by Katia Rose
I pluck the melody for ‘Nevermore’ and mutter a few lines, trying out phrases that still don’t feel quite right. They’re close, so close, like pieces of a puzzle that stay in place if you push down hard enough, but spring out of shape the second you take your hands away.
I slam my palms down on the concrete of the balcony.
“Fuck it,” I swear. “It will have to be music and whiskey tonight.”
4 Black Mambo || Glass Animals
STÉPHANIE
I almost bump into Guita as she carries a giant platter of baklava into the library at the AMM. Almost all of the folding chairs are filled with people waiting for our guest speaker to arrive.
“My husband sent these over from the bakery,” she tells me in French, setting the tray down on the small table under the windowsill. “I was going to save them until after the discussion, but Rohit just texted me to say he’s going to be late.”
“Baklava to the rescue,” I joke. “The crowd must be fed.”
She picks up on my sarcasm and laughs. Even though the ‘crowd’ is enough to fill the small room, there’s still only thirteen people here, Guita and I included.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Guita says to me. “I know you had to rush over from your dance studio. Luc’s daughter is sick so he can’t make it tonight, and I don’t know if I could have put this all together myself.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I assure her. “I really liked Meditation for Modern Minds. I’m sure Rohit’s going to be a great speaker.”
Guita squeezes my hand and heads back to the kitchen. Sometimes I feel a bit out of place around the other AMM volunteers, who are all old enough to have spouses and families and other Experienced Adult Commitments I can’t relate to, but Guita always makes me feel at home.
I straighten up our display of Rohit’s books and sneak a baklava for myself.
“I thought I was going to be late, but it looks like you haven’t even started.”
I spin around, still holding the pastry up to my mouth with one hand and cupping the other underneath it to catch any crumbs.
“Maybe you have gotten started,” Ace Turner comments, eyeing my dessert.
It’s really him, standing there in a black t-shirt and jeans, looking just as out of place as he did sitting cross-legged in the park. I force a mouthful of baklava down my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
He raises his eyebrows. “The flyer said everyone was welcome.”
“Ben, yes, of course. You’re right. Come in.” I sweep my hand toward the rows of folding chairs.
I slipped into French again. I did that around him last time.
I kicked the habit of peppering my English with French slang and interjections years ago. I might still throw French insults at people in my head, but until they learn my last name, the English parents at the studio don’t even know I’m French.
For some reason my slip-up just makes me even more annoyed at Ace for being here. He probably has some stupid bet with his band about getting into my pants. I grab the baklava tray and start passing it around the room, distracting myself by chatting with the other attendees. I’ve met most of them before.
By the time Rohit arrives, almost all the pastries are gone and so are almost all the seats. The only free one is right beside Ace. He pats the white plastic and gives me that little smirk again, the one that’s so subtle it look more like a twitch than an actual facial expression.
I take the chair and cross my legs, straightening the edges of my cardigan and keeping my eyes fixed on the front of the room.
Rohit, a studious-looking forty-something, begins his presentation by asking some kind of deeply reflective question and pausing to let the audience deeply reflect. I don’t even hear what the question is because I’m too busy concentrating on not letting myself glance at Ace.
All my muscles are tensed, braced for him to lean over and whisper something totally inappropriate in my ear. I’m so sure he’s going to do it I already have my hands clamped down on the edges of my seat, ready to glare at him and then inch the chair away.
“Unfortunately, my French is really quite awful and you’d probably be more offended if I tried to use it than if I didn’t”—the crowd gives Rohit a laugh—“so I’ll only be speaking about my book in English, but one of the volunteers here, Stéphanie, will be translating any French questions you might have during the Q and A afterwards.”
Right. I’m doing that.
“So to get things started, in the introduction of my book...”
I barely follow along with the rest of the presentation. Ace’s presence is like a magnetic field that throws off all my navigation systems. He’s a foreign object, sitting here in this place that is my sanctuary, and my body is reacting the same way it would to splinter getting lodged beneath my skin: panic, and then a crucial and immediate urge to push him out.
“Stéphanie?” My leg jerks when Guita reaches around from the row ahead of us and pats me on the knee. “Allô, Stéphanie. Ҫa va?”
“Ouais,” I answer distractedly, realizing the presentation is finally done. “Ouais, ҫa va.”
“Are you ready to go up to the front?” Guita whispers, as the room buzzes with mumbled comments and Rohit clears his throat. “You don’t have to. I can do it if you want.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Sorry, I was just thinking.”
I get up and bring my chair with me to sit down next to Rohit, letting my eyes wander over to Ace for the first time. As usual, he’s staring right back at me.
Maudit connard.
He must know exactly what he’s doing.
Most of the crowd’s questions are asked in English, so I sit in my chair with not much to do for the next few minutes.
“All right, well it looks like that’s our last question, so—Oh, yes? You in the back?”
Ace has his hand up in the air. He clears his throat and starts to speak in perfectly enunciated French.
“You talked about the concept of ‘erasure’ in meditation,” he begins, “of obliterating the self in order to truly be led back to the self. I just want to know if you really think that’s possible. Do you think everyone can let go to that extent, or are there some facets of the human mind that refuse to be erased?”
He slides his attention from Rohit to me and for a moment, I wonder why his stare is so expectant. Then I remember that I’m supposed to be translating.
“S’il vous plait,” I ask, still blinking with shock over the fact that he was actually listening to the presentation, “could you repeat that?”
He grins at me. “I’ll try it in English.”
Ace repeats himself, and Rohit goes off on a tangent on how he thinks meditation is possible for everyone and that the only limits we’re defined by are the ones we set for ourselves—or something like that. Guita slips out and reappears with more Lebanese desserts before announcing that she’ll be ending the night with a session in the meditation room if anyone wants to join.
I attempt to follow her out, but Ace leans up against the wall beside the doorway. I pause.
“I’m beginning to think I haven’t made a great impression on you,” he drawls, crossing his arms over his chest.
I hesitate for a moment. “I’m just wondering what brought you here tonight.”
He nods towards the stack of Rohit’s books. “I’m a modern mind who wants to meditate. Isn’t that enough?”
“You’re a rock star,” I say flatly.
Right on cue, I spot one of the guests trying to covertly take a photo of Ace with her phone. He notices too and gives the woman a small wave, which makes her turn bright red and practically run over to pretend to look at one of the bookshelves.
“Do you have a ‘no rock star’ policy here?” Ace asks me.
Standing face to face like this, I realize he’s only got about two inches on me in height. I square my shoulders and decide to just deal with this splinter, right here, right now.
�
��Are you bullshitting me?” I demand.
He raises an eyebrow in answer.
“I need to know right now if you’re fucking with me, and if you are, you can leave. I have a lot of respect for these people and this place, and”—I pause to swallow—“and it means a lot to me. So if you came here for a laugh or to get your dick wet, you can walk out the front door right now and not come back.”
He raises his hands in surrender. “And here I thought this was a place of welcome and—”
“Ace,” I snap, the sound of his name turning my voice into a hiss.
Something in the air tightens, contracts—like the single syllable is a chord that’s just been strummed, the sound waves reverberating between both our bodies, echoing over and over against our chests. I realize right then that there’s an inevitable intimacy to calling someone by their name for the first time.
“I’m not fucking with you,” he says slowly, his voice lowering an octave and lingering on the word ‘fuck’ just long enough for me to question if he did it on purpose or not. “I didn’t come here to mess around with anyone. I genuinely wanted to hear this presentation.”
If he hadn’t asked Rohit that question at the end, I wouldn’t believe him at all. I’m still not convinced. Either there’s a trace of sincerity in him right now, or he’s doing a really good job of faking it.
“Well I hope you enjoyed it,” I tell him. “I’m going to join the meditation now.”
I meant that to be a goodbye, but I hear his footsteps following me down the hallway.
“I thought you said you weren’t messing with me,” I call back to him, refusing to turn around.
“Am I not allowed to meditate too?” he responds. “What are you, the Association de Méditation’s guard dog?”
We enter the room and I tap the Silence Please sign on the door. A few people have already joined Guita on the pillows, and Ace and I settle down too. My favourite sandalwood incense is burning, Guita’s rhythmic humming combining with the traces of smoke in the air to create an almost mystical atmosphere.
I start with tuning into my body, focusing on the fabric of the pillow brushing against my legs, on the ache settling into my muscles after teaching back-to-back contemporary classes at the studio today. I settle into the flow of my breathing, lengthening and elongating the pattern of exhales and inhales until I reach the point where I’m usually ready to slip into a deeper state.
Except I can’t.
Thoughts keep claiming my consciousness instead: the faces of people on the metro this morning, the flexed feet of one of the contemporary girls I kept trying to correct, the way Ace’s eyes darkened when I said his name...
I try to let the images go, to watch them float by like clouds the way I tell people to do in the park every Sunday, but they cling to me, spiraling like a cyclone instead of gliding out of sight.
With an exhale that’s more of a huff, I open my eyes.
I didn’t notice the lines in his face until they were gone, didn’t see the tension that kept his brow furrowed and his mouth tight even when he smiled, but the change in Ace Turner right now is almost too drastic to believe. He doesn’t look younger, just...lighter, like he had a burnt out bulb someone came along and replaced.
I make sure he’s going to keep his eyes shut, and then I let myself trace the angles of his face with my gaze. He might try to hide it with tattoos and tattered clothing, but he doesn’t have the face of a rock star. His features are too polished, his cheeks too hollow and his lips too full for him to have the same kind of rugged appeal as the other guys in his band. They’re all whiskey shots and beer bottles; Ace Turner has a face that was made to sip champagne.
Everything about him is trying to convince the world of the exact opposite, though. Dark ink covers the muscles of his arms, most of it etched in the shape of patterns and symbols whose meanings I can’t make out. There are a few less abstract images: skeleton hands holding bouquets of roses, twisted trees wrapping their branches around his forearms. His loose shirt reveals the feathered edges of a design beneath his collarbones, stretching down past where I can see.
A metal bar runs through the top of one of his ears, and I realize that the black piercings in both his earlobes are actually tiny gauges. I got over being into that kind of look a long time ago, but there’s something so arresting about the contrast between his clean-cut, almost aristocratic face and the flashing danger signs the rest of him puts on display.
Ting, ting.
Guita claps two tiny meditation cymbals together with her finger and thumb, signalling for everyone to start coming back to their surroundings. I drop my hands from my knees and pretend to be awakening just as slowly as everyone else.
“Thank you for joining us today,” Guita announces. “Feel free to take your time leaving the room. Please remember that this is still a silent space.”
Ace pushes himself to his feet beside me and walks away. I let out my first genuinely relaxed exhale and roll my neck back and forth, savouring the fading scent of the incense as everyone else shuffles out and I’m left on my own.
Sometimes I wish I could sleep here, recharge my batteries overnight instead of having to head home and let the stillness I find inside myself here slowly drain away until I’m desperate for another hit.
Can you get addicted to meditation?
I need to eat something other than baklava though, and I have a date with my foam roller tonight, so I head into the kitchen to see if Guita needs any more help before I leave.
She’s in there with Rohit and waves away my attempts to help. “Allons-y. You must be exhausted, and your friend is waiting for you by the door.”
My friend?
I must look as confused as I feel because Guita gives me a conspiratorial smile and says, “You don’t have to be shy about it, Stéphanie. He seems like a very smart man. I would ask you to introduce me, but I know you must want to get home.”
I pretend to know what she’s talking about and walk down the hallway to find a sandy-haired, black-clad figure lurking by the front door.
“This sort of feels like you fucking with me,” I call as I approach.
“Trust me, Stéphanie, if I was fucking with you, you’d feel it for sure.”
My breath hitches. It’s properly dark outside now and no one has turned the hallway light on, so we stand in the shadows, him leaning against one wall and me backing up against the other. He seems to loom over me, even though there isn’t much real difference between our heights.
“I actually wanted to thank you,” Ace says.
I blink. “Thank me?”
“Yeah. I did the, uh...” He clears his throat and stares at the floorboards. “I did that cloud thing you said. You know, with my thoughts? Honestly, I thought it was fucking stupid when you explained it in the park, but I did it today and...I don’t know how to describe it. It just worked.”
He looks so vulnerable right now, hands shoved deep into his pockets as he avoids my eyes. I wonder if he’s blushing, but I can’t tell in the darkness. Part of me wants to laugh at his discomfort. The rest of me wants to reach out and pat him on the shoulder.
I settle for a soft chuckle. “Yeah, some of my ‘fucking stupid’ suggestions have a habit of actually being helpful. Maybe remember that next time.”
“Next time?” he repeats.
“Are you still coming to my sessions on Sundays?”
He shrugs, his stance loosening as he gets his confidence back. “I’m still deciding.”
It takes me a moment to realize the sinking sensation in my stomach is disappointment. Laughter erupts in the kitchen and we both glance towards it before looking back at each other.
“Guita—the woman who brought all the baklava—thinks you’re my new ‘petit ami.’”
Ace gets a dangerous glint in his eye.
“Oh she does, does she? And what does she think you’re doing out here with your ‘special friend?’’’
Warmth blooms in me as his eyes flic
k up and down my body. I want to tell myself it’s just the heat of indignation, but being around this man gives me a creeping awareness of every inch of my skin. I feel my pulse hammering in my throat and I imagine what it would feel like if he raised his finger—the one with the same thick ring on it as he wore in the park—and pressed the pad of it to the vein where my jaw meets my throat.
“What is that?” I blurt, lifting my own finger to point at his chest. “That tattoo?”
He tilts his chin down and thumbs the neckline of his shirt. “This one?”
I nod, my rapid heartbeat echoing in my head.
He tugs the shirt down to reveal the upper half of a defined pectoral. I can see enough of the tattoo to realize it’s a black bird, raised wings stretching out on either side of his sternum so the design forms a kind of chest plate.
“A crow?” I question.
He lets his shirt snap back into place. “A raven.”
“Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”
I meant to say it lightly, half-joking, but it comes out breathless. Ace just stares at me, his expression searching.
“You know?” I urge. “That poem? ‘The Raven.’”
He stares for a moment longer. “I know it.”
5 Everything is Alright || The Glorious Sons
ACE
Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’
I almost grabbed her when she said it. For a moment, I couldn’t think of anything but the knee-jerk reaction to reach out and cup the side of her face, demanding she repeat those words for me. It took everything I had to stay pressed up against the wall.
Hearing Stéphanie quote ‘The Raven’ was like watching a cat speak or seeing a statue move out of the corner of your eye—something so unexpected it fills you with the urge to get closer, to inspect, to convince yourself that what you just witnessed was real.
I can’t justify the sensation at all; it’s a popular poem. People have reacted to my tattoo the exact same way before. Hell, it’s the first thing the artist said when I brought up the idea. Still, something about the ominous prophecy of those dark, depressing words being delivered by her pink and playful lips struck me in a way the poem had never done on its own before.