Peg-Arm
March 2, 2009 02 PM
| audiobook, short story
Another story from the “You Don’t Have to Make This Stuff Up, Just Extrapolate” department. If you listen to the podcast, please forgive my hideous approximation of a Scots accent!
Peg-Arm
“Hello!” said the woman, moving to the front of the line, holding out a book. “It’s great to see you again.”
The author looked at her. She couldn’t recall ever having seen the woman before. She smiled and nodded in fake recognition.
This happened a lot.
“How have you been?” asked the author, putting down her pen and wiggling her fingers to stretch them.
“Oh, well, the dogs are doing better. Remember, the last time we talked they both had some kind of worms? Well, they’re better now, so you don’t have to worry about them.” The woman made a self-mocking face. “Listen to me. Here you are, a busy author with all these people’s books to sign, and I’m going on about my dogs.”
The author smiled. This was a compact she had with herself: She would give encouraging expressions that could be interpreted however the receiver wanted, but she would not lie. If the woman had asked her point-blank “Do you want to hear about my dogs?”, she would have been constrained to admit that, honestly, she did not.
She felt a little dizzy, a little sleepy, a little hungry, and a little sick. This was the third city of twelve that she’d be visiting on the tour, a tiny town. She tried to remember its name and drew a blank. She rubbed her eyes then looked up. The woman was still there, now holding out her book.
“Could you just make it out to me again? None of my friends at work like your books. If they read at all, they read romances. So at least I don’t have to worry about anyone asking for one of my autographed copies, because I’d have a hard time thinking up an excuse, but I wouldn’t want to let it off your shelf. I have a shelf f—”
“What’s the spelling again?” asked the author.
“Oh,” said the woman. “Still R-U-T-H!” She laughed nervously.
The author made a “Silly me” face herself now, then leaned over with her pen to scribble something friendly but not too familiar. As she smiled and gave back the book she thought, Kill me now.
~
“But it’s theoretically possible, isn’t it?” asked the author.
“Well, yes, but the technology involved—” protested her friend.
“Come on. I know the kind of work you did on the shuttle arm. I saw the test where you had that little platform balance a pencil. I can’t imagine the calculations it would take to do that, then to build the arm so that it didn’t wobble endlessly when it moved in space, and that was nearly twenty years ago.”
“We have learned a lot since then. But the human hand is incredibly complex. To reliably reproduce handwriting by physically writing...”
“No, not reproduce, transmit. These aren’t going to be photocopies. I want something to follow my hand’s movements, but thousands of miles away.”
“So you can stay home.”
“Yes,” said the author. “They’ll see me on a screen, and we’ll still interact, I just won’t have to make airplane connections, have my underthings lost, eat alone in restaurants, or, worse, eat with strange people who want to pick at my life’s history and my psyche. And I wouldn’t have to be away from my home.” She looked at her friend. “So can you put a team together?”
“Yes,” said the engineer.
~
The robotic device stuck straight up from a base on the table, a shiny black insect limb executing a graceful series of movements like a flamenco dancer’s arm.
The engineer smiled at the author. “Have a seat,” he said, directing her to her favourite chair. He slipped the controls over her writing arm, a mesh sleeve that was threaded through with wires and small sticks. He pressed a glowing blue button on the back of her hand and the arm on the table flopped down, limp, awaiting instructions.
“Go ahead,” he said to the author, handing her a pen and a piece of paper. “Oh, wait a second,” he said, running across the room to put a pen in the robotic hand and slip a piece of paper underneath it. “Right, sign the paper.”
The author smiled, enjoying the display of gadgetry. Several people had argued that this wouldn’t work, that the result would be inherently unnatural and unconvincing, but she had faith in her friend and in technology.
She made a few loops in the air first, watching the limb across the room lift and repeat her gesture exactly, then she dove in to form her bold signature on the page. When she finished, the engineer hopped across the room with the robot’s page and set it next to the author’s.
“Exact!” she said, her mouth agape. Even she wouldn’t have known that she hadn’t written it. “And this doesn’t store the signature anywhere? It needs me in order to do it?”
“Don’t worry,” her friend reassured her, “it will use a series of algorithms to learn your movements in order to seem less... odd... to the people getting their books signed, and so it can deal with more formats of books and a wider range of situations. But the impulse that forms the signature has to come from you.”
One of the members of the robotic engineering team waved. “Ah,” said the engineer, “your screen is ready.”
They watched as the team attached a large flat black panel to the arm’s platform. “This will transmit images of you at your desk, and we’ll angle it to be a natural distance from your arm—”
“Which is already several thousand miles long at this point,” giggled the author.
“Yes. And it has its own energy supply, so you can set it up anywhere you like. Oh, and the most important part,” he said, pointing to a vertical line along the side of the screen.
“What’s that?”
“For credit cards,” he said.
The author nodded.
“One last thing,” said the engineer, guiding the author to her kitchen, where more team members were mixing something in a bucket. The room smelled of mint. “We need to take a casting of your arm so we can make this other arm look more realistic.”
“Skin?”
“It’ll look like skin, yes.”
“Brilliant.”
The engineer smiled and gave a small nod.
~
The air inside the white tent was hot and muggy. Edinburgh was uncharacteristically hot this summer, but the book festival still attracted its largest audience yet. Ruth held her book close to her as she moved forward in line. She’d attended several events at the festival so far, but this was the one she was really looking forward to.
She was first in line to have her book signed, but grew confused when one of the volunteers directed her to a chair in front of a large screen. Admittedly, they had called this an “unveiling”, which she didn’t quite understand, but now she had no idea what was going on.
With a flourish, the volunteer pulled a large piece of cloth away to reveal a dismembered human arm. Ruth gasped.
“It’s her arm!” said the volunteer with a grin.
“Oh my God!” cried Ruth.
“No no no,” said the volunteer, realising the misunderstanding, putting a reassuring hand on Ruth’s shoulder. “It’s not actually her arm. Here, swipe your credit card through this slot.”
Ruth had to dig through her purse, and wasn’t happy about being asked to pay again, after she’d already bought the book. She didn’t even know what she was paying for, but she was too timid to protest, figuring it was her fault for not being informed. She produced a card and swiped it.
The screen flickered, and a face appeared — the author’s, far away from here, in her air-conditioned house.
“Hello?” asked Ruth.
“Hello!” said the author, full of enthusiasm about the novelty of this medium, far more vibrant than she’d been in the small-town bookstore.
“Am I really talking to you?” asked her fan.
“Yes! There’s a tiny camera on the screen, so we’re really talking. And—”
The arm jittered and came to life. Ruth jumped in her seat and screamed.
“It’s alright!” assured the author. “Look,” she said, wiggling the fingers.
“Oh,” said Ruth, easing back into her seat. “Um, so you’re not really here.”
“Well, not physically, but I’m virtually there.”
“Right,” said Ruth. She was nonplussed: she had no idea how to interact with this thing, a flat face and a lone arm. She poked a finger into the skin of the thing, which was rubbery but incredibly detailed. It had no hairs, but they had painted the fingers and mottled the flabby skin realistically.
“Would you like me to sign your book?” asked the author, wanting to move things along, as she could see the line-up behind Ruth.
“Yes, please,” said Ruth. The arm picked up a pen and moved to the page that Ruth held open on the table. “Um, I brought some poetry I wrote about my dogs. It’s here in my purse. I thought you might—”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the author, her expression registering a flicker of horror then adopting a sad look, “it’s too bad I can’t read it.”
“It’s alright,” said Ruth, “I’m sure it’s no good.” She looked down at her book, which was now signed, then back up at the screen, which was shiny, black, blank: her time had run out.
Ruth collected her book and her purse and moved off into the festival crowd.
The next person in line was a large man, who plopped himself in the chair and ran his card roughly through the credit slot.
“Hello!” said the author, putting down a cup of tea she’d been sipping.
“You!” said the man.
“Me? What about me?”
He held up one of her books. “Mah wife asked me tae come doon here and get this signed for her. She’s always readin’ these stories of yours. Ah think they’re a load of shite. Yeh’ve filled her heid wi’ all this man-hating bollocks, an’ Ah think yeh’ve a lot tae answer for.”
The author put her hands to her face, but on the table, the arm was forming a clenched fist. “I— I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “Of course, that wasn’t my intention in writing the books, and I think it’s a misinterpretation.”
“Misinterpretation my arse! Stirring up all this trouble, yet yeh cannae even be arsed comin’ here to meet the likes of us.”
“Lots of people like this. We’ve been using this setup for several months, and the feedback from those we’ve talked to has been very positive. We think it’s learned to become quite sophisticated. It allows me to be more places, and to spend more time writing books. Er, not that you necessarily think this is a good thing. Um, did you still want me to sign the book?”
He slammed the novel down on the table. “I’ll tell yeh what yeh kin do wi’ the book, ya troublemaking old bitch, yeh kin— YEEEEEAUGH!” The man’s hand had been nailed to the hardcover book with a pen. He looked at the robotic arm, which pointed at him, then gave him the finger. The man swung at it, but it had pushed itself out of reach. He stretched toward it, but yelled at the pressure on his other hand.
Book festival volunteers rushed to his aid. “Call 999,” yelled one of them. A hundred people took out their mobile phones, then, all seeing each other, put them away again, figuring someone else had called. In fact, no one had, and it took some time for this to become apparent, which delayed the ambulance’s arrival.
One of the organisers went back to the tent to check on the robotic arm, but it was gone.
~
The author stared at the television screen. “Robert Fletcher, one of the most respected yet reviled literary critics was found dead in a hotel room last night in Scotland, where he had been attending this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. Police say that there is evidence of forced entry, and foul play is suspected. They are now checking the scene of the crime for fingerprints.”
It couldn’t be, thought the author.
Her phone rang.
The author picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hello. I’m a representative of the Lothian and Borders Police. I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions.”
The animosity between her and Fletcher was well-known, and now, somehow, they’d found her fingerprints at the scene of his murder, but, strangely, no genetic material. She feigned ignorance to the detective on the phone, agreed to speak to him again about the matter, finished the call, then immediately phoned her travel agent.
~
The author finished reading the selection and put the book down on her lap. The audience in the small tent applauded. She mopped her forehead with a handkerchief.
“Any questions?” she asked.
Ruth was in the front row and put up her hand. She rose to speak when the author pointed at her. “I think this book seemed sad,” she said.
“Hm. Alright. Do you have a question?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. No, I guess not,” said Ruth, and sat down again.
The author looked around her. There was no sign of it yet. There was one thing she knew would draw it out: “If anyone would like me to sign a copy of the book for them, I’d be happy to. And to thank you for coming out today, the signings will be gratis.”
The organisers set up a small table and chair inside the tent for her. As she rose and headed toward them, the author saw the arm, dragging itself under the plasticised fabric of the tent.
“There you are,” she said.
The arm reared up like a cobra.
The author ran and jumped on it. It wriggled free and landed punches on her body.
“Come here, you damnable thing!” she cried as she reached out for it. It slapped her in the face, then writhed back under the side of the tent. The author crawled after it.
When she emerged, she saw the thing, rampant before her, holding a sharpened tent-peg. It raised the peg then drove it down into her writing arm, over and over. The author screamed. As the arm drew back to stab her in the neck, it was grabbed by the wrist. The author looked up and saw a man flanked by two police officers. He pinned the thing with his knee to the ground.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”
She recognised his voice from their telephone conversation. He has a nice accent, she thought, as she lost consciousness.
~
When she opened her eyes, the first person the author saw was Ruth. Around her were several of her other fans who’d travelled to hear her read her work. The detective was there, too. And a doctor.
The doctor gave her a look that made her worried. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we weren’t able to save your arm. But don’t worry, you’ll still be able to write. We came up with a solution I think you’ll be happy with.”
She looked down and saw a perfect robotic replica of her arm attached to her. The fingers gave her a small wave, imperceptible to anyone else. She screamed.
Peg-Arm
“Hello!” said the woman, moving to the front of the line, holding out a book. “It’s great to see you again.”
The author looked at her. She couldn’t recall ever having seen the woman before. She smiled and nodded in fake recognition.
This happened a lot.
“How have you been?” asked the author, putting down her pen and wiggling her fingers to stretch them.
“Oh, well, the dogs are doing better. Remember, the last time we talked they both had some kind of worms? Well, they’re better now, so you don’t have to worry about them.” The woman made a self-mocking face. “Listen to me. Here you are, a busy author with all these people’s books to sign, and I’m going on about my dogs.”
The author smiled. This was a compact she had with herself: She would give encouraging expressions that could be interpreted however the receiver wanted, but she would not lie. If the woman had asked her point-blank “Do you want to hear about my dogs?”, she would have been constrained to admit that, honestly, she did not.
She felt a little dizzy, a little sleepy, a little hungry, and a little sick. This was the third city of twelve that she’d be visiting on the tour, a tiny town. She tried to remember its name and drew a blank. She rubbed her eyes then looked up. The woman was still there, now holding out her book.
“Could you just make it out to me again? None of my friends at work like your books. If they read at all, they read romances. So at least I don’t have to worry about anyone asking for one of my autographed copies, because I’d have a hard time thinking up an excuse, but I wouldn’t want to let it off your shelf. I have a shelf f—”
“What’s the spelling again?” asked the author.
“Oh,” said the woman. “Still R-U-T-H!” She laughed nervously.
The author made a “Silly me” face herself now, then leaned over with her pen to scribble something friendly but not too familiar. As she smiled and gave back the book she thought, Kill me now.
~
“But it’s theoretically possible, isn’t it?” asked the author.
“Well, yes, but the technology involved—” protested her friend.
“Come on. I know the kind of work you did on the shuttle arm. I saw the test where you had that little platform balance a pencil. I can’t imagine the calculations it would take to do that, then to build the arm so that it didn’t wobble endlessly when it moved in space, and that was nearly twenty years ago.”
“We have learned a lot since then. But the human hand is incredibly complex. To reliably reproduce handwriting by physically writing...”
“No, not reproduce, transmit. These aren’t going to be photocopies. I want something to follow my hand’s movements, but thousands of miles away.”
“So you can stay home.”
“Yes,” said the author. “They’ll see me on a screen, and we’ll still interact, I just won’t have to make airplane connections, have my underthings lost, eat alone in restaurants, or, worse, eat with strange people who want to pick at my life’s history and my psyche. And I wouldn’t have to be away from my home.” She looked at her friend. “So can you put a team together?”
“Yes,” said the engineer.
~
The robotic device stuck straight up from a base on the table, a shiny black insect limb executing a graceful series of movements like a flamenco dancer’s arm.
The engineer smiled at the author. “Have a seat,” he said, directing her to her favourite chair. He slipped the controls over her writing arm, a mesh sleeve that was threaded through with wires and small sticks. He pressed a glowing blue button on the back of her hand and the arm on the table flopped down, limp, awaiting instructions.
“Go ahead,” he said to the author, handing her a pen and a piece of paper. “Oh, wait a second,” he said, running across the room to put a pen in the robotic hand and slip a piece of paper underneath it. “Right, sign the paper.”
The author smiled, enjoying the display of gadgetry. Several people had argued that this wouldn’t work, that the result would be inherently unnatural and unconvincing, but she had faith in her friend and in technology.
She made a few loops in the air first, watching the limb across the room lift and repeat her gesture exactly, then she dove in to form her bold signature on the page. When she finished, the engineer hopped across the room with the robot’s page and set it next to the author’s.
“Exact!” she said, her mouth agape. Even she wouldn’t have known that she hadn’t written it. “And this doesn’t store the signature anywhere? It needs me in order to do it?”
“Don’t worry,” her friend reassured her, “it will use a series of algorithms to learn your movements in order to seem less... odd... to the people getting their books signed, and so it can deal with more formats of books and a wider range of situations. But the impulse that forms the signature has to come from you.”
One of the members of the robotic engineering team waved. “Ah,” said the engineer, “your screen is ready.”
They watched as the team attached a large flat black panel to the arm’s platform. “This will transmit images of you at your desk, and we’ll angle it to be a natural distance from your arm—”
“Which is already several thousand miles long at this point,” giggled the author.
“Yes. And it has its own energy supply, so you can set it up anywhere you like. Oh, and the most important part,” he said, pointing to a vertical line along the side of the screen.
“What’s that?”
“For credit cards,” he said.
The author nodded.
“One last thing,” said the engineer, guiding the author to her kitchen, where more team members were mixing something in a bucket. The room smelled of mint. “We need to take a casting of your arm so we can make this other arm look more realistic.”
“Skin?”
“It’ll look like skin, yes.”
“Brilliant.”
The engineer smiled and gave a small nod.
~
The air inside the white tent was hot and muggy. Edinburgh was uncharacteristically hot this summer, but the book festival still attracted its largest audience yet. Ruth held her book close to her as she moved forward in line. She’d attended several events at the festival so far, but this was the one she was really looking forward to.
She was first in line to have her book signed, but grew confused when one of the volunteers directed her to a chair in front of a large screen. Admittedly, they had called this an “unveiling”, which she didn’t quite understand, but now she had no idea what was going on.
With a flourish, the volunteer pulled a large piece of cloth away to reveal a dismembered human arm. Ruth gasped.
“It’s her arm!” said the volunteer with a grin.
“Oh my God!” cried Ruth.
“No no no,” said the volunteer, realising the misunderstanding, putting a reassuring hand on Ruth’s shoulder. “It’s not actually her arm. Here, swipe your credit card through this slot.”
Ruth had to dig through her purse, and wasn’t happy about being asked to pay again, after she’d already bought the book. She didn’t even know what she was paying for, but she was too timid to protest, figuring it was her fault for not being informed. She produced a card and swiped it.
The screen flickered, and a face appeared — the author’s, far away from here, in her air-conditioned house.
“Hello?” asked Ruth.
“Hello!” said the author, full of enthusiasm about the novelty of this medium, far more vibrant than she’d been in the small-town bookstore.
“Am I really talking to you?” asked her fan.
“Yes! There’s a tiny camera on the screen, so we’re really talking. And—”
The arm jittered and came to life. Ruth jumped in her seat and screamed.
“It’s alright!” assured the author. “Look,” she said, wiggling the fingers.
“Oh,” said Ruth, easing back into her seat. “Um, so you’re not really here.”
“Well, not physically, but I’m virtually there.”
“Right,” said Ruth. She was nonplussed: she had no idea how to interact with this thing, a flat face and a lone arm. She poked a finger into the skin of the thing, which was rubbery but incredibly detailed. It had no hairs, but they had painted the fingers and mottled the flabby skin realistically.
“Would you like me to sign your book?” asked the author, wanting to move things along, as she could see the line-up behind Ruth.
“Yes, please,” said Ruth. The arm picked up a pen and moved to the page that Ruth held open on the table. “Um, I brought some poetry I wrote about my dogs. It’s here in my purse. I thought you might—”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the author, her expression registering a flicker of horror then adopting a sad look, “it’s too bad I can’t read it.”
“It’s alright,” said Ruth, “I’m sure it’s no good.” She looked down at her book, which was now signed, then back up at the screen, which was shiny, black, blank: her time had run out.
Ruth collected her book and her purse and moved off into the festival crowd.
The next person in line was a large man, who plopped himself in the chair and ran his card roughly through the credit slot.
“Hello!” said the author, putting down a cup of tea she’d been sipping.
“You!” said the man.
“Me? What about me?”
He held up one of her books. “Mah wife asked me tae come doon here and get this signed for her. She’s always readin’ these stories of yours. Ah think they’re a load of shite. Yeh’ve filled her heid wi’ all this man-hating bollocks, an’ Ah think yeh’ve a lot tae answer for.”
The author put her hands to her face, but on the table, the arm was forming a clenched fist. “I— I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “Of course, that wasn’t my intention in writing the books, and I think it’s a misinterpretation.”
“Misinterpretation my arse! Stirring up all this trouble, yet yeh cannae even be arsed comin’ here to meet the likes of us.”
“Lots of people like this. We’ve been using this setup for several months, and the feedback from those we’ve talked to has been very positive. We think it’s learned to become quite sophisticated. It allows me to be more places, and to spend more time writing books. Er, not that you necessarily think this is a good thing. Um, did you still want me to sign the book?”
He slammed the novel down on the table. “I’ll tell yeh what yeh kin do wi’ the book, ya troublemaking old bitch, yeh kin— YEEEEEAUGH!” The man’s hand had been nailed to the hardcover book with a pen. He looked at the robotic arm, which pointed at him, then gave him the finger. The man swung at it, but it had pushed itself out of reach. He stretched toward it, but yelled at the pressure on his other hand.
Book festival volunteers rushed to his aid. “Call 999,” yelled one of them. A hundred people took out their mobile phones, then, all seeing each other, put them away again, figuring someone else had called. In fact, no one had, and it took some time for this to become apparent, which delayed the ambulance’s arrival.
One of the organisers went back to the tent to check on the robotic arm, but it was gone.
~
The author stared at the television screen. “Robert Fletcher, one of the most respected yet reviled literary critics was found dead in a hotel room last night in Scotland, where he had been attending this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. Police say that there is evidence of forced entry, and foul play is suspected. They are now checking the scene of the crime for fingerprints.”
It couldn’t be, thought the author.
Her phone rang.
The author picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Hello. I’m a representative of the Lothian and Borders Police. I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions.”
The animosity between her and Fletcher was well-known, and now, somehow, they’d found her fingerprints at the scene of his murder, but, strangely, no genetic material. She feigned ignorance to the detective on the phone, agreed to speak to him again about the matter, finished the call, then immediately phoned her travel agent.
~
The author finished reading the selection and put the book down on her lap. The audience in the small tent applauded. She mopped her forehead with a handkerchief.
“Any questions?” she asked.
Ruth was in the front row and put up her hand. She rose to speak when the author pointed at her. “I think this book seemed sad,” she said.
“Hm. Alright. Do you have a question?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. No, I guess not,” said Ruth, and sat down again.
The author looked around her. There was no sign of it yet. There was one thing she knew would draw it out: “If anyone would like me to sign a copy of the book for them, I’d be happy to. And to thank you for coming out today, the signings will be gratis.”
The organisers set up a small table and chair inside the tent for her. As she rose and headed toward them, the author saw the arm, dragging itself under the plasticised fabric of the tent.
“There you are,” she said.
The arm reared up like a cobra.
The author ran and jumped on it. It wriggled free and landed punches on her body.
“Come here, you damnable thing!” she cried as she reached out for it. It slapped her in the face, then writhed back under the side of the tent. The author crawled after it.
When she emerged, she saw the thing, rampant before her, holding a sharpened tent-peg. It raised the peg then drove it down into her writing arm, over and over. The author screamed. As the arm drew back to stab her in the neck, it was grabbed by the wrist. The author looked up and saw a man flanked by two police officers. He pinned the thing with his knee to the ground.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”
She recognised his voice from their telephone conversation. He has a nice accent, she thought, as she lost consciousness.
~
When she opened her eyes, the first person the author saw was Ruth. Around her were several of her other fans who’d travelled to hear her read her work. The detective was there, too. And a doctor.
The doctor gave her a look that made her worried. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we weren’t able to save your arm. But don’t worry, you’ll still be able to write. We came up with a solution I think you’ll be happy with.”
She looked down and saw a perfect robotic replica of her arm attached to her. The fingers gave her a small wave, imperceptible to anyone else. She screamed.
The Half-Dead House
March 2, 2009 02 PM
| audiobook, short story
A tale from an Edinburgh tenement...
The Half-Dead House
The tenement stairway was always dark. The frosted skylight on the top floor let in only the faintest grey illumination.
Mrs Johnston opened her door a sliver and looked out. Seeing no one, she snuck out as best she was able to. Her body was a twisted old oak that had been hit several times by lightning strikes of arthritis and mini-strokes.
Her ankle wiggled painfully as she stepped on tiny army-men of uniform green colour. She cursed under her breath and stooped to pick up the little figures. She tried to think of something to do with them. With a smile, she remembered War of the Worlds, and brought the soldiers back through to the microwave in her kitchen.
Mrs Johnston headed down the stairs five minutes later, off to buy her groceries. In front of her neighbours’ door lay a green plastic disc from which tiny arms, legs, and heads emerged like cursed, drowning things.
~
“Wee Alec” Newsome was home from school again, while teachers and behaviour specialists tried to figure out a way to educate him without further harm to the rest of the student body. They dreaded to think what he would be like when he reached the double-digits. For now, he got a lot of mileage out of looking cute. It worked on his mother, who thought he was adorable, and enjoyed the extra company.
Alec was downstairs, trying to find a way to open the mysterious green wooden door. It might contain a grass trimmer or spare string for the communal washing-line, but he imagined it hid the entrance to vast underground vaults.
“Hello, Wee Alec.”
Alec was sprawled out, trying to see into the crack underneath the door. He looked up to see Mrs Johnston. She gave him a smile like a battered picket fence in need of painting.
“Hullo, Mrs Johnston.”
“I think your wee soldiers had an accident,” she said.
The boy’s eyes sprung open. He righted himself and flew up the stairs. Mrs Johnston heard a wailing sound and smiled to herself as she left the tenement.
~
“What’s the matter?” asked the postman.
Alec stayed tight-lipped and shook his head.
“Is Mrs Johnston home? Ah’ve got these to give her.” The postman held a small cardboard box the size of a book, and an envelope.
Alec started shaking his head, then got an idea. “I’ll give ‘em t’er.”
“What a nice lad,” said the postman, handing over the parcel and the letter, ruffling the boy’s hair. Alec gave him a big smile. Something about it unnerved the man, though. He wasn’t sure if it was the red-tinged eyes or the number of teeth.
There was nothing wrong with Alec’s reading skills. The book proved to be a boring collection of abridged stories. The letter was much more interesting. It contained a cheque. He recognized cheques because his mother was always happy when she got them in the mail. He proceeded to endorse it in crayon, drew several gruesome pictures of Mrs Johnston on it, then let it drop in pieces like snow from his bedroom window.
~
One afternoon Alec’s mother sent him out into the hallway to play, saying his Christmas crafts were too messy for indoors. In actual fact, dipping string into white glue was his attempt to make a human-sized spider web.
Mrs Johnston unbolted the five locks on her door and emerged with a wreath, seemingly made of black plastic holly and discarded red buttons. She was about to hang it on her door when a man sprung up the stairs.
“It’s just up here,” the man called back down. Moments later, the movers came into sight with several pieces of multi-coloured furniture.
The man wore a bright green jumper with several reindeer stitched across its front. “Hi there!” he said to Alec and Mrs Johnston. “My name’s Doug. I’m your new neighbour!” His smile beamed broad and white, and his cheeks were a joyful pink. “Oh, here,” he said, handing each of them a small card. “I’m going to be having a party. Nothing loud, just a little festive get-together so we can become acquainted as neighbours.”
When he left, Mrs Johnston spoke carefully to Alec: “We have to get rid of him.”
Alec nodded.
She was about to go in, but turned back. “Happy Christmas,” she said with a jagged smile.
The Half-Dead House
The tenement stairway was always dark. The frosted skylight on the top floor let in only the faintest grey illumination.
Mrs Johnston opened her door a sliver and looked out. Seeing no one, she snuck out as best she was able to. Her body was a twisted old oak that had been hit several times by lightning strikes of arthritis and mini-strokes.
Her ankle wiggled painfully as she stepped on tiny army-men of uniform green colour. She cursed under her breath and stooped to pick up the little figures. She tried to think of something to do with them. With a smile, she remembered War of the Worlds, and brought the soldiers back through to the microwave in her kitchen.
Mrs Johnston headed down the stairs five minutes later, off to buy her groceries. In front of her neighbours’ door lay a green plastic disc from which tiny arms, legs, and heads emerged like cursed, drowning things.
~
“Wee Alec” Newsome was home from school again, while teachers and behaviour specialists tried to figure out a way to educate him without further harm to the rest of the student body. They dreaded to think what he would be like when he reached the double-digits. For now, he got a lot of mileage out of looking cute. It worked on his mother, who thought he was adorable, and enjoyed the extra company.
Alec was downstairs, trying to find a way to open the mysterious green wooden door. It might contain a grass trimmer or spare string for the communal washing-line, but he imagined it hid the entrance to vast underground vaults.
“Hello, Wee Alec.”
Alec was sprawled out, trying to see into the crack underneath the door. He looked up to see Mrs Johnston. She gave him a smile like a battered picket fence in need of painting.
“Hullo, Mrs Johnston.”
“I think your wee soldiers had an accident,” she said.
The boy’s eyes sprung open. He righted himself and flew up the stairs. Mrs Johnston heard a wailing sound and smiled to herself as she left the tenement.
~
“What’s the matter?” asked the postman.
Alec stayed tight-lipped and shook his head.
“Is Mrs Johnston home? Ah’ve got these to give her.” The postman held a small cardboard box the size of a book, and an envelope.
Alec started shaking his head, then got an idea. “I’ll give ‘em t’er.”
“What a nice lad,” said the postman, handing over the parcel and the letter, ruffling the boy’s hair. Alec gave him a big smile. Something about it unnerved the man, though. He wasn’t sure if it was the red-tinged eyes or the number of teeth.
There was nothing wrong with Alec’s reading skills. The book proved to be a boring collection of abridged stories. The letter was much more interesting. It contained a cheque. He recognized cheques because his mother was always happy when she got them in the mail. He proceeded to endorse it in crayon, drew several gruesome pictures of Mrs Johnston on it, then let it drop in pieces like snow from his bedroom window.
~
One afternoon Alec’s mother sent him out into the hallway to play, saying his Christmas crafts were too messy for indoors. In actual fact, dipping string into white glue was his attempt to make a human-sized spider web.
Mrs Johnston unbolted the five locks on her door and emerged with a wreath, seemingly made of black plastic holly and discarded red buttons. She was about to hang it on her door when a man sprung up the stairs.
“It’s just up here,” the man called back down. Moments later, the movers came into sight with several pieces of multi-coloured furniture.
The man wore a bright green jumper with several reindeer stitched across its front. “Hi there!” he said to Alec and Mrs Johnston. “My name’s Doug. I’m your new neighbour!” His smile beamed broad and white, and his cheeks were a joyful pink. “Oh, here,” he said, handing each of them a small card. “I’m going to be having a party. Nothing loud, just a little festive get-together so we can become acquainted as neighbours.”
When he left, Mrs Johnston spoke carefully to Alec: “We have to get rid of him.”
Alec nodded.
She was about to go in, but turned back. “Happy Christmas,” she said with a jagged smile.
Going On
March 2, 2009 02 PM
| audiobook, short story
Every year the Toronto Star has a story writing contest, and it’s got a big, fat prize of $10,000. How could I not send something in? But the kinds of things I usually write, well, they’re not your average Sunday morning cup-of-coffee-and-a-paper fare. So I decided to stretch myself, to write something a little more Oprah-riffic…
Going On
“Look, this just isn’t working,” he said. “Stop the car and I’ll get out.”
“Please,” she begged, “can’t we give it one more try? We’ve both invested so much time into this.”
“Okay,” he said, “just one more try.”
She pulled her car up alongside one that was parked, then put it into reverse. Slowly, twisting the manual steering hand over hand with all her might, she angled the car backwards into the empty spot. Her rear tire bumped up onto the curb and stuck there. She had to give the engine more gas to get the car to leave its perch, but when she did, it leapt backwards and plowed hard into the car behind her. She straightened the wheel and pulled forward.
The driving instructor released his grip from the dashboard, took off his seatbelt, and got out of the car. He took a notepad from the inside pocket of his red driving school windbreaker. He started making notes for the accident report he’d have to file.
“I’m sorry,” said Carol, getting out of the car. “I know I’m no good — not yet — but I really need to be able to drive this car.”
The instructor didn’t raise his eyes. “There are some people who are just not cut out for driving. It should be hard to get a license, because a car can be a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.” He looked at her. “Hands like yours.”
“Please. If you don’t want to teach me, then hand me over to one of the other instructors.”
“This was our thirtieth lesson together. I really don’t believe that you’re going to get any better. And don’t give me any of that ‘It’s because I’m a woman’ nonsense, because I’ve had some female students who drove better than I do. I’m not going to recommend you to another teacher, because you’re just plain bad.”
Carol’s nose — the nose her husband once described as “perky” — snarled now. Just a few months ago, she would have been crying about this. Through the years she’d eaten enough humble pie to win a contest. But now something else was guiding her. And just as plain as the sun that morning it said to her, “Go on.”
Carol stared the man down, and without thinking, she spoke. “Has anyone ever told you that your toupée looks like very old roadkill?” Then she walked back to her car, got in, and locked the doors. She started it, and, purely by instinct, pulled the car easily from the parking spot.
The instructor ran beside the car, banging on the window, and shouted, “Hey! You’re not supposed to–”
But she was.
~
Carol walked through the shopping mall, looking for a job. She had a degree in social work, specializing in children’s welfare, but she’d not worked since graduating. When her mother suggested that she look for social work, Carol replied, “You need experience to get experience.”
Was it really such a crime to want to get married, stay home, and raise a family? Her brother told her that it was a waste of her potential. But what did he know? He was gay. Her friends, though, were no better, all going off to their careers, images of Lexus-driving supermoms in their heads. No, Carol had been a latch-key kid, and was not going to do that to her child.
She stopped at a beauty boutique. Okay, she figured, she’d been wearing makeup since she was thirteen. How hard could it be to sell it?
Moments later, she was sitting on a wooden bench, pen poised over an application form. When she started writing her name, the pen pushed through the paper. She checked her trouser-leg; good, no mark. That saved a trip to the dry cleaners. She found a counter to lean on.
The form’s questions were simple enough, but the answers were hard.
When she finished filling out the application, she walked back into the shop and handed it to the pale waif behind the counter. Carol waited for the little nod that said, “I’ll hand this to the appropriate grown-up”, but instead the girl turned the paper around and started scrutinizing Carol’s answers.
“This, here, is this a store?” she asked, pointing.
“Um, no,” said Carol, “it was a camp, a day camp for deaf children.”
“Oh,” said the girl, and drew a ballpoint line through it.
The girl cocked her head. “Okay, I’ll just ask you straight out. The sign said ‘Experience Required’. Do you have, like, any retail experience?”
“No,” said Carol.
“God! Can nobody read? I mean, how hard is it to understand? ‘Experience Required’.”
Carol’s stomach went cold. Never in her life, she thought, would she get used to people being rude to her. Maybe it’s just because most people aren’t, she figured, that it’s always so shocking, so unexpected. And she’d been shopping in this store for years. This was where she got that lipstick that her husband Rob liked so much, the one she wore that night. She and her friend were going to see a show at the Royal Alex, but Rob couldn’t go because he was on call. And when she got home, she found out he was gone.
“Go on,” said the voice to her again, as real as the girl, as real as the fluorescent light and the fragrances in the air.
Carol reached over and straightened the lapels of the girl’s makeup lab coat with a jerk. Again, the words just flowed out. “You have so much foundation on, you look like a corpse.” She smiled, “But it suits you. It’s very… peaceful.” She turned and walked out in her most triumphant Angie Dickinson style.
~
Carol ran on the endless black ribbon of the treadmill. Through her radio headphones, she heard the song “Road to Nowhere”. The irony struck her as funny at first, but when it started attaching itself to other meanings in her head, she plucked the radio off and dropped it on her towel. Perhaps the gesture was too grand, because the woman on the next machine was looking at her.
“Song remind you of something?” the woman asked.
“Oh, uh, no. I just wanted a bit of quiet.”
“Ha! In a gym? No such luck. And listen to the songs they play, these love dirges.” The mass of the woman’s frizzy red hair bobbed with her paces.
“I hadn’t really noticed,” said Carol.
“Oh, please,” said the woman, incredulous but friendly, “the first thing that happens when you get dumped is you start understanding songs. It’s like the village well getting poisoned: suddenly you notice it in the malls, in your car, at work — everywhere — this soundtrack of miserable, desperate songs. ‘I can’t breathe when you’re not here’, ‘There’s no point going on without you’, ‘Loving you is like an aneurysm’.”
Carol laughed.
“Ah, see. You do know what I’m talking about,” the woman said, smiling back. She looked with a tilted head at Carol. “You look like you’re in Stage Two.”
Okay, figured Carol, letting down her defenses, this was worth hearing. “What’s Stage Two?”
“Self-reinvention,” said the woman. “Symptoms include piercing, tattoos, night classes, and, most commonly, fitness.”
“Wait then,” asked Carol, missing a step on the rubber belt, stumbling to regain her stride. She pressed a button several times to adjust the treadmill’s speed. “What’s Stage One?”
“Well, for me it’s ice cream. Very cheap ice cream, the foamy vanilla kind that comes in a box. But it varies. For other people the wounded dog act comes most naturally: ‘Leave me alone, I’m just going off to lie in a corner and die’. You’re lucky you made it to Stage Two. When did he leave you?”
“Just three months ago,” said Carol, her steps getting heavy. But she kept running.
“The bastard!’
“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” she insisted.
“Now, don’t make excuses for him.”
“No, really.” Carol hesitated to tell the next part, because it always sounded so extreme and put such pressure on the listener. “He was killed.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” said the woman. She put her hand to her mouth, embarrassed, and stopped running.
“Don’t be,” said Carol, “it’s all right.” For some reason, she liked this woman, and wanted to tell her everything. “My husband and I both studied social work. He was doing child protection, and that night he went out on this call to take a little boy out of a dangerous domestic situation. I guess he got in the middle of it. He got stabbed in the neck.” Carol stared out the long windows of the gym at a patch of open sky just above a dark concrete slab of a building. “He died right away.”
She heard a sound from the woman and turned see she was crying. Carol put her hand on the woman’s arm. “It’s all right. I’m gradually getting used to it. At first it seemed like he was just away on vacation, even though I saw him laid out at the wake. But now I’m getting the idea.” She forced a smile. “Are there any other stages to look forward to?”
The woman swallowed hard and dried her eyes. “Uh, yeah, just one: Stage Three.”
“And what’s that?”
“You go on.”
The look on Carol’s face surprised the woman. “What is it? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I am,” said Carol. She picked up her radio and towel. “Thank you. I really mean it.” She started to leave, but turned back. “I don’t know your name.”
“Ruth.”
“Thanks, Ruth,” said Carol, extending a hand. Ruth smiled and they shook hands heartily. “I’ll see you again sometime.”
~
Carol waited. She picked up a Reader’s Digest and read an unfunny joke. Then she tested her word power (which was, apparently, formidable), read about a new treatment for heart disease (which made no mention of avoiding it in the first place), and then skimmed through the “Quotable Quotes” (which she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to repeat).
Since when was she so cynical? she wondered. Sure she found herself funnier than she’d ever been, but if this was what funny cost, she wanted no part of it. She was going to become a not-nice person, someone she wouldn’t want to know.
She put the magazine down. She’d been hurt, that’s all. And now she was being more cautious, prepared for letdowns. But you can’t prepare, can you, she thought. It just happens, and it’s always a surprise.
“The doctor will see you now.”
Carol looked up at the nurse. Please, please, please, she thought, no surprises.
A few minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of the vinyl-covered examination table with her allotment from the paper towel roll crinkling beneath her. The doctor came into the room with a chart in his hand.
“Well,” he said, looking at the chart, “I’m not sure what result you wanted, Mrs. Long, but the test came back negative. You’re not pregnant.”
She put on her best brave face. “Thank you,” she said, gathering up her coat and purse.
“Did you want to talk about the test results,” he asked.
“Nope,” she said.
Doubtful, but respecting her answer, the doctor nodded and left the room. Carol closed the door behind him, dropped her things, and sobbed. The strange room was covered with posters with big, informative letters on them and tiny pharmaceutical company logos at the bottom. Some had plastic cutaways of the female anatomy that made it look like strange cuts of meat. There were pamphlets and sample packages. But none of it had anything to do with her, because she was not pregnant.
A new round of crying took her. This was her last connection to Rob — the chance to have their child and raise it. And now that was gone, too.
She sat on the floor, not caring if anyone should come in and find her. Her nose started to run, but she didn’t care about that, either.
“Go on,” said the voice.
She begrudgingly laughed through her tears. This is ridiculous, she thought, there wasn’t even anyone there to insult. What was this voice here for? What was it saying?
“Go on.”
She felt a chill. Was it her husband? No, but it was that familiar. She tested the character of the voice in her mind. It was a voice she heard every day, but wasn’t used to hearing out loud.
It was her voice. And it was telling her to get up, to do something, anything, but not to stop.
She stood up and took a tissue from the box on the gray desk in the office. She blew her nose, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and got her things together.
~
The car sold quickly, and eventually the house sold, too. It made Carol uncomfortable, having all this money. Well, the money part was good, it was just the reason she had it that she hated. But in the past couple of months it had allowed her to move to a little apartment downtown and do some volunteer work. In fact, it looked like she was about to be hired on as a staff member soon.
Now that she was finding the right outlets for her energy, she’d stopped telling everyone off, too. She even made a point of revisiting some of her previous crime scenes to make amends.
She’d got a cat from the shelter, thinking it would give her some companionship. But it was standoffish and messy. Rob had been messy. But she could sleep with Rob. And he didn’t make her sneeze. She eventually acknowledged that she was resenting the little creature, and gave it away to someone at work. He was all excited about getting it, but now Carol had no idea what the attraction was. She’d stick to humans for partners. And that was a ways off, she figured.
It was summer now, and she was involved with her friends, going to clubs, boating, and up to their cottages. She received her share of looks and the odd offer of a drink. And that was really nice. But not quite yet. She knew it would happen eventually, though.
Because she was going on.
Going On
“Look, this just isn’t working,” he said. “Stop the car and I’ll get out.”
“Please,” she begged, “can’t we give it one more try? We’ve both invested so much time into this.”
“Okay,” he said, “just one more try.”
She pulled her car up alongside one that was parked, then put it into reverse. Slowly, twisting the manual steering hand over hand with all her might, she angled the car backwards into the empty spot. Her rear tire bumped up onto the curb and stuck there. She had to give the engine more gas to get the car to leave its perch, but when she did, it leapt backwards and plowed hard into the car behind her. She straightened the wheel and pulled forward.
The driving instructor released his grip from the dashboard, took off his seatbelt, and got out of the car. He took a notepad from the inside pocket of his red driving school windbreaker. He started making notes for the accident report he’d have to file.
“I’m sorry,” said Carol, getting out of the car. “I know I’m no good — not yet — but I really need to be able to drive this car.”
The instructor didn’t raise his eyes. “There are some people who are just not cut out for driving. It should be hard to get a license, because a car can be a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands.” He looked at her. “Hands like yours.”
“Please. If you don’t want to teach me, then hand me over to one of the other instructors.”
“This was our thirtieth lesson together. I really don’t believe that you’re going to get any better. And don’t give me any of that ‘It’s because I’m a woman’ nonsense, because I’ve had some female students who drove better than I do. I’m not going to recommend you to another teacher, because you’re just plain bad.”
Carol’s nose — the nose her husband once described as “perky” — snarled now. Just a few months ago, she would have been crying about this. Through the years she’d eaten enough humble pie to win a contest. But now something else was guiding her. And just as plain as the sun that morning it said to her, “Go on.”
Carol stared the man down, and without thinking, she spoke. “Has anyone ever told you that your toupée looks like very old roadkill?” Then she walked back to her car, got in, and locked the doors. She started it, and, purely by instinct, pulled the car easily from the parking spot.
The instructor ran beside the car, banging on the window, and shouted, “Hey! You’re not supposed to–”
But she was.
~
Carol walked through the shopping mall, looking for a job. She had a degree in social work, specializing in children’s welfare, but she’d not worked since graduating. When her mother suggested that she look for social work, Carol replied, “You need experience to get experience.”
Was it really such a crime to want to get married, stay home, and raise a family? Her brother told her that it was a waste of her potential. But what did he know? He was gay. Her friends, though, were no better, all going off to their careers, images of Lexus-driving supermoms in their heads. No, Carol had been a latch-key kid, and was not going to do that to her child.
She stopped at a beauty boutique. Okay, she figured, she’d been wearing makeup since she was thirteen. How hard could it be to sell it?
Moments later, she was sitting on a wooden bench, pen poised over an application form. When she started writing her name, the pen pushed through the paper. She checked her trouser-leg; good, no mark. That saved a trip to the dry cleaners. She found a counter to lean on.
The form’s questions were simple enough, but the answers were hard.
When she finished filling out the application, she walked back into the shop and handed it to the pale waif behind the counter. Carol waited for the little nod that said, “I’ll hand this to the appropriate grown-up”, but instead the girl turned the paper around and started scrutinizing Carol’s answers.
“This, here, is this a store?” she asked, pointing.
“Um, no,” said Carol, “it was a camp, a day camp for deaf children.”
“Oh,” said the girl, and drew a ballpoint line through it.
The girl cocked her head. “Okay, I’ll just ask you straight out. The sign said ‘Experience Required’. Do you have, like, any retail experience?”
“No,” said Carol.
“God! Can nobody read? I mean, how hard is it to understand? ‘Experience Required’.”
Carol’s stomach went cold. Never in her life, she thought, would she get used to people being rude to her. Maybe it’s just because most people aren’t, she figured, that it’s always so shocking, so unexpected. And she’d been shopping in this store for years. This was where she got that lipstick that her husband Rob liked so much, the one she wore that night. She and her friend were going to see a show at the Royal Alex, but Rob couldn’t go because he was on call. And when she got home, she found out he was gone.
“Go on,” said the voice to her again, as real as the girl, as real as the fluorescent light and the fragrances in the air.
Carol reached over and straightened the lapels of the girl’s makeup lab coat with a jerk. Again, the words just flowed out. “You have so much foundation on, you look like a corpse.” She smiled, “But it suits you. It’s very… peaceful.” She turned and walked out in her most triumphant Angie Dickinson style.
~
Carol ran on the endless black ribbon of the treadmill. Through her radio headphones, she heard the song “Road to Nowhere”. The irony struck her as funny at first, but when it started attaching itself to other meanings in her head, she plucked the radio off and dropped it on her towel. Perhaps the gesture was too grand, because the woman on the next machine was looking at her.
“Song remind you of something?” the woman asked.
“Oh, uh, no. I just wanted a bit of quiet.”
“Ha! In a gym? No such luck. And listen to the songs they play, these love dirges.” The mass of the woman’s frizzy red hair bobbed with her paces.
“I hadn’t really noticed,” said Carol.
“Oh, please,” said the woman, incredulous but friendly, “the first thing that happens when you get dumped is you start understanding songs. It’s like the village well getting poisoned: suddenly you notice it in the malls, in your car, at work — everywhere — this soundtrack of miserable, desperate songs. ‘I can’t breathe when you’re not here’, ‘There’s no point going on without you’, ‘Loving you is like an aneurysm’.”
Carol laughed.
“Ah, see. You do know what I’m talking about,” the woman said, smiling back. She looked with a tilted head at Carol. “You look like you’re in Stage Two.”
Okay, figured Carol, letting down her defenses, this was worth hearing. “What’s Stage Two?”
“Self-reinvention,” said the woman. “Symptoms include piercing, tattoos, night classes, and, most commonly, fitness.”
“Wait then,” asked Carol, missing a step on the rubber belt, stumbling to regain her stride. She pressed a button several times to adjust the treadmill’s speed. “What’s Stage One?”
“Well, for me it’s ice cream. Very cheap ice cream, the foamy vanilla kind that comes in a box. But it varies. For other people the wounded dog act comes most naturally: ‘Leave me alone, I’m just going off to lie in a corner and die’. You’re lucky you made it to Stage Two. When did he leave you?”
“Just three months ago,” said Carol, her steps getting heavy. But she kept running.
“The bastard!’
“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” she insisted.
“Now, don’t make excuses for him.”
“No, really.” Carol hesitated to tell the next part, because it always sounded so extreme and put such pressure on the listener. “He was killed.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” said the woman. She put her hand to her mouth, embarrassed, and stopped running.
“Don’t be,” said Carol, “it’s all right.” For some reason, she liked this woman, and wanted to tell her everything. “My husband and I both studied social work. He was doing child protection, and that night he went out on this call to take a little boy out of a dangerous domestic situation. I guess he got in the middle of it. He got stabbed in the neck.” Carol stared out the long windows of the gym at a patch of open sky just above a dark concrete slab of a building. “He died right away.”
She heard a sound from the woman and turned see she was crying. Carol put her hand on the woman’s arm. “It’s all right. I’m gradually getting used to it. At first it seemed like he was just away on vacation, even though I saw him laid out at the wake. But now I’m getting the idea.” She forced a smile. “Are there any other stages to look forward to?”
The woman swallowed hard and dried her eyes. “Uh, yeah, just one: Stage Three.”
“And what’s that?”
“You go on.”
The look on Carol’s face surprised the woman. “What is it? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I am,” said Carol. She picked up her radio and towel. “Thank you. I really mean it.” She started to leave, but turned back. “I don’t know your name.”
“Ruth.”
“Thanks, Ruth,” said Carol, extending a hand. Ruth smiled and they shook hands heartily. “I’ll see you again sometime.”
~
Carol waited. She picked up a Reader’s Digest and read an unfunny joke. Then she tested her word power (which was, apparently, formidable), read about a new treatment for heart disease (which made no mention of avoiding it in the first place), and then skimmed through the “Quotable Quotes” (which she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to repeat).
Since when was she so cynical? she wondered. Sure she found herself funnier than she’d ever been, but if this was what funny cost, she wanted no part of it. She was going to become a not-nice person, someone she wouldn’t want to know.
She put the magazine down. She’d been hurt, that’s all. And now she was being more cautious, prepared for letdowns. But you can’t prepare, can you, she thought. It just happens, and it’s always a surprise.
“The doctor will see you now.”
Carol looked up at the nurse. Please, please, please, she thought, no surprises.
A few minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of the vinyl-covered examination table with her allotment from the paper towel roll crinkling beneath her. The doctor came into the room with a chart in his hand.
“Well,” he said, looking at the chart, “I’m not sure what result you wanted, Mrs. Long, but the test came back negative. You’re not pregnant.”
She put on her best brave face. “Thank you,” she said, gathering up her coat and purse.
“Did you want to talk about the test results,” he asked.
“Nope,” she said.
Doubtful, but respecting her answer, the doctor nodded and left the room. Carol closed the door behind him, dropped her things, and sobbed. The strange room was covered with posters with big, informative letters on them and tiny pharmaceutical company logos at the bottom. Some had plastic cutaways of the female anatomy that made it look like strange cuts of meat. There were pamphlets and sample packages. But none of it had anything to do with her, because she was not pregnant.
A new round of crying took her. This was her last connection to Rob — the chance to have their child and raise it. And now that was gone, too.
She sat on the floor, not caring if anyone should come in and find her. Her nose started to run, but she didn’t care about that, either.
“Go on,” said the voice.
She begrudgingly laughed through her tears. This is ridiculous, she thought, there wasn’t even anyone there to insult. What was this voice here for? What was it saying?
“Go on.”
She felt a chill. Was it her husband? No, but it was that familiar. She tested the character of the voice in her mind. It was a voice she heard every day, but wasn’t used to hearing out loud.
It was her voice. And it was telling her to get up, to do something, anything, but not to stop.
She stood up and took a tissue from the box on the gray desk in the office. She blew her nose, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and got her things together.
~
The car sold quickly, and eventually the house sold, too. It made Carol uncomfortable, having all this money. Well, the money part was good, it was just the reason she had it that she hated. But in the past couple of months it had allowed her to move to a little apartment downtown and do some volunteer work. In fact, it looked like she was about to be hired on as a staff member soon.
Now that she was finding the right outlets for her energy, she’d stopped telling everyone off, too. She even made a point of revisiting some of her previous crime scenes to make amends.
She’d got a cat from the shelter, thinking it would give her some companionship. But it was standoffish and messy. Rob had been messy. But she could sleep with Rob. And he didn’t make her sneeze. She eventually acknowledged that she was resenting the little creature, and gave it away to someone at work. He was all excited about getting it, but now Carol had no idea what the attraction was. She’d stick to humans for partners. And that was a ways off, she figured.
It was summer now, and she was involved with her friends, going to clubs, boating, and up to their cottages. She received her share of looks and the odd offer of a drink. And that was really nice. But not quite yet. She knew it would happen eventually, though.
Because she was going on.
Handsome Devil
March 2, 2009 02 PM
| audiobook, short story
I was asked to co-curate a night in a reading series in 2000. The series is called Clit Lit (I know, I blush every time I mention it). It tends, as you might have guessed, to run along lesbian/feminist themes. This one night, though, was to be a men’s writing night. I suggested the name “Spunky”, and we ran with it. The evening went pretty well, and I got a good response to this piece, which was fun to write. It’s hard to get very deep with only a thousand words — all that a ten-minute slot allows. So I thought I’d have some fun…
Handsome Devil
Dean checked himself in the mirror. Again. He straightened his tie, then forcefully pulled it off. “I’m thirty years old and I don’t know how to dress myself!”
“Dean, it’s just a date,” said Lu, his neighbour from across the hall, who had also become his best friend. She flipped his collar out over the lapels of his brown sportscoat, then licked her hand and patted down a reprobate tuft of his black hair. Dean flinched at the touch of her licked hand. “Don’t worry — family germs,” she said. Then she led him away from the mirror, over to his puffy cream-coloured couch. Lu sat beside him, awkwardly propped there because of a large pillow she knew she was not to move: it covered a reminder-stain of his failed attempt to own a pet.
“He’s really nice,” said Dean, looking worriedly at his clasped hands, as if there were answers cupped in there. “As soon as I saw him in the car dealership, I fell for him. It’s what I do: I see them, I fall.”
“Well, he should at least have been impressed that you could afford to buy one of those audacious cars,” snarked Lu, who prided herself on being something of a culture-jammer. The hemp T-shirt she had on bore the logo of “Buy Nothing Day”.
“I doubt it: it’s his dealership. But when we talked, he didn’t seem to care about any of that. He really listened to me. He dropped a couple of hints that he liked men, and when I asked him if he’d like to go out for a drink, he said yes right away, like he’d known all along that I was going to ask, and he wanted me to. I swear, he seems different.”
Lu left Dean’s side and launched herself into the deep, green leather chair opposite him. “Oh, they all seem different at first.”
Dean dropped his head down onto the pillow. “I know, but then they always turn out the same. It’s ridiculous, but it’s like I keep meeting the same guy over and over. He’s sweet and beautiful and interested, and three weeks later he dumps me. What’s wrong with me? Is it my self-esteem? Do I look bad close-up? Or is there some kind of karmic lesson I have to learn before it works out? That guy in California, the one who kept insisting that I liked martinis, he told me I thought too much.”
“Dean, shut up. Don’t go down that tunnel. You’re perfect.” She stood up and crossed over to give him a friendly slap on the cheek. “Just try to let this date go however it goes. You’re too attached.”
“Maybe that’s it. You know? They always say you never find it when you’re looking for it. So if I can convince myself that I don’t want it… But if I’m only doing that because I do want it—”
“Dean, shut up. I’m calling you a cab.”
~
“Hi,” said Bob, presuming to place a kiss on Dean’s cheek, “you look great tonight.”
“You’ve only seen me once before!” said Dean, then checked himself. “I mean, thank you.”
Bob sat back down in the booth he’d reserved for them. Nice restaurant, thought Dean, maybe this will become our place. In the same moment he dismissed the thought as ridiculously presumptuous.
The waiter sidled up to them without a sound. “Would you care for anything to drink?” he asked.
Bob looked to Dean briefly for permission, then ordered before Dean could respond. “Two martinis, please.”
“Uh, no,” said Dean, “just one. I’ll have a Pernod.” The waiter left. “Sorry, I don’t like martinis.”
“Oh,” apologized Bob, “I could have sworn you said you liked them.” Dean shook his head, and looked askance at the other man. His shoulders shivered, that strange unconscious reaction his mother always referred to as “a ghost on your grave” and his father insisted was a mild form of epilepsy. Such was the balance in his family between flaky superstition and over-analytical rationalism. Unfortunately, Dean found both elements in himself, usually at war.
Dean soon found himself wrapped up in sweet conversation, enjoying everything this man had to say about himself, as if Bob had rehearsed this fascinating life story just for Dean’s benefit. Each anecdote made Dean more sure that this guy was it, The One. He tried to play cool, but the excitement occasionally crawled up into his voice, making it squeak embarrassingly.
Over the appetizers, talk turned briefly to religion. Dean was uncomfortable. He didn’t know much, he said, half ashamed of his ignorance, half worried that Mister Right would turn out to be Mister Right-Wing. Dean was pretty successful by anyone’s measures, but gays who forgot their marginal roots — finding Christ, talking about the lazy poor, vanishing off to the suburbs — they made him queasy. But when it became clear that Dean had little to say on the subject, Bob dropped it, claiming that people’s beliefs were just something he’d always had a curiosity about.
“Do you think two people can be made for each other?” asked Bob.
“I don’t know,” said Dean, “I’d like to think so, but I haven’t had the best time trying to find out.” Dean self-consciously bit his lip. He didn’t want to get into this, the first date exorcism of all the past loves, the self-pitying complaints—”men are pigs” and “I hate the gay scene” — salting the ground where new love might take root. “It’s just that I haven’t had a lot of luck dating. It’s never lasted past a couple of months.”
“Except for the guy at the boat club.”
“Yeah, exc—” Dean squinted at the man. “I didn’t tell you about that.”
Bob looked panicked. “No, uh, you did, at the, uh, the showroom. I was showing you the different colours the interior comes in. You told me about him, and then you told me about the trip you took to Majorca.”
“No,” insisted Dean, “we were talking about condo prices on the waterfront. I didn’t tell you about any of that.” Dean put his napkin on the table. “What’s going on here?” He cocked his head. “I said all those things on my last date. How can you know—?” He stood up, and felt that shiver again, the worst he’d felt it since his mother and he played with a Ouija board and someone claiming to be his five-years-dead grandmother told them that his father was cheating with a woman whose name (like his assistant’s) started with the letter ‘R’.
Dean felt the world suddenly shift to one side, and he didn’t recognize a thing. “You look different, but you’re him, aren’t you? You’re the guy I had my last date with.” He leaned on his steepled fingers. “It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?”
“Dean, I don’t know what—”
“Yes you do. Look at you: you’re not even really surprised by the idea.” He sat back down and put his napkin on his lap. At last, he was going to get to the bottom of this. “Who are you, really?”
“I—”
“Really.”
Bob took a deep breath and sat back. He sighed, and dropped his hands into his lap. “I’m the devil.”
“Ha!” Dean laughed. “I know that. But who are you?”
“No, Dean, I’m the devil.”
Dean stopped smiling. “You’re the… And you’re here just for me?”
“Well, I’m your devil. But I do have the authority of being the devil, too. In the same way that you’re Go — oh, but you don’t know about that. See, we’re not made to forget our nature. Nevermind. It’s not important. The point is, I’ve been with you all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember Erin in kindergarten?”
“The one with the really straight hair who I played in the sandbox with. God, I’d forgotten all about her.”
“That was me.”
“You? But, you were a girl.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t quite figured out that part about you yet. So I was stuck being Erin for a year until she ‘moved away’ in first grade.” He sat forward, folding his hands together and leaning close, a familiarity that suddenly seemed warranted. “Who else do you remember? The ones you had a desperate crush on, who broke your heart.”
“Todd, my best friend in grade school.”
“Yup.”
“Well, that explains how you got the Yoda number 142 from the second Empire Strikes Back set. Nobody could get that card. Oh, and the McDonalds Monopoly sticker that you won all that money for.”
Bob smiled. “Everyone knew they didn’t print Ventnor Avenue. I was worried that would be a giveaway.”
“Stu, John, Rob…” he said, searching his memory and rhyming off names.
Bob nodded at them all. “Remember the guy on the streetcar last week?”
“No way! The one with the dog?”
“Yeah. Me. I know you like dogs.”
“Right,” said Dean, “so you’d know about mine, the one who ran away.”
“Dean, I was that dog.”
“What about my dad? Were you him, too?”
“No. He was just a bastard.”
“Oh.” Dean took it in, then smiled, strangely relieved: it wasn’t the answer he was looking for, but at least he finally had one. But there was still a piece missing. “Why?” he asked. “Why bother?”
“Well, you’ve heard the old ‘fallen from grace’ explanation for us, right?” Dean nodded. “That’s God’s half of the story. We were in love with him. But he was such a damned prude that it made him uncomfortable. So he started shutting us out. Finally we had to confront him with our feelings, and look what we got in return: complete and utter rejection. Cast out.” Bob looked at the candle on the table, then held his hand over it. His eyes tightened as the flame bent and licked his palm, but it did no damage to the flesh. “God is love, right? So if we can get you to destroy yourself over love, well, that’s the ultimate revenge, isn’t it?”
“So you want me to — what? — kill myself?” asked Dean, concerned.
“If you like. Or just live in misery. Your choice.”
Dean looked around, reorienting himself and looking for the exit.
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you? Not only would that be rude, it wouldn’t work. I’ll just keep showing up, right when you’ve forgotten and started hoping again.”
Dean looked despondent. He sprawled back in the booth. His mind raced for a way out. “What do you get if I give in? Why do you bother?”
Bob looked him tenderly in the eye. “I get to be with you. If you love one of these God-creatures, we lose. We’re shut out again. But everybody’s got a thing — drinking, gambling, love—”
“And that thing is you.” Dean’s spirits lightened. “You love me, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have spent my life on you if I didn’t. I was made just for you.”
“So what if we just stayed together? If you and I are parts of the devil and God, who’s to say they’re not the same thing deep down, too? Maybe it’s my turn to haunt you.”
Bob found himself without words for a change, without a plan. “Well, I—”
“It’s what we both want in the end, isn’t it?” Dean gave a wily smile and held out his hand. Bob tentatively reached out and took it in his. He tried to speak, but was too choked up. “Come on,” said Dean, “I seem to recall you being pretty good in bed.”
Handsome Devil
Dean checked himself in the mirror. Again. He straightened his tie, then forcefully pulled it off. “I’m thirty years old and I don’t know how to dress myself!”
“Dean, it’s just a date,” said Lu, his neighbour from across the hall, who had also become his best friend. She flipped his collar out over the lapels of his brown sportscoat, then licked her hand and patted down a reprobate tuft of his black hair. Dean flinched at the touch of her licked hand. “Don’t worry — family germs,” she said. Then she led him away from the mirror, over to his puffy cream-coloured couch. Lu sat beside him, awkwardly propped there because of a large pillow she knew she was not to move: it covered a reminder-stain of his failed attempt to own a pet.
“He’s really nice,” said Dean, looking worriedly at his clasped hands, as if there were answers cupped in there. “As soon as I saw him in the car dealership, I fell for him. It’s what I do: I see them, I fall.”
“Well, he should at least have been impressed that you could afford to buy one of those audacious cars,” snarked Lu, who prided herself on being something of a culture-jammer. The hemp T-shirt she had on bore the logo of “Buy Nothing Day”.
“I doubt it: it’s his dealership. But when we talked, he didn’t seem to care about any of that. He really listened to me. He dropped a couple of hints that he liked men, and when I asked him if he’d like to go out for a drink, he said yes right away, like he’d known all along that I was going to ask, and he wanted me to. I swear, he seems different.”
Lu left Dean’s side and launched herself into the deep, green leather chair opposite him. “Oh, they all seem different at first.”
Dean dropped his head down onto the pillow. “I know, but then they always turn out the same. It’s ridiculous, but it’s like I keep meeting the same guy over and over. He’s sweet and beautiful and interested, and three weeks later he dumps me. What’s wrong with me? Is it my self-esteem? Do I look bad close-up? Or is there some kind of karmic lesson I have to learn before it works out? That guy in California, the one who kept insisting that I liked martinis, he told me I thought too much.”
“Dean, shut up. Don’t go down that tunnel. You’re perfect.” She stood up and crossed over to give him a friendly slap on the cheek. “Just try to let this date go however it goes. You’re too attached.”
“Maybe that’s it. You know? They always say you never find it when you’re looking for it. So if I can convince myself that I don’t want it… But if I’m only doing that because I do want it—”
“Dean, shut up. I’m calling you a cab.”
~
“Hi,” said Bob, presuming to place a kiss on Dean’s cheek, “you look great tonight.”
“You’ve only seen me once before!” said Dean, then checked himself. “I mean, thank you.”
Bob sat back down in the booth he’d reserved for them. Nice restaurant, thought Dean, maybe this will become our place. In the same moment he dismissed the thought as ridiculously presumptuous.
The waiter sidled up to them without a sound. “Would you care for anything to drink?” he asked.
Bob looked to Dean briefly for permission, then ordered before Dean could respond. “Two martinis, please.”
“Uh, no,” said Dean, “just one. I’ll have a Pernod.” The waiter left. “Sorry, I don’t like martinis.”
“Oh,” apologized Bob, “I could have sworn you said you liked them.” Dean shook his head, and looked askance at the other man. His shoulders shivered, that strange unconscious reaction his mother always referred to as “a ghost on your grave” and his father insisted was a mild form of epilepsy. Such was the balance in his family between flaky superstition and over-analytical rationalism. Unfortunately, Dean found both elements in himself, usually at war.
Dean soon found himself wrapped up in sweet conversation, enjoying everything this man had to say about himself, as if Bob had rehearsed this fascinating life story just for Dean’s benefit. Each anecdote made Dean more sure that this guy was it, The One. He tried to play cool, but the excitement occasionally crawled up into his voice, making it squeak embarrassingly.
Over the appetizers, talk turned briefly to religion. Dean was uncomfortable. He didn’t know much, he said, half ashamed of his ignorance, half worried that Mister Right would turn out to be Mister Right-Wing. Dean was pretty successful by anyone’s measures, but gays who forgot their marginal roots — finding Christ, talking about the lazy poor, vanishing off to the suburbs — they made him queasy. But when it became clear that Dean had little to say on the subject, Bob dropped it, claiming that people’s beliefs were just something he’d always had a curiosity about.
“Do you think two people can be made for each other?” asked Bob.
“I don’t know,” said Dean, “I’d like to think so, but I haven’t had the best time trying to find out.” Dean self-consciously bit his lip. He didn’t want to get into this, the first date exorcism of all the past loves, the self-pitying complaints—”men are pigs” and “I hate the gay scene” — salting the ground where new love might take root. “It’s just that I haven’t had a lot of luck dating. It’s never lasted past a couple of months.”
“Except for the guy at the boat club.”
“Yeah, exc—” Dean squinted at the man. “I didn’t tell you about that.”
Bob looked panicked. “No, uh, you did, at the, uh, the showroom. I was showing you the different colours the interior comes in. You told me about him, and then you told me about the trip you took to Majorca.”
“No,” insisted Dean, “we were talking about condo prices on the waterfront. I didn’t tell you about any of that.” Dean put his napkin on the table. “What’s going on here?” He cocked his head. “I said all those things on my last date. How can you know—?” He stood up, and felt that shiver again, the worst he’d felt it since his mother and he played with a Ouija board and someone claiming to be his five-years-dead grandmother told them that his father was cheating with a woman whose name (like his assistant’s) started with the letter ‘R’.
Dean felt the world suddenly shift to one side, and he didn’t recognize a thing. “You look different, but you’re him, aren’t you? You’re the guy I had my last date with.” He leaned on his steepled fingers. “It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?”
“Dean, I don’t know what—”
“Yes you do. Look at you: you’re not even really surprised by the idea.” He sat back down and put his napkin on his lap. At last, he was going to get to the bottom of this. “Who are you, really?”
“I—”
“Really.”
Bob took a deep breath and sat back. He sighed, and dropped his hands into his lap. “I’m the devil.”
“Ha!” Dean laughed. “I know that. But who are you?”
“No, Dean, I’m the devil.”
Dean stopped smiling. “You’re the… And you’re here just for me?”
“Well, I’m your devil. But I do have the authority of being the devil, too. In the same way that you’re Go — oh, but you don’t know about that. See, we’re not made to forget our nature. Nevermind. It’s not important. The point is, I’ve been with you all along.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember Erin in kindergarten?”
“The one with the really straight hair who I played in the sandbox with. God, I’d forgotten all about her.”
“That was me.”
“You? But, you were a girl.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t quite figured out that part about you yet. So I was stuck being Erin for a year until she ‘moved away’ in first grade.” He sat forward, folding his hands together and leaning close, a familiarity that suddenly seemed warranted. “Who else do you remember? The ones you had a desperate crush on, who broke your heart.”
“Todd, my best friend in grade school.”
“Yup.”
“Well, that explains how you got the Yoda number 142 from the second Empire Strikes Back set. Nobody could get that card. Oh, and the McDonalds Monopoly sticker that you won all that money for.”
Bob smiled. “Everyone knew they didn’t print Ventnor Avenue. I was worried that would be a giveaway.”
“Stu, John, Rob…” he said, searching his memory and rhyming off names.
Bob nodded at them all. “Remember the guy on the streetcar last week?”
“No way! The one with the dog?”
“Yeah. Me. I know you like dogs.”
“Right,” said Dean, “so you’d know about mine, the one who ran away.”
“Dean, I was that dog.”
“What about my dad? Were you him, too?”
“No. He was just a bastard.”
“Oh.” Dean took it in, then smiled, strangely relieved: it wasn’t the answer he was looking for, but at least he finally had one. But there was still a piece missing. “Why?” he asked. “Why bother?”
“Well, you’ve heard the old ‘fallen from grace’ explanation for us, right?” Dean nodded. “That’s God’s half of the story. We were in love with him. But he was such a damned prude that it made him uncomfortable. So he started shutting us out. Finally we had to confront him with our feelings, and look what we got in return: complete and utter rejection. Cast out.” Bob looked at the candle on the table, then held his hand over it. His eyes tightened as the flame bent and licked his palm, but it did no damage to the flesh. “God is love, right? So if we can get you to destroy yourself over love, well, that’s the ultimate revenge, isn’t it?”
“So you want me to — what? — kill myself?” asked Dean, concerned.
“If you like. Or just live in misery. Your choice.”
Dean looked around, reorienting himself and looking for the exit.
“You’re not thinking of leaving, are you? Not only would that be rude, it wouldn’t work. I’ll just keep showing up, right when you’ve forgotten and started hoping again.”
Dean looked despondent. He sprawled back in the booth. His mind raced for a way out. “What do you get if I give in? Why do you bother?”
Bob looked him tenderly in the eye. “I get to be with you. If you love one of these God-creatures, we lose. We’re shut out again. But everybody’s got a thing — drinking, gambling, love—”
“And that thing is you.” Dean’s spirits lightened. “You love me, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have spent my life on you if I didn’t. I was made just for you.”
“So what if we just stayed together? If you and I are parts of the devil and God, who’s to say they’re not the same thing deep down, too? Maybe it’s my turn to haunt you.”
Bob found himself without words for a change, without a plan. “Well, I—”
“It’s what we both want in the end, isn’t it?” Dean gave a wily smile and held out his hand. Bob tentatively reached out and took it in his. He tried to speak, but was too choked up. “Come on,” said Dean, “I seem to recall you being pretty good in bed.”
Lighthearted
March 2, 2009 01 PM
| audiobook, short story
After doubleZero came out, I had the good fortune to do my first readings. Being a former actor, I like being in front of people, sharing work with them. Writing novels is a solitary business, and it’s hard to know if you’re on the right track sometimes, so it’s good to have a chance to present material and get an instant response. When I was asked to do my first reading for the Toronto Dollar Reading Series, I wrote my first piece that was specifically for presentation, instead of reading a disjointed chunk of book. And they gave me the series’ second prize for it, too, which was sweet.
Lighthearted
Greg shut down his computer, locked the filing cabinet in his desk, and nearly vomited. His work for the week was finished, it was six o’clock on Friday, and now he had no choice but to go out into the world.
Tonight, in particular, that meant going to a party. A party full of gay men. Technically, the term applied to him, too, but in practice he was a failure at gay.
He took his jacket from the rack near the office door. A perfect example, he thought, this jacket is at least three years out of style. He had no style. His apartment was messy, he owned no cologne, used $2.99 Dep in his hair to hold it to one side, and was dismal at making conversation. And now he was going to a party — straight from work, no shower.
He slipped his passcard in the elevator panel and pressed ‘G’. The old car bumped as it reached the ground floor. As he walked out of the building, he turned back to look at it. This was one of his biggest joys, working in the Concourse Building. While his office inside was a plain honeycomb of cubicles with fluorescent lights, the exterior of the building always struck him as a marvel. Its dark gray Deco façade stretched up away from his eyes, deeply ridged with grooves and punctuated with diamond-shaped accents. The archway over the building’s entrance always held his imagination. The mosaic tiles portrayed symbols of Canadian industry — plow, plane, wheat, etc. — in basic colours over gold. It wasn’t that the piece was all that stunning, but for Greg it represented a forward-looking hope.
He turned and walked along Adelaide. The summer evening was warm, temperature unchanged even though the sun was burning down to an ember on the horizon behind him.
The hope of industry, he thought to himself, looking at the buildings around him. Their functional, bathroom mirror surfaces didn’t strike him as particularly visionary or hopeful. In the other direction, he saw a building that looked like a plug-in air freshener. Yuck. All this boxed-in life.
He smiled to himself. I should talk, he thought. Everything he did was part of an attempt to stave off the messiness of the world: work was messy, family was messy, people were messy.
And now he was going to a party. He’d promised his coworker Jean he’d go. She said there would be lots of gay men there. Great. “What a waste,” they always said behind his back in his mind, “so nice-looking, but so boring, so badly put-together.”
The sky overhead slowly turned a dark turquoise, and the streetlights came on. What if he had it all wrong? he thought. What if he met someone tonight who he really liked? His stomach lurched again. He stopped walking, and considered not going to the party. He looked back down the street.
And the streetlight went out. Right when he looked at it. Greg laughed to himself. He’d seen that a couple of times in his life. It was just a coincidence, he knew, but still neat.
The sight was enough to lift his mood. He kept walking to the party.
~
“Greg Stiver,” said Jean, dragging him across the room to face another man, “this is Vince Arturo. He’s an electrician. And you use electricity. See how much you have in common?” And with that, she left them alone.
The two men laughed at the awkward moment that followed. Greg felt a sensation like a current flash through his chest as the man looked into his eyes. Vince broke the space between them with the offer of a handshake. Then he carried them easily off into conversation.
They fell away from the rest of the party, talking on the patio by themselves. Greg found himself thinking about all the people he knew who were getting married off this summer. It was a thirty thing, he figured. But why couldn’t he meet someone, too, just like this?
Vince had to go, he announced, standing up, stretching his legs and groaning. They’d been sitting on the metal chairs for hours. He had a contract to get to early in the morning, he said.
Greg stood, too. He reached into his back pocket, pulling out his very fat wallet (also not gay, he’d been told). He took out one of his business cards for Vince. “There’s my phone number and my e-mail address. Oh,” he said, pulling a pen out from his pocket, scribbling on the card as he rested it against his wallet, “this is my home number.”
“Great,” said Vince. Greg paused expectantly. “Oh, I’ll give you my number.” Greg pulled another card from his wallet and handed Vince the pen.
“Maybe we can get together sometime,” said Greg.
“Yeah. Well, I have to be honest,” said Vince. Greg’s stomach depressurized, waiting for whatever news was to follow. “I’m pretty busy. I don’t have a lot of time with this latest condo contract.” He smiled. “But, yeah, that would be good. I’ll give you a call.”
They shook hands, and Vince left the party. Greg quickly found himself in “polite time” — the time between realizing he wanted to leave and when he actually did. With a quick goodbye to Jean, he slipped out.
The air was cool as Greg walked home. He took a shortcut through the Annex, knowing that there was a street with lilacs on it whose smell he always enjoyed. He played with the card in his pocket with Vince’s number on it, then took it out. He was being stupid, he told himself, getting all excited over this guy.
Just then, the streetlight ahead of him went out. He stopped, and looked back. The light behind him flickered, then went dark, too.
Greg put the card away and hurried home.
~
Greg pressed the “Check Mail” button again. The short, tinny ping told him there was no mail, just as it had when he’d come into the office on the weekend to check. Maybe Vince didn’t have e-mail. But he probably did have a phone.
He tapped a pen against his finger, then threw it down on his desk. He checked his phone for messages, already knowing there were none. Exasperated with himself, he left for lunch.
Prime Time Donuts didn’t make the fanciest lunch on the block, but that suited Greg just fine. One of their cellophane-wrapped sandwiches suited his appetite and his budget. Besides, the shop was stuck in the corner of the office building; convenient, albeit the architectural equivalent of a tennis visor on the queen.
He felt deranged, thinking so much about this stranger. But no act of reason could unseat Vince from his mind. It was getting distracting all this—
He snapped out of his reverie and checked his watch. Seven-thirty; it had stopped. He looked at the wall clock: one-twenty. He cursed to himself and hurried back to his desk. He was caught up on work, but maybe someone might have thought he’d be back at one…
There were no messages. He checked his e-mail, only to receive a “Cannot connect — network error” message.
“Jean,” he called. Jean’s head popped over his carpeted wall. “Are you having any problems with the network?”
“Nope. It’s fine,” she said.
“I’m having a—” he began, then the fluorescent light in his cubby flickered and went out. “I’m having a problem with… with things.” He recounted his experiences of the past few days, being careful to acknowledge that the connections could all be in his head.
“Streetlight Interference effect,” she said flatly, “or SLI. I’ve read about it. You’re too old for it to be the poltergeist effect. Or it could be an alien implant. Have you ever—?”
“Nevermind,” he said, “I’m just going to go home for the afternoon. I’m feeling a bit stressed.”
~
He flipped his Metropass at the streetcar driver. The car lurched forward and he stumbled to a seat. After five blocks, the whirring streetcar engine made a thunk-thunk noise and the car slid to a halt. The driver left the car and tugged at the power cable, but Greg knew there was nothing wrong. He’d already left the car and started walking. Seconds later, the streetcar drove by.
As he passed the Canada Life tower, he stopped to look up at the lightbulb-pyramid weather indicator at its peak. The temperature was holding steady, it showed. Then it blinked off.
Greg walked through the old entrance of the University Theatre. “Is Vince here?” he asked one of the men working on the condo development. The man pointed further into the concrete and drywall mess. Greg waved hi when he saw Vince, who looked confused at first, then smiled.
“Sorry to bother you here at work, but I’m having a bit of an emergency.” Vince led him out to a park behind the development and sat him on a big concrete slab that served as a bench. Greg outlined his problem, leaving out the part that implicated Vince.
“So, in your professional opinion,” he finished, “does this make any sense?”
“No, none. That’s impossible,” said Vince. “It’s just coincidence. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He stood. “I have to get back to work. But why don’t we get together for dinner? Something really touristy. I know, meet me at the CN Tower restaurant at eight.”
Greg agreed, forgetting about the implications of the choice.
~
“This place — has — a lot — of stairs,” said Greg, sitting down. The view outside changed slowly as the restaurant revolved around the tower.
“Why didn’t you take the—?”
“It was broken when I got there,” interrupted Greg. Now he knew he sounded like a kook. He might as well keep going, he figured. “I’m going crazy,” he said. “I keep thinking about—” he started, and the tiny halogen light overhead made a plink sound and went dark. Greg was getting used to this, and continued on without a beat. “I keep thinking about you.”
Like fresh ice cubes in a drink, the lights around them made tinkling sounds and winked out. Corners of darkness unfolded in the bar like an origami box.
“I’m really,” he stammered. He leaned across the table, “I’m really interested in you!” he exclaimed. The bar sank into night. With a metallic groan, the restaurant shuddered to a standstill.
Darkness spread like a ripple across the city below, snuffing out the lights in the buildings and along the streets.
As his eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight, Greg could see Vince’s astonished smile. “Could you,” Vince said slowly and carefully, “could you keep it like this for a minute?” Greg laughed, and Vince took his hand. “I feel the same way,” he said.
The light over their head popped back to life. Vince led Greg away from the table, out of the restaurant, and into the dark city.
Everything they passed came back to light.
Lighthearted
Greg shut down his computer, locked the filing cabinet in his desk, and nearly vomited. His work for the week was finished, it was six o’clock on Friday, and now he had no choice but to go out into the world.
Tonight, in particular, that meant going to a party. A party full of gay men. Technically, the term applied to him, too, but in practice he was a failure at gay.
He took his jacket from the rack near the office door. A perfect example, he thought, this jacket is at least three years out of style. He had no style. His apartment was messy, he owned no cologne, used $2.99 Dep in his hair to hold it to one side, and was dismal at making conversation. And now he was going to a party — straight from work, no shower.
He slipped his passcard in the elevator panel and pressed ‘G’. The old car bumped as it reached the ground floor. As he walked out of the building, he turned back to look at it. This was one of his biggest joys, working in the Concourse Building. While his office inside was a plain honeycomb of cubicles with fluorescent lights, the exterior of the building always struck him as a marvel. Its dark gray Deco façade stretched up away from his eyes, deeply ridged with grooves and punctuated with diamond-shaped accents. The archway over the building’s entrance always held his imagination. The mosaic tiles portrayed symbols of Canadian industry — plow, plane, wheat, etc. — in basic colours over gold. It wasn’t that the piece was all that stunning, but for Greg it represented a forward-looking hope.
He turned and walked along Adelaide. The summer evening was warm, temperature unchanged even though the sun was burning down to an ember on the horizon behind him.
The hope of industry, he thought to himself, looking at the buildings around him. Their functional, bathroom mirror surfaces didn’t strike him as particularly visionary or hopeful. In the other direction, he saw a building that looked like a plug-in air freshener. Yuck. All this boxed-in life.
He smiled to himself. I should talk, he thought. Everything he did was part of an attempt to stave off the messiness of the world: work was messy, family was messy, people were messy.
And now he was going to a party. He’d promised his coworker Jean he’d go. She said there would be lots of gay men there. Great. “What a waste,” they always said behind his back in his mind, “so nice-looking, but so boring, so badly put-together.”
The sky overhead slowly turned a dark turquoise, and the streetlights came on. What if he had it all wrong? he thought. What if he met someone tonight who he really liked? His stomach lurched again. He stopped walking, and considered not going to the party. He looked back down the street.
And the streetlight went out. Right when he looked at it. Greg laughed to himself. He’d seen that a couple of times in his life. It was just a coincidence, he knew, but still neat.
The sight was enough to lift his mood. He kept walking to the party.
~
“Greg Stiver,” said Jean, dragging him across the room to face another man, “this is Vince Arturo. He’s an electrician. And you use electricity. See how much you have in common?” And with that, she left them alone.
The two men laughed at the awkward moment that followed. Greg felt a sensation like a current flash through his chest as the man looked into his eyes. Vince broke the space between them with the offer of a handshake. Then he carried them easily off into conversation.
They fell away from the rest of the party, talking on the patio by themselves. Greg found himself thinking about all the people he knew who were getting married off this summer. It was a thirty thing, he figured. But why couldn’t he meet someone, too, just like this?
Vince had to go, he announced, standing up, stretching his legs and groaning. They’d been sitting on the metal chairs for hours. He had a contract to get to early in the morning, he said.
Greg stood, too. He reached into his back pocket, pulling out his very fat wallet (also not gay, he’d been told). He took out one of his business cards for Vince. “There’s my phone number and my e-mail address. Oh,” he said, pulling a pen out from his pocket, scribbling on the card as he rested it against his wallet, “this is my home number.”
“Great,” said Vince. Greg paused expectantly. “Oh, I’ll give you my number.” Greg pulled another card from his wallet and handed Vince the pen.
“Maybe we can get together sometime,” said Greg.
“Yeah. Well, I have to be honest,” said Vince. Greg’s stomach depressurized, waiting for whatever news was to follow. “I’m pretty busy. I don’t have a lot of time with this latest condo contract.” He smiled. “But, yeah, that would be good. I’ll give you a call.”
They shook hands, and Vince left the party. Greg quickly found himself in “polite time” — the time between realizing he wanted to leave and when he actually did. With a quick goodbye to Jean, he slipped out.
The air was cool as Greg walked home. He took a shortcut through the Annex, knowing that there was a street with lilacs on it whose smell he always enjoyed. He played with the card in his pocket with Vince’s number on it, then took it out. He was being stupid, he told himself, getting all excited over this guy.
Just then, the streetlight ahead of him went out. He stopped, and looked back. The light behind him flickered, then went dark, too.
Greg put the card away and hurried home.
~
Greg pressed the “Check Mail” button again. The short, tinny ping told him there was no mail, just as it had when he’d come into the office on the weekend to check. Maybe Vince didn’t have e-mail. But he probably did have a phone.
He tapped a pen against his finger, then threw it down on his desk. He checked his phone for messages, already knowing there were none. Exasperated with himself, he left for lunch.
Prime Time Donuts didn’t make the fanciest lunch on the block, but that suited Greg just fine. One of their cellophane-wrapped sandwiches suited his appetite and his budget. Besides, the shop was stuck in the corner of the office building; convenient, albeit the architectural equivalent of a tennis visor on the queen.
He felt deranged, thinking so much about this stranger. But no act of reason could unseat Vince from his mind. It was getting distracting all this—
He snapped out of his reverie and checked his watch. Seven-thirty; it had stopped. He looked at the wall clock: one-twenty. He cursed to himself and hurried back to his desk. He was caught up on work, but maybe someone might have thought he’d be back at one…
There were no messages. He checked his e-mail, only to receive a “Cannot connect — network error” message.
“Jean,” he called. Jean’s head popped over his carpeted wall. “Are you having any problems with the network?”
“Nope. It’s fine,” she said.
“I’m having a—” he began, then the fluorescent light in his cubby flickered and went out. “I’m having a problem with… with things.” He recounted his experiences of the past few days, being careful to acknowledge that the connections could all be in his head.
“Streetlight Interference effect,” she said flatly, “or SLI. I’ve read about it. You’re too old for it to be the poltergeist effect. Or it could be an alien implant. Have you ever—?”
“Nevermind,” he said, “I’m just going to go home for the afternoon. I’m feeling a bit stressed.”
~
He flipped his Metropass at the streetcar driver. The car lurched forward and he stumbled to a seat. After five blocks, the whirring streetcar engine made a thunk-thunk noise and the car slid to a halt. The driver left the car and tugged at the power cable, but Greg knew there was nothing wrong. He’d already left the car and started walking. Seconds later, the streetcar drove by.
As he passed the Canada Life tower, he stopped to look up at the lightbulb-pyramid weather indicator at its peak. The temperature was holding steady, it showed. Then it blinked off.
Greg walked through the old entrance of the University Theatre. “Is Vince here?” he asked one of the men working on the condo development. The man pointed further into the concrete and drywall mess. Greg waved hi when he saw Vince, who looked confused at first, then smiled.
“Sorry to bother you here at work, but I’m having a bit of an emergency.” Vince led him out to a park behind the development and sat him on a big concrete slab that served as a bench. Greg outlined his problem, leaving out the part that implicated Vince.
“So, in your professional opinion,” he finished, “does this make any sense?”
“No, none. That’s impossible,” said Vince. “It’s just coincidence. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He stood. “I have to get back to work. But why don’t we get together for dinner? Something really touristy. I know, meet me at the CN Tower restaurant at eight.”
Greg agreed, forgetting about the implications of the choice.
~
“This place — has — a lot — of stairs,” said Greg, sitting down. The view outside changed slowly as the restaurant revolved around the tower.
“Why didn’t you take the—?”
“It was broken when I got there,” interrupted Greg. Now he knew he sounded like a kook. He might as well keep going, he figured. “I’m going crazy,” he said. “I keep thinking about—” he started, and the tiny halogen light overhead made a plink sound and went dark. Greg was getting used to this, and continued on without a beat. “I keep thinking about you.”
Like fresh ice cubes in a drink, the lights around them made tinkling sounds and winked out. Corners of darkness unfolded in the bar like an origami box.
“I’m really,” he stammered. He leaned across the table, “I’m really interested in you!” he exclaimed. The bar sank into night. With a metallic groan, the restaurant shuddered to a standstill.
Darkness spread like a ripple across the city below, snuffing out the lights in the buildings and along the streets.
As his eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight, Greg could see Vince’s astonished smile. “Could you,” Vince said slowly and carefully, “could you keep it like this for a minute?” Greg laughed, and Vince took his hand. “I feel the same way,” he said.
The light over their head popped back to life. Vince led Greg away from the table, out of the restaurant, and into the dark city.
Everything they passed came back to light.
