by Nora Decter
“Yeah, you look rock ’n’ roll, sweetie,” Jim says, and I blush. There are other people in here. Boys, of course. It’s weird being a girl in one of these stores. I always feel like the dudes that shop and work here think I’m just waiting around for a guy. Which I guess I sort of am. I take the Strat over to the amp Zack set me up with and play the song I’ve been working on. Quietly, but I play it. I can hear Jim saying something about buzzing and action and other guitar talk I don’t understand, and I see one of the long-haired dudes browsing the guitar mags look at me sideways, and I play on.
“So, is that the one?” Jim asks. I jump. He and Zack have come out from behind the counter and are beside me.
“It’s a great, versatile guitar. You’ll play it for years,” Zack says.
It’s also nine hundred dollars. “No, no,” I say, lifting it over my head and handing it back to him. I try to change the subject. “Hey, can you show me how to lower the action?”
“Ring it through, Zack,” Jim says, taking out his wallet.
“No, Dad, seriously. I don’t want it.”
“You deserve your own guitar,” he says. I can see his resolve, but I can’t make the argument that would work against it: that I have plenty of perfectly good guitars—he just doesn’t want me to play them.
“I don’t want a guitar. I want, uhh, that.” We’re standing beside a display case full of pedals, and I point at one with a price tag under a hundred dollars.
“The Boss loop pedal,” says Zack. “You into looping?”
“I’m getting into it, yeah.”
“That’s pretty cool,” says Jim. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Kind of. I’ll learn.”
“That’s a good starter looping system,” Zack says. I nod as if I know what that means. “Very intuitive. She’ll figure it out in no time.”
Jim nods. “Wrap it up then.” The guitar goes back, and I breathe easier. A few minutes later Jim and I are back in the truck, headed for the Chinese restaurant. I get him talking about tress rods and other terms I heard him and Zack use, and he’s off. I follow as best I can. I want to walk into those stores and feel like I belong there. I want to know I do.
“I got you a job.” Maggie never comes down here. Just yells down the stairs. I am fooling around with the loop pedal but stop at the sound of her voice. She repeats herself a few more times. “I got you a job.” And again. “I got you a job.” She sounds plastered. Or maybe just pleased.
Against my better judgment I go upstairs. I find her in the kitchen. Char is at the table, her head swathed in plastic wrap. Maggie dyes her hair for her once a month. Red this time. Fire engine, by the looks of it.
Maggie leans against the counter. “Winston at the Cal was looking for someone. Kitchen help. I signed you up. You start tomorrow.”
“I’m not working at the Cal.”
“Why not?”
“Look at it this way, Jo,” Char says. “You’ll get tipped out. Pay off that phone bill fast.” Baby is attempting to claw her way up Char’s front but can’t scale her cleavage.
“It’s not legal for minors to work in bars.”
“Job’s a job, Jo. Doesn’t have to be legal.”
“I think that’s only if you’re the one serving alcohol,” Char says. “You’ll just be washing dishes, right, Mags?”
“Yeah,” Maggie says, smug. “You don’t have to be eighteen to wash dishes.”
“Plus you’ll probably get paid under the table.” Char tries again, distracted because Baby’s claws have caught in her sweater and she can’t get her off.
I go out. It’s too cold for breathing, so I don’t. Not until the river, where I scream. Silently. The snow is rough when I plunge my hands into it, a layer of crunchy ice on top. I grab two palms full and rub it across my face to cool down. To numb over. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, but I am.
Howl looks over from where she’s sniffing the foot of a tree. She looks at me and says, You can’t go now. You’ve got to grow up first.
But I don’t have time for that.
Well then, says Howl, maybe Maggie has a point. Work at the Cal. Make some money. Get on a bus out of town. How else are you going to leave? You can’t walk out.
But I do not want to admit she has a point right now. Howl knows. Howl slinks off through the trees to smell other smells and chase other shadows. Leaves me to stare angry at the moon.
Turns out the loop pedal lets you build a noise bigger than yourself. I don’t need anyone else—I can record a beat and layer guitars over top and then add my voice, just by stepping on the pedal. It remembers what I tell it to do and forgets what I tell it to forget too, which is more than I can say for most people. Who needs a band? Who needs anyone? I can make all the noise I need on my own.
SEVEN
“So why do you need a job? You saving up for a car? Or a new cell phone? Or what?” Groves is reading over my paper on weather as theme in literature. I told her it was for an essay-writing contest, and she actually believed me. She’s too focused on her other line of questioning.
“Lots of students have jobs. It’s not weird.”
“Just the way you said it. Like you have debts to settle or something.”
“I’m saving up for after high school is over.”
She nods. “That’s great, Jolene. So what’s your plan today?”
“I dunno.”
“Good one,” she says, and then, “You appear not to know how to use a semicolon.”
“Yeah, I usually just stick one in when it feels right.”
She looks scandalized. “Oh, that’s not going to do. Let me get my grammar books.”
I groan, but I also pull my chair closer and pay attention.
“And here I thought I was the one who was gonna be late. Come on, space cadet,” Ivy says, surprising me a few hours later in my usual spot at the university, by the escalators. Before I can protest, she’s strong-arming me down the hall. My muscles melted when I quit swimming, and I’m powerless.
“Nice to see you, ladies,” the professor says as we grab a couple of seats near the back. “You’re just in time to hand in your essays.”
Ivy pulls hers out of her bag, smoothing the crumples out of it. She holds out her hand for mine. Cornered, I reach into my backpack. I don’t know why I wrote it, but I did write it, then got Groves to help me edit it this morning. I watch my paper be passed from hand to hand to the front of the room and sink a little lower in my seat. I didn’t put my name on it. Maybe some other student who is legitimately in this class but didn’t do their homework will get the credit for it. I’m doing a good deed.
“I wanna show you something after class,” Ivy whispers.
I nod. I’d thought if I lurked outside the doors until class started, then slipped in and sat at the back, I could avoid her, but no. Of course not. I should have just stayed at my actual school and attended my actual classes for actual credit, but I was too nervous about my first day at work later for that. And I wanted to see what the professor would assign next. I guess I wanted to see Ivy again too. I think.
“Well, that was stupid and boring,” Ivy says after class lets out. “Let’s get coffee. I’m tired now.”
“Um, sure.” We walk down the hall to the cafeteria, and I don’t have time to feel nervous—the questions come hard and fast.
“Where were you last class? You can borrow my notes if you want to. Professor Sinclair is pretty tough, don’t you think? How’s the guitar playing coming along? Can I hear some of your music sometime? Or are you shy about that stuff? What other classes are you taking?”
I stand in front of the coffee offerings, trying to choose between Colombian and French roasts while also coming up with a suitable lie. “Uh, a psych course and—”
“Do you have Reynolds? I had him last semester.”
“Uh, yeah.” I follow her to the lineup to pay. She gives the lady a five to cover both of us and shushes me wh
en I protest.
“Come on. It’s this way,” she says, leading me to the escalators.
“Where are we going?”
She smiles. “Patience. I’m taking you to one of my favorite spots.”
The escalator deposits us on the second floor, and Ivy keeps going up another escalator. “The library?” I ask as it comes into view. I’ve spent my fair share of time in there. If there are any good spots, I know about them.
“Sort of.” The library is on the top two floors of the building. I follow Ivy across the lobby to the staircase that leads to the main stacks. She climbs the stairs quickly. I have to hurry to keep up, and then we’re going down one aisle and then another, squeezing past students who are squatting in search of books or spread out on the floor with their research around them. Ivy stops in front of the door to a private study room. You have to reserve them at the main desk, but Ivy barges in. Two guys look up from their books in alarm. Engineering students, I’d wager. Pale, poor fashion sense, seem genuinely frightened of girls. “Shh,” she says. “It’s okay. We work here.”
On the other side of their table is a door marked Do not enter. She starts to open it, and I freak. “Wait! It says Alarm will sound.”
“It won’t,” she says. “Trust me.”
“What’s out there?” I ask, though I think I know.
Ivy leans close before she answers, eyeing the engineers. “The roof, duh. But be cool. I don’t want a bunch of people to find out.”
My stomach turns over. “But it’s cold out.”
“Oh, come on. It’s pretty sheltered up there, not too windy. And the view is so cool. You can handle the cold for a few minutes. It’s worth it.”
I almost say yes. Almost continue following her where I’m not supposed to go. But my head begins to shake of its own accord. All of me does. “I can’t. I’ve gotta go.”
The engineers look up, irritated, as I run off like a moron. Even they are cooler than I am.
The Caledonia is king among scum hotels, six floors of basic cable, shitty carpeting and rooms that rent by the hour, perfect for all your crack-smoking needs. A dull fluorescent sign hangs from the side of the building, looking like it might fall off at any minute and land in front of the ground-floor beverage room, which hosts weekly amateur-stripper nights and other entertainments. Hang around for a while and you might be lucky enough to catch a curb stomping or a hooker with a bloody nose. It’s a regular Winnipeg tourist attraction.
The scent of piss and beer greets me at the door. Also, a bouncer. He’s bald and squat with a permanently creased forehead and shoulders as big and meaty as Easter hams. He’s so jacked he has to hold his arms away from his body, like his muscles are shopping bags he can never set down. “ID?” he asks in a consoling tone.
Winston, the owner, spots me and comes out from behind the bar. “Jolene, you’re looking all grown-up.” He nods at the bouncer. “This is Maggie’s girl.”
Mr. Beefcake looks at me anew, probably searching for a likeness, which I fucking pray he can’t find. He puts out a bloated palm, and we shake. His grip is surprisingly dainty, like he’s used to being conscious to not crush things. “Your mom’s going to kill it this week. We’re all rooting for her.”
There’s a poster for the contest on the wall behind him. The prize is five hundred bucks and a trip to Vegas. No wonder she’s so serious about this. Vegas is her spiritual homeland.
Winston leads me over to the bar. The room is low-key, just a few drinkers bent over tall glasses of beer and a row of gamblers at the slots with their backs to the room, oblivious to any and everything outside the rattle and clang of the machines. The slot zombies always make me sad. Self-destruction shouldn’t be done out in the open like that. It’s too much like watching someone slowly drown.
A waitress I’ve never seen before is behind the bar, stocking the beer fridge.
“Tina, this is Jolene. She’ll be helping Benny out in the back on busy nights from now on.”
Tina sticks out a hand, and I shake it. She’s decorated with blue-black ink, the deliberate, childlike lines of homemade tattoos. There’s a cross on her shoulder and a series of initials scattered across her chest, like she’s had to add more and more letters to her skin, deviating from the plan, if there ever was one. She looks at me hard, appraisingly, and I force myself not to fidget. “You don’t look like your mom,” she says, and I love her.
“Basically,” Winston says, “you can come in whenever Benny thinks he needs you. Busiest nights are Thursday through Saturday. Thursday’s the contest this month, straight-up karaoke night the rest of the time. Friday is amateur strip night—that’s big money. And Saturday rotates. Sometimes we get a cover band. Sometimes it’s just dance music. Always got a meat draw though. People come out for that. Especially toward the end of the month.”
I nod. Many a Sunday we have dined on Maggie’s meat-draw winnings.
Winston leads me back to the kitchen, a space of yellowed tile and dull stainless steel. Benny’s at the stove in his whites, which are more like grays.
“Jo!”
“Oof,” I say as he hugs me somewhat violently. He smells greasy in a good way. “Hi, Benny.” I wasn’t sure he’d remember me. It’s been years since we used to come around looking for Maggie, and I have one of those faces people forget. Or maybe it’s not my face. Maybe it’s something else.
“Welcome aboard,” he says, waving one hand across the kitchen as if it’s something glorious to behold.
“Thanks.”
Winston claps his hands. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
“Thought he’d never go,” Benny says after Winston leaves. “He only comes back here once every few months to complain about how much money we aren’t making off the food menu. Meanwhile he’s getting rich off the gambling revenue and serving people way too wasted to notice they’re being charged double for their rye and Cokes. Not Tina though. She’s a good one. But the other waitresses, they’re cold-blooded. Anyway, this is Maude.” He opens the dishwasher door, and steam pours out. “She’s got some quirks. You’re gonna want to get on her good side.”
All day I’d been dreading this. But it’s not so bad. It’s almost easy. Benny may even be the perfect companion for me—he doesn’t require my involvement to carry on a conversation. He just talks and talks, and I don’t say anything.
Benny lets me go around eleven, when the kitchen closes. “I’ll clean up myself tonight.”
“Should I come same time tomorrow?”
“Nah, tomorrow’s stripper night. Let’s spare you that for now.”
I hang up my apron and get out of there before he can start talking again.
“Hey, you’re not walking, are you?” Tina asks as I pass by the bar.
“Nope,” I say over my shoulder.
I walk by abandoned gas stations and corner stores and hair salons with hand-painted signs. I walk by the local Pay Day Loans, always a happening spot. The ground sails by beneath my feet, which seem divorced from my body, acting of their own accord. I walk so fast my footsteps blend together into one steady sound. I walk without a thought to traffic signs or rules of the road. I walk and walk until I reach the foot of the Salter Street Bridge, and then I stop.
EIGHT
Matt liked doing stupid, reckless things to prove to himself that he could. Ivy reminds me of him that way. He’d seek out risks, climbing trees no one else could scale, walking across the train yards at night instead of taking the bridge, riding his bike with no hands down the river path in the thick pitch-dark. Sometimes he would work for Jim and sneak on site at night, after the crew had gone home, and climb to the top of a doomed building to take in the view. And that was just the stuff he told me about. I’m sure there was more. I know there was.
The summer right after Matt got his license, we spent all our time driving around in the Illegal Mobile, Matt fussing with the tape player, me with my arm out the window to feel the air fly by.
A few sweltering days in a
row had turned the house into a sweatbox, making the only tolerable activity—in between cold showers—taking turns sitting in front of our one fan. Matt mentioned a cliff-jumping spot that one of his co-workers at the pizza joint had told him about. We loaded up on chips and sodas and drove out. The car smelled of Maggie’s perfume and the sunscreen we bought and applied in secret because of her near-religious belief that getting a sunburn builds immunities.
Matt parked next to a few other cars, and we followed the trail his buddy had described through a forest of poplars and pines and up to a cliff looking out on a lake that shone like polished silver in the full daylight. It was a local drinking spot, and a group of teenagers in bikinis and Bermuda shorts stood around at the edge. We dropped our towels and stripped down to our suits. Matt chatted up the only guy who was already wet while I looked over the edge and judged the fall to be about the same distance as the highest diving platform at the pool where I trained, which we’d sometimes get to jump off in the last minutes of practice. More important, I saw you didn’t have to jump out very far to clear the cliff face. The guy told Matt the water was deep.
“Well,” said Matt. “Shall we?”
“Let’s,” I said. He took three fast steps and was gone. The teenagers looked up from their drinking game to cheer him on. I was eleven, wearing my blue practice Speedo and already too tall. I was as frightened of teenagers then as I am now, and I knew dillydallying to be the enemy of daredevil activity, so when I saw Matt surface and swim over to the rocks, I filled my lungs with air and jumped.
The moment I hit the water and shot through it, I kicked like mad, surfacing in time to hear the impressed whoops of the teens up above. I swam over to Matt, whose skin had already dried in the searing heat. “Again?” he asked, reaching for my hand and hauling me out.
“Again,” I agreed.
We jumped until our skin was pink and sore from being slapped around by the water. The teenagers treated me like a minor celebrity that day and every other time we drove out to the cliffs that summer. I didn’t see how it was so impressive. Back then stuff like that didn’t scare me. I knew it was easy, the same trick, really, as anytime you let yourself fall. The thing is, once you decide, it’s already done. It’s just a matter of committing. What people are afraid of is the moment after the decision is made, after you act but before you begin to fall.