, and the fresh air had loosened their tongues. Maura’s been weird and distant. She didn’t return his calls today. And yesterday. And Shannon. He hadn’t expected to see her, hadn’t expected to ever have his sense of “overness” tested. And how the hell do you know that anyways? And work. Oh, and the library. His contract is almost up with no signs of renewal. And Ulysses’ and where is that headed. It is K’s litany for the night.
His friend’s response is supportive, but not clarifying. He is not pro-relationship tonight. It doesn’t help that Brae had ditched him, too. Everyone has their own problems.
Claire will help. She’s better at this sort of thing. When she’s around.
G.T. shrugs: “I dunno. I guess she’s seeing some rich guy.”
K: “Hence the party.” He points down the road to a large warehouse-cum-condo. Full of what looks like two story lofts. One corner, high up looks brighter, fuller than it’s neighbours.
G.T.: “Hence the party.”
They now walk along quietly.
Nothing in K’s mind feels discrete. Everything is cross-referenced ambivalently. A crammed drawer of ramshackle links between memories, feelings, and on-going debates.
He thinks about his first kiss with Maura, but then he thinks about his about first kiss with Shannon. The sad part about first kisses is that they are always so full of promise that subsequent hurt, lies, or whatever cannot wholly overwrite them. The memories live on, like erased pencil in the margins of old books. The dark grey smudges always outlast the words themselves.
He remembers kissing Claire once. Outside the Fisher King, while waiting for a ride. They were standing beside his Cavalier. The poor car had broken down outside the bar. When their lips met, it was awkward, dry, cut off quickly as Shannon rolled up in her parents’ car (that old grey VW).
K rode in the back. Watching Shannon’s green eyes in the rear-view mirror, he made a joke about his Cavalier giving up its ghost (happily, it would be revived the next day), and Claire laughed. Shannon suggested he get a better job so he could afford a car that worked every time. It seemed to be reasonable advice.
This was what Shannon was like back then. Everything about her when they started dating was reasonable, measured, locked down against some imagined storm always coming. His chest hurt slightly with a familiar welling disappointment that his most emotive, open time with her was after she came back from Paris.
Now he wondered about this new Shannon that had met him outside the library. He runs downs the details in his mind. She was not someone better. Maybe someone who so herself better. But, not someone he was sure he could be attracted to or not attracted to.
They went for drinks after the library. And they talked for a long time, mostly about people they knew and old times. The recent past felt like a mine field. Except, Shannon let slip that she had heard about Maura from Claire. K didn’t dodge the topic, but he was cursory, found himself scaling back his feelings.
Out of consideration for Shannon’s? He hoped.
Shannon didn’t try anything when K hugged her before she went down to the subway. Her body, her chest against his chest, his arms crossed around her, hands flat on her sides feeling the soft cotton of her hoodie. Her arms around him warm on his back. Lucently familiar and inscrutably new.
He tried to call Maura the next day. But, she apparently wasn’t taking calls.
The trees rustle in the wind. Their new leaves flittering light and dark in the street lights. K could tell they were turning over, opening their underside for what was on the rising breeze.
K: “It’s gonna rain.” He stops out side the condo. In the lights that some of the original façade had been preserved. He can barely make out the faded white paint. “O’Baird Shipping Co.?” He read it out loud without meaning to. “Is this the place?”
G.T.: “Looks hoity-toity enough.”
K: “Oh, totally.” He walks ahead, runs his fingers along the list of names in the foyer. “What’s the name we’re looking for?”
G.T.: “Gloucester. Got your gaiters on?”
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Too Young
Too Young – Phoenix(listen in new tab)
Moments pile on. Seconds compress under the cumulative weight and ossify into minutes, days, years. Your life becomes dense with the particulate matter of time, eroding fossil memories. It is dense, but not indistinct. Some things still hold shape, so that when you look at them…
The first few bars are familiar; they clear a swath, like a hand wiped across an old pane in a dusty western. Or palms on a fogged shower door in any kind of sexier film.
K’s face is screwed up as he tries to hear over the music. “What?”
V. I. Lenin is busier now, swirls around as if he and G.T. are static, pillars in the wake.
G.T. thinks for half a second, wondering if he had said anything. He holds up his glass. It is three quarters empty. The amber fluid sloshes against the fingerprint smudged walls when he taps K’s glass. It is too loud to hear the glasses connect. Except for the settling foam and small waves there would be no proof they had touched.
This pint, the last before they leave to catch up with Claire (she had invited them to some “rich people party,” where the “liquor runneth free” – her words), had waxed G.T.’s brain, glossed it with slippery circumspection. “Nothing,” he says. “Haven’t heard this song in a while.”
K: “It was in that movie. It makes me think of Billy Murray.”
G.T.: “That’s a shame buddy. He wasn’t the high point of that film. At least, for those of us who the view the female form un but de chaque jour.” The movie, though, wasn’t what G.T. was thinking of. Not exactly.
G.T. looks at his cell phone. It’s almost 10:30. “We should go.”
K barely hears him, but he can guess. They finish their glasses, leaving them in a neat pair on a table they pass on the way out.
K taps a poster near the door. Squares, like from an old video game, form a barely discernable unicorn driving an ice cream truck for other smaller unicorns. The thick paper hangs loosely. The scotch tape that was holding the upper left corner, floats in the small drafts, weighed down by a few specks of red paint form the wall.
K: “Hey, the Pixel Kings. I thought they broke up.”
G.T. “Nah. They’re on again, off again these days.” Carefully, he grabs the loosened corner. He smoothes the paper against the wall, feeling the slight irregular textures of the acrylic inks the screen printer used. Colours in Braille.
K: “Remember when we saw them?”
G.T. “Yeah. It was the night you met Shannon.”
K reaches back and rubs the back of his head, feels his hair under his hands as he considers the facts. “Yeah, well, we didn’t “meet” meet that night.”
G.T.: “History is a complex mix of antecedents and accidents. I can understand how you’d get confused.” Besides, before it became the night K met Shannon, it was the night they met Claire.
And they are now outside. Their lungs bring in the damp, spring’s night, exhuming and casting out the silt of the bar’s air. The overcast sky, lit by the newborn weekend’s blithe city, hangs low with promises of rain.
Five years ago, it was already raining. Inside V.I.’s you could hear the pounding, thick and heavy drops obliterating themselves on the roof, adding a low syncopation to the world inside the bar.
It was the lull between bands. The music playing over the sound system, sounded smooth and clean after the fuzzed-out reverb that had driven the close of the opening band’s set.
K and G.T. stand against the back wall. They had come later than they normally would, squeezing in just before the bar reached capacity. No one was there for the opener (some trio lost to the annals of Toronto’s ambitious youth). They were all there for the Pixel Kings (on their way up, that spring – on their way down by the winter).
The only spots left were near the swag table. G.T. watched K try to give the girl selling shirts and CDs a sly look. Both he and his friend were facing a months long girl-drought, such furtive efforts had become common.
It was at that point that Claire walked by. G.T. didn’t see her at first. She was blocked by her friend (G.T. never saw again). But, K saw her for sure. G.T. watched his friend’s head turn to follow them. This meant, historically speaking, that G.T.’s first view of Claire was from behind.
During the Pixel King’s set, K and G.T. had pushed forward. They found themselves crushed in the middle of the dance floor. At some point, Claire reappeared again on her way back from the bar.
She placed a palm on G.T.’s shoulder. Her palm was warm, gentle on his shoulder. He turned to let her pass. She smiled gratefully at G.T. The band tore into a new song. She held to her chest a brace of beer bottles. Her mouths formed a “thanks” as she moved confidently and casually by, into the pumping press of fans.
She disappeared, swallowed into the crowd ahead of him. G.T. was impressed. Moving through that crowd that night was a feat of skill and determination.
They ended up at the bar together after the set. K clumsily started a conversation. They talked about the Pheonix song that was playing. And Lost in Translation. Claire said she liked it. K agreed a little too ingenuously. For some reason G.T., driven to contention by something Claire said, demurred and suggested that better songs and movies existed.
Claire smiled a gracious, cutting “whatever” and left with her drinks. Left with that breezy bounce that G.T. did not yet know was typical of her.
Later, outside, they ran into her again. The rain had stopped. The asphalt, the sidewalk, everything glistened in the street light. She was getting into a car that had just pulled up.
G.T. a little drunk and happily petulant yelled: “Hey! See any better films yet?”
K told G.T. to cool it and ran up to her. He put on his best, “my friend’s a jerk, but I’m ok” act.” The woman driving was nonplussed, annoyed at being held up. Claire, half in the car, quickly scribbled her number on a worn paper customer rewards card from a coffee shop he hadn’t heard of.
K backed away as Claire closed the door. G.T. walked up.
Through the open windows they heard the driver ask: “Who was that loser?”
Claire gave the driver’s headrest a sprightly slap. “Take it easy Shannon. We’re going.”
A small moment. As the car pulls away. Claire looks back at K. Then at G.T. , who doesn't know that look yet, somewhere between disdain and something inexorably gripping. But, he has since learned the language of her face.
Moments pile on. Seconds compress under the cumulative weight and ossify into minutes, days, years. Your life becomes dense with the particulate matter of time, eroding fossil memories. It is dense, but not indistinct. Some things still hold shape, so that when you look at them…
The first few bars are familiar; they clear a swath, like a hand wiped across an old pane in a dusty western. Or palms on a fogged shower door in any kind of sexier film.
K’s face is screwed up as he tries to hear over the music. “What?”
V. I. Lenin is busier now, swirls around as if he and G.T. are static, pillars in the wake.
G.T. thinks for half a second, wondering if he had said anything. He holds up his glass. It is three quarters empty. The amber fluid sloshes against the fingerprint smudged walls when he taps K’s glass. It is too loud to hear the glasses connect. Except for the settling foam and small waves there would be no proof they had touched.
This pint, the last before they leave to catch up with Claire (she had invited them to some “rich people party,” where the “liquor runneth free” – her words), had waxed G.T.’s brain, glossed it with slippery circumspection. “Nothing,” he says. “Haven’t heard this song in a while.”
K: “It was in that movie. It makes me think of Billy Murray.”
G.T.: “That’s a shame buddy. He wasn’t the high point of that film. At least, for those of us who the view the female form un but de chaque jour.” The movie, though, wasn’t what G.T. was thinking of. Not exactly.
G.T. looks at his cell phone. It’s almost 10:30. “We should go.”
K barely hears him, but he can guess. They finish their glasses, leaving them in a neat pair on a table they pass on the way out.
K taps a poster near the door. Squares, like from an old video game, form a barely discernable unicorn driving an ice cream truck for other smaller unicorns. The thick paper hangs loosely. The scotch tape that was holding the upper left corner, floats in the small drafts, weighed down by a few specks of red paint form the wall.
K: “Hey, the Pixel Kings. I thought they broke up.”
G.T. “Nah. They’re on again, off again these days.” Carefully, he grabs the loosened corner. He smoothes the paper against the wall, feeling the slight irregular textures of the acrylic inks the screen printer used. Colours in Braille.
K: “Remember when we saw them?”
G.T. “Yeah. It was the night you met Shannon.”
K reaches back and rubs the back of his head, feels his hair under his hands as he considers the facts. “Yeah, well, we didn’t “meet” meet that night.”
G.T.: “History is a complex mix of antecedents and accidents. I can understand how you’d get confused.” Besides, before it became the night K met Shannon, it was the night they met Claire.
And they are now outside. Their lungs bring in the damp, spring’s night, exhuming and casting out the silt of the bar’s air. The overcast sky, lit by the newborn weekend’s blithe city, hangs low with promises of rain.
Five years ago, it was already raining. Inside V.I.’s you could hear the pounding, thick and heavy drops obliterating themselves on the roof, adding a low syncopation to the world inside the bar.
It was the lull between bands. The music playing over the sound system, sounded smooth and clean after the fuzzed-out reverb that had driven the close of the opening band’s set.
K and G.T. stand against the back wall. They had come later than they normally would, squeezing in just before the bar reached capacity. No one was there for the opener (some trio lost to the annals of Toronto’s ambitious youth). They were all there for the Pixel Kings (on their way up, that spring – on their way down by the winter).
The only spots left were near the swag table. G.T. watched K try to give the girl selling shirts and CDs a sly look. Both he and his friend were facing a months long girl-drought, such furtive efforts had become common.
It was at that point that Claire walked by. G.T. didn’t see her at first. She was blocked by her friend (G.T. never saw again). But, K saw her for sure. G.T. watched his friend’s head turn to follow them. This meant, historically speaking, that G.T.’s first view of Claire was from behind.
During the Pixel King’s set, K and G.T. had pushed forward. They found themselves crushed in the middle of the dance floor. At some point, Claire reappeared again on her way back from the bar.
She placed a palm on G.T.’s shoulder. Her palm was warm, gentle on his shoulder. He turned to let her pass. She smiled gratefully at G.T. The band tore into a new song. She held to her chest a brace of beer bottles. Her mouths formed a “thanks” as she moved confidently and casually by, into the pumping press of fans.
She disappeared, swallowed into the crowd ahead of him. G.T. was impressed. Moving through that crowd that night was a feat of skill and determination.
They ended up at the bar together after the set. K clumsily started a conversation. They talked about the Pheonix song that was playing. And Lost in Translation. Claire said she liked it. K agreed a little too ingenuously. For some reason G.T., driven to contention by something Claire said, demurred and suggested that better songs and movies existed.
Claire smiled a gracious, cutting “whatever” and left with her drinks. Left with that breezy bounce that G.T. did not yet know was typical of her.
Later, outside, they ran into her again. The rain had stopped. The asphalt, the sidewalk, everything glistened in the street light. She was getting into a car that had just pulled up.
G.T. a little drunk and happily petulant yelled: “Hey! See any better films yet?”
K told G.T. to cool it and ran up to her. He put on his best, “my friend’s a jerk, but I’m ok” act.” The woman driving was nonplussed, annoyed at being held up. Claire, half in the car, quickly scribbled her number on a worn paper customer rewards card from a coffee shop he hadn’t heard of.
K backed away as Claire closed the door. G.T. walked up.
Through the open windows they heard the driver ask: “Who was that loser?”
Claire gave the driver’s headrest a sprightly slap. “Take it easy Shannon. We’re going.”
A small moment. As the car pulls away. Claire looks back at K. Then at G.T. , who doesn't know that look yet, somewhere between disdain and something inexorably gripping. But, he has since learned the language of her face.
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