by Shani Mootoo
Feigning levity, he tells her that in Guanagaspar, a gardener was a man who came to work barefoot on his bicycle that was held together by string and a prayer, who, before pulling out weeds and shoring up beds, washed his employer’s car and after scrubbed the bathroom floor and tiles.
Kay is indulgent, arching her eyebrows, looking directly into his eyes. She interrupts, points to her empty glass. Before he can respond, still in the palm of his own reminiscence, she is up and away while telling him to continue, that she is listening. He hears the oven door opened, the foil pulled back, the door pushed shut again. The refrigerator door. A squeal of a cork from a bottle being pried up. He takes the opportunity to finish his salad. With this salad, wine goes back to being the taste of grasses and garden bugs. He must recommend to the membership of the Once a Taxi Driver Wine Tasting and General Tomfoolery Club that they revise their politics. She is right. They must give the Europeans a second chance.
“This is indeed one heck of a salad,” Harry shouts toward the kitchen. His words and voice are unfamiliar to him. With the last drop of wine in his glass thrown back, the flavor of garlic from the salad dressing stands erect, sweet, at the back of his tongue. She is here, bottle in hand, a smile of gratitude for the compliment. She is about to pour herself a glass but quickly recovers and sets the cold bottle, a different white, on a cork coaster. He obliges. Even in such light, one can easily discern that this one is brighter, yellower, than the last. He is eager to taste it. Seeing his empty plate, she clears the table of the half-full salad bowl and the salad plates. He could get up and bring in the fish and the corn pie, set out dinner plates. But his legs are heavy, and besides, he enjoys the sound of her, not Kay exactly, but a woman, the sound of a woman rummaging about his kitchen. He thinks of her in the Volkswagen van, and she is not a woman who has had lovers in the past, a woman looking for another lover, but a peaceful woman taking a long drive, a little holiday, by herself, and he wants to be in that van with her, she who would make his supper, put sugar in his tea and stir it, hang his pants, careful of the creases, and put slippers by the bed for him, so that in the morning when he awakens, he can be spared the rudeness of a cold floor.
Yet when she returns, places the fish and the corn pie on trivets, and sits in front of him, a sadness washes across him—if only it were Rose sitting across from him on this night. And as it comes, so it passes.
Kay sees the far-off look in his eyes. She puts the glass to her lips and swallows. Taps her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“Honey.”
Harry feels a rush of wine, blood, and confusion.
“Taste it. Honey.”
That old trick. He is surprised by his relief and by his disappointment.
“Where is this from?” He attempts a recovery from his confusion.
“Italy also. Different, though, eh? You were saying?” She speaks so innocently, but surely she meant to provoke him.
This time she scoops a serving of corn pie onto his plate, then onto hers. She serves him fish, then herself. She learns fast.
Taking a mouthful of fish, she clutches her chest with one hand and wrings the other. Harry pushes his chair back, ready to spring to some as yet undetermined action.
“Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry. This is heaven. It’s so tender,” she says, her mouth full of food. He relaxes and grins with pride. She prods with the tines of the fork at the fish, drawing out little shrimp and poking at cubes of cassava. “What is this? Potato?”
“Cassava,” he says. She has never had cassava before. She marvels, and he is aware of the lightness of her voice, so different from the sturdiness of her actions. She asks what the strong taste is. “Cilantro, or it could be ginger,” he tells her, not sure which she might be referring to. He takes a fork full of her corn pie. It is creamy and sweet. Like pudding. He tells her it is the kind of texture and soft taste one could reach for several times a day, just for its soothing. There is red bell pepper in it, not an ingredient he is used to.
They eat in silence. He sips the wine. Cilantro and red bell pepper, long since swallowed, seem to reemerge, to burst open fully, like blossoms.
They glance at each other, smiling.
“I was thinking. This beats being with my daughter’s family and my grandchildren—much as I adore them all.”
“Apples and oranges.”
“Guavas and cashews. Handfuls of them.”
This woman is good company, Harry admits to himself. She gives as easily as she takes. So ready to play, so eager to be played with. He glances at his watch. Quarter past nine. Quarter past midnight in Guanagaspar. He had not wanted to miss the moment of Guanagaspar’s New Year celebration. But it has already passed. He has no clue as to what Rose and Shem might be doing. He wonders what the maid would have told Rose about his telephone call. He wishes again that he had not made that call. He imagines them passing the evening quietly, wind in the coconut trees and waves from the Caribbean Sea crashing on their beachfront property. Perhaps they went to their seaside neighbors for a celebration, or had friends up from town for the holiday, or their son and daughter-in-law and the grandchildren are passing the night in the beach house with them. No doubt they would sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Even if they were by themselves, over the sound of waves and wind, they surely would have listened on the radio for the New Year countdown, or watched the TV with its snowy ocean-side reception, and perhaps hummed along with the anthem. First the slow, nostalgic version, and then the same song, fast-paced, played by a pop and steel-pan band. Surely she must have hugged and kissed her husband, wished him a happy New Year. And he her. Would they have held each other in a long embrace? How many hopes for the future passed between them? He tells Kay that he feels a draft and excuses himself as if to check that the front door is shut tight. Kay prepares to rise.
“Don’t get up,” he says, pressing her shoulders as he passes. He goes to the darkened verandah and spends a handful of seconds watching the silver sea and night sky colored a brilliant orange by the lights of the distant city that is awaiting its midnight craziness. He sends wishes to Rose. He imagines he hears hers to him.
He returns to the dining table.
Kay asks if he is alright. He assures her he is, and quickly brushing her caring away as if it were one of those wool hairs come undone from her sweater, he begins to relate how he found his house.
“So, it was fall, late October. I was in Vancouver, nearing the end of a shift. There used to be a local radio show—Bringin’ Home the West Indies—I was inside my idle cab on Eighth and Granville, listening to a prerecorded cricket test match. England and the West Indies.”
He was never interested in the game of cricket, he tells her as he tries to shake the longing. Not even as an adult in Guanagaspar. When the cricket season began, the entire country caught cricket fever—the entire country, it seemed, but him.
“I find it to be a game that demands a great deal of patience, even from a spectator. Ali used to play.” Seeing his look of confusion, she adds, “My husband.”
“No, no. I know he was your husband. I am only surprised. I didn’t know Iranians played cricket.”
“Immigrants play cricket. He played with men from India, and from the islands—your islands. I went to matches with him, but no matter how many times he or anyone tried to explain the game to me, I remained baffled. It was such a slow game. I didn’t mind the get-togethers and the parties after, though.”
“There! We have something in common. I myself never received the calling to stand around in sweltering heat waiting for a ball to come my way. But the thing is, up here I was always yearning for anything from back home. So I used to listen to the commentary on the radio, and on that particular afternoon I was in my cab, waiting for a fare and listening.”
He is relating an evening etched in his memory, an evening she wants to hear about, and he is aware of the thinness of her lambs’-wool sweater. He congratulates himself on having had the wisdom to not reveal that in his life, there
is indeed a woman. However peripheral she has been lately. Thousands of little wisps of wool hairs rise out of the fabric, over the entire sweater. He imagines them against the palm of his hand. What would Anil say if he knew she—this white woman, the liquor-store lady that they tease him about—was having New Year’s Eve dinner with him? Anil would be happy for him. That’s the kind of friend Anil has been. Her sweater clings, showing the indentation of her brassiere where it cuts into her flesh. Glancing discreetly at the place where her bra straps would be, he imagines her flesh—solid, not flabby.
He attempts to draw a picture for her with his hands, spreading them on the table and in the air: the buildings of downtown, fewer then than now, the red sun gradually bathing the city in a fiery gold light. He is speaking, but he is distracted by the solidity of her body. He wants to tell her his story more than ever. He describes every detail, and she listens, her eyes fixed on his face, nodding, as she puts her fork, tipped with his fish, into her mouth, her eyes never leaving his. He talks and at the same time watches her breasts, her face, her hands, the knife in one, the fork in the other, cutting squares of corn pie. Such tenderness in her small gestures.
The red sun, he tells her, lit the panes of glass on the buildings, rendering each a little framed fire. On the far side of the water, the West Vancouver hills flared as if a spotlight had been thrown on them. The whites and pastels of buildings on that far shore jumped out against deep green trees.
Suddenly a man grabbed hold of the door of his cab and, without waiting for any indication from him, yanked the door open and pushed a woman in. The man slid in beside her and said, “Across the bridge. Elderberry Bay. It’s up the Sound.” That was a long drive. They would have racked up an enormous fare. The man wore a strong cologne, sandalwood and tobacco overpowering the stubborn scent of the thick plastic sheeting that covered the backseat. Traffic was heavy heading toward the bridge. If Harry could have turned them down, if it weren’t illegal to refuse a fare, he would have; it was unlikely that he would pick up a return fare on that side of the bridge.
Kay has already helped herself a second time. She says that the meal is delicious, such a lovely evening and it isn’t even midnight yet. Harry sniffs his wine: a Guanagasparian December’s lash of seaside wind, the smell of oily sea salt.
“And?” Kay encourages, propping her chin on the back of one hand.
He decides to take a liberty. With a wink, as if imparting a confidence, he tells her that it used to be, in his taxi-driving days, a joke among cabbies that people from this side of the Lion’s Gate Bridge weren’t given to engaging in conversation with their drivers or being as familiar with them as passengers from the city’s core. Those types would usually look out the windows absently or be hidden behind the daily paper for the entire trip.
“Now, not to interrupt your story, but don’t you go thinking I am one of them,” Kay says. “I live here because I work here. If I know anything about the high life, wine and that sort of thing, it’s because I had to learn so I could serve this side’s crowd.” She feigns defensiveness. “Before I began working at the store, I knew nothing. When I was growing up, people didn’t drink wine with meals. Wine was associated with wantonness. And by the way, Mr. Saint George, look at you, you’ve become one of those types yourself!” The teasing accusation flatters him, and a revelation unsteadies him: although this woman is from up here and, well, white-skinned is the best way he could put it, she is perhaps more like he is than he is like his Indo-Guanagasparian Rose.
He resumes his story, remembering precisely where he left off. The cricket-match commentary was still playing on the radio, quite low. The West Indies was batting and doing quite poorly. The man began whispering the instant the car pulled away from the curb. He soon dropped his guard against Harry’s hearing, perhaps consoled by an idea that the game on the radio occupied Harry completely. But Harry couldn’t have helped overhearing. They were in the midst of some unforeseen crisis. One could have told, in any case, that something was amiss from the instant the man opened the car door. You learn to spot these things when you drive for a living, if only as a matter of survival.
The woman was tall and thin. Although she hugged herself rather tightly, her face offered no story. The man wore a cream-colored suit. One could imagine that at calmer times, they might have made a handsome couple, except his face was unshaven and his suit crumpled, and the knot of his tie pulled down to his chest. His face was drawn, circles around his eyes.
The man was trying to reassure the woman that although they were on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, she should not worry; they could start life all over elsewhere. The woman was sullen.
Harry stopped listening to the radio and tuned his ears solely to the passengers. He heard the man whimper: “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He stole quick glances in the rearview mirror and saw that the man was shaking his head as though he couldn’t believe what was happening.
In the mirror Harry saw that the woman’s lips were pursed tight. She was staring out the window toward the distant sun-speckled mountains to the west, but Harry could tell she wasn’t really paying them any attention.
Gritting his teeth, the man urged her to stop ignoring him. He was quiet for a minute as the car crawled down the decline of the bridge. Then he began repeating “I’m sorry” as though it were a mantra. He spoke loudly about their problems, admitting to a litany of sins. From the way he carried on, Harry imagined he might have thought Harry’s English too poor for him to comprehend. Their house, the one he was driving them to, was about to be repossessed. Unless they made a quick sale, they would lose everything and have to declare bankruptcy. The man assured the woman that when he got home, he would get on the blower, he called it, call a few people and see if he could find someone with cash. Only then for the first time did the woman speak. “Who are you going to call? Who will take a call from you now?”
The man started breathing so hard that Harry surreptitiously glanced in the rearview mirror, afraid that at any moment the man might strike out at the woman. But the man was silent. Neither spoke again, except when the man mumbled to Harry to turn left off the highway.
Kay holds up her hands in the shape of a capital T. Harry stops.
“I’ll make coffee,” she states.
Harry jumps up, goes to a kitchen cupboard, and takes down a jar of instant coffee.
“Oh, instant. Is this all you have?”
He tells her, “Yes, don’t worry, it’s fresh, only been open for a couple of days.” He reaches for the kettle, but Kay takes it from him. He leans against the counter as she searches and finds two mugs.
“Tell me the rest,” she urges.
When they left the highway, they were winding their way on a dirt and rock road, lurching at times over small boulders. That year it had rained almost nonstop, and there were potholes so large that one could have fallen in and gotten lost.
The kettle reaches a boil. Kay lifts it off the stove and pours the water into two glass mugs.
“Honey.”
This is the second time. She is doing it on purpose. She is flirting.
Harry opens a drawer and retrieves a packet of honey lifted from a restaurant.
“And you? Milk and honey?”
“Milk and sugar. Three teaspoons of sugar.”
“Harry. Three teaspoons.” She gasps.
“Well, just two. Two and a half, then.”
“No, no, if three is what you usually take, I will put in three for you, but wow!”
Taking his mug from the counter, he ever so briefly places an open hand on her waist. She does not budge but keeps her back to him. He feels a residue, the ghost of her waist on the palm of his hand, the soft smoothness of the black wool sweater. The high protrusion of her hip. Having touched her once, he wants to do it again. She did not protest, but she did not react, either. She stays leaning against the counter, blows the surface of her coffee.
“We were approaching the house from above,” Harry carries o
n, his voice thick.
Kay frowns, knowing that she entered his house from the back.
“The entrance used to be up there, on the road above. You couldn’t tell there was a house below. It was only a dirt road up there that ended abruptly at the precipice. Let me show you.”
She leans over the counter and peers through the window into darkness. He puts his hand on her back and points upward. That indentation, her brassiere strap. The wool soft against her firm flesh. The heat from her body tingles in the palm of his hand. Neither Kay nor Harry remarks on the fact that it is too dark to see what he is describing. But Kay nods as if she sees and understands. They lean their backs against the counter. He smells her cologne. He could put his arm around her and finish the story like that, or not finish it at all.
“There was a bit of red railing visible from up there, on the other side of the precipice,” he says, cupping the steaming drink in both hands. “All one could see beyond was a hint of a roof, then the ocean a little farther beyond.”
There is still time before the start of a New Year. He wonders if she will want to leave right after midnight. He walks to the far counter and puts the milk carton back in the refrigerator, then leans against that counter. There he remains. Kay looks from him to her coffee, no judgment, no clue to her desires, and she raises the mug to her lips.
“I heard water lapping at rocks, small waves breaking on the shore, felt the breeze through the trees. The words ‘seaside house,’ ‘waterfront property,’ formed in my mouth. I used to dream about living in a house by the sea. A real house in a nice neighborhood. I used to live by the sea with my mother when I was a child. But that house—with the two of us in it—could have fit in this kitchen. In that house, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and living room were one and the same. And the bathroom and toilet were separate stalls outside in the yard. When I was a little older, we went to live in the town—my mother had married a petty businessman, and it was he who filled up my head with ideas and dreams about houses like this one. So it was as if my blood started racing when I saw this house.