by Nora Decter
Howl looks pissed.
This is your fault, I tell her. I told you I’m not a party person.
Eventually I manage to suit up to take Howl for a walk. Anything to get her to stop glaring at me.
The moment we step onto the porch, I can feel the difference. Something’s shifted. Overnight the air’s gone mild, like a switch flipped and all the bite drained right out of it. Newly enthusiastic, Howl launches off the steps and pulls me down the street. By the time we reach the river I’m sweating underneath my clothes. I unwind my scarf, pull off my hat. Branches droop under the weight of melting snow, which lands like heavy rain on my head.
It’s freak spring.
It’s a fake-out we fall for year after year. Freak spring appears one day in midwinter, months before you can reasonably expect the season to end. Temperatures climb ten, sometimes twenty, degrees in the night. Euphoria sweeps through town as everyone climbs down off whatever ledge winter forced them onto, and people go collectively apeshit, making out on park benches and lying around backyards in an effort to ditch the winter pallor, although the ground is soggy brown and the smell of melting dog shit dominates. Only a prairie person would try to get a tan when there’s still snow on the ground. Being slightly in denial about your surroundings is the Winnipeg condition.
When it snows again—and it always snows again—everyone gets riled up, like the weather has been stringing us along. People are so stupid. They always expect good things to last. I try to be smarter than that. There’s something about freak spring that feels, well, fake. The way it fools us into thinking it can wash us clean. Cleaner than we are. Cleaner than we should be.
I guess I’m only human, though, because after I’ve dragged Howl home and ditched the scarf, hat, mittens and extra socks, I walk back out into the gentle air feeling agile and free. I can’t help myself. This is what I miss in winter. The privilege of being able to walk outside with your defenses down, without bracing yourself first. You can just walk out.
Today is not a day to go to school.
An empty king can of Coors rolls by, the Winnipeg equivalent of a tumbleweed. It’s so eerily balmy out that even the bums outside the Windsor Hotel seem jolly and carefree. All along Main people are out in droves, drinking on stoops, calling out to each other, letting their bare limbs breathe. I catch myself smiling and force it off my face. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m joining the freak-spring party, but a block later the smile creeps back into place.
As I make my way downtown I’m stopped by various street-side entrepreneurs and offered crack, weed, a yellow plastic flower, a deal on tube socks that fell off the back of the truck, and three rides anywhere I want to go. I politely decline them all. I catch a fistfight in front of the Woodbine and stop in at Earl’s. He’s reading an old National Geographic. I stand over the case of watches and wait for him to realize it’s going to be one of those days. Eventually he sighs. “What?”
“I was just wondering…”
“What now?”
“How far away would a TV get me?”
“What kind?”
“I dunno. An old one.”
“You’d be lucky to get to Brandon.” He flips a page.
“What if I throw in a clock radio?”
“Still Brandon.”
“A toaster oven?”
“Bran-don,” he says it slowly, so I catch his drift.
“How about a TV, clock radio, toaster oven and a DVD player?”
“Saskatoon, maybe. If you caught me in a good mood.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t have many good moods,” he warns while I’m on my way out. Very few things in life reassure me the way Earl’s detailed knowledge of Greyhound’s ticket pricing does.
Despite my vow not to give in to the temptations of freak spring, I decide to take myself out for ice cream. Well, I don’t decide so much as I realize I’m starving, and the nearest food establishment is an ice-cream place. I take it for a sign and go in.
I stand at the counter and wait for the employee to look up from his phone. He’s a short guy with Buddy Holly glasses and greasy hair pulled back into the sort of man-ponytail Jim would call a dink knob. “You decide?” he asks after a minute.
“Can I get a scoop of that?” I ask, pointing into the freezer at something that looks like chocolate.
“Chocolate praline swirl? Or the Skor brownie?”
“The Skor one.”
“Cup or cone?”
“Cup, please.”
He rings me through indifferently, but as he’s handing over my change he stops and squints at me from behind his thick black frames. “Hey, I know you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I do! You went to Crescentwood, right?”
I grab my ice cream and put my wallet away. My stomach feels funny. I haven’t eaten in too long. I need to get out of here. It’s almost time to get to work. “No. I must have one of those faces. You know, like, a common face,” I say moronically.
“I know!” He smacks the counter with his palm. “You’re Matt Tucker’s little sister, right? I’m Pete. I used to jam in your basement.”
“Oh yeah.” I bump into a table and put out my hand to steady it, or maybe to steady myself.
“How is Matty? I haven’t seen him since high school. I heard he went out west.”
“Yeah, he did.”
“So what’s he up to? He still out there?”
“I have to catch a bus.”
“Hey! Next time Matt’s in town, tell him to call me up! I’m putting together a band. We’re gonna be called the Halfwits. Pretty good, huh?”
I run out of the store, trying to look sorry, which I am. That hasn’t happened in a while. I add the ice-cream parlor to the list of places I don’t go.
As long as I’m walking, I feel all right. It’s staying still that’s the problem.
SIXTEEN
“How’s it going, kid?” Tina says as I throw myself at the bar.
“Coffee,” I say. “Please.”
She puts a mug in front of me and pours. “Whatsa matter?”
“Nothing.” I tear a sugar packet open and dump it in. “Just tired.”
“Huh,” she says. “Because you look a tad hungover to me.”
“Nope.” I grab my coffee and head back to the kitchen. But maybe she’s right. I do a body scan. I’ve never been hungover before. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me today. Not the letter. Not freak-spring fever. And not ice-cream-parlor Pete. I’ve just got an old-fashioned hangover, like my mother before me.
My head is deep in a stockpot, where I’m using a large metal spoon as a chisel to scrape the burned stuff off the bottom. Outside the pot Benny is saying how tomato sauce is the worst to clean.
“Wouldn’t be so bad, but the lunch cook always burns the pots,” I say.
“Yeah,” Benny says. “He’s a prick.”
“Hey, Jo.”
I come up for air and bump into the snake, which bobs up and down, dripping. It’s Tina, looking pleased with herself. “Someone out here asking for you.”
“I’m busy.”
“No,” she says. “I don’t think you’re too busy for this.”
She sounds funny, so I assume it’s Maggie out there, making some kind of a scene.
Benny gives me a nod. “Go on. It’s time for your break anyways.”
I hook the snake back in its holster and wipe my hands on my apron. “No way,” Tina says, pointing at my front. “Take that off. And wipe your face—you’ve got some sauce on it. God, girl, just come here.” She rubs some paper towel roughly across my chin, then uses it to dab the sweat off my forehead.
“It’s the steam. It gets hot back here.” I try not to wince as she smooths the frizz out of my hair.
“Come on.” She shoves me forward. “Someone might’ve jumped him by now.”
“Jumped who?” I ask as we walk through the kitchen doors, and I see Graham at the bar, punching at his phone with h
is thumbs. The wind has whipped his cheeks a bright, girlish pink, and he’s dressed all in black—black jeans, black jacket and a black hat that he takes off when he sees me, touching his hand to his shaggy hair for a moment, as if he wants to rearrange it but then thinks better of it.
“Oh,” I say. “I thought you were someone else.”
It’s not even a half smile he gives me, more like a quarter of one, but just like that, I get the sense I’m in grave danger again. “Who?” he asks.
“No one.” I stiffen. Not my mother, that’s for sure.
He says, “Cool,” and he says, “What’s up?” and if I wasn’t totally inept at reading the facial expressions of anyone other than Howl, I’d say he’s nervous too. But I am. So he couldn’t be.
I say, “Not much,” and I say, “Oh, you know, just washing dishes and shit.” I gesture at my apron and then realize I’m not wearing it, so really all I’ve done is draw attention to my stomach area.
“Cool,” he says, nodding excessively.
“What’s up with you?”
“Not much. Drew and I just went to grab the rest of our gear from the gallery. Ivy mentioned last night that you work here. We were just a few blocks away, so I thought I’d check it out.”
With the bar between us, I don’t know what to do, so I grab a pitcher and fill it with beer. It’s mostly foam, but I take two glasses and join him on the other side anyway.
“Oh.” I pour him a glass and place it in front of him. “Well, I wouldn’t come here alone. It’s a bit shifty.”
“What do you mean?” he asks. “I’m alone right now.”
“No,” I say. “I mean, don’t come here when I’m not around.”
He looks at me sidelong and says he wasn’t planning to, and I feel stupid in a good way. I gulp my beer and say, “So.” But what to follow it up with? “Umm, what are you taking at school?” I ask, immediately feeling like a mom—not mine but somebody’s. “Sorry, that’s a dumb question.”
“Kind of like what kind of music do you play?” He takes a sip of beer while I burn with the sudden memory of reaming him out for asking me that last night. I believe I said that talking about genres of music grosses me out. “Philosophy,” he says kindly. “I went to college for sound engineering already, but I decided to go back to school. I’ll be the only sound engineer/philosopher around.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“You’ve really gotta admire someone that unemployable.” It just slips out before I can stop it.
He laughs and I do too, and we both sip, and I’m feeling pretty good. I’m feeling kind of awesome actually.
“What’s yours?” he asks.
“My what?”
“Your major.”
“Oh, yeah.” The thing about the beer is it makes me remember how to talk. “Nostalgia,” I say, and he laughs again.
Tina comes back out from the kitchen. “Benny says take your time, the pots and pans can wait.” Then she busies herself behind the bar, sneaking glances at Graham. He’s worth a glance or two. I don’t remember him being so conventionally good-looking last night. Maybe the lighting is better here. His shoulders are disarmingly broad, and his eyes stupidly blue. Feet ever-so-slightly pigeon-toed in his combat boots. I forget how to talk again.
“So,” he says, “nice weather, huh?”
Tina snorts and then covers it by clanking some glasses together. I seize on the subject of freak spring and tell him about the walk I went on before coming in to work. About Earl and the pawnshop guitars and my favorite river spot and this Vietnamese restaurant where you can get a sandwich for three bucks, which is where I should have gone when I got hungry, but I don’t say that. I even tell him about the song I started working on last night.
“Will you play it for me sometime?”
I freeze. “I’ll consider it.”
Then there’s a lull. He says, “So,” and I say, “So,” too. Tina laughs and turns it into a cough.
“So, are you busy Monday night?” he asks.
I feel like this is loaded. I don’t know the right answer. “Umm, Monday…hmm. Today’s Friday, right?” He nods. “No, I don’t think I have plans Monday.”
“There’s this show happening on Albert. It should be pretty cool. My friends are playing. I recorded their album.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a cassette tape, which he slides toward me.
The band is called Good Sleep, and the cover is an illustration of a dog passed out, surrounded by beer bottles. “People still put music out on tapes?”
“Well,” he says, “vinyl’s too expensive to produce, and nobody wants to buy CDs anymore. But I can get you a CD if you don’t have a tape player. Then you can put it on your computer or whatever.”
“I have a tape player.” I leave out the fact that I don’t have a phone, since this seems to be going well and I don’t want to test him with too many of my eccentricities.
“You do? Cool. Seems like a lot of people got rid of them.”
“I’m a nostalgia major, remember?”
“Right.” He smiles and then, remembering, searches his pockets again. “I brought you a flyer.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He gives me a rather formal nod, picks up his hat and puts it back on. As he turns toward the door, I’m already breaking the encounter down into parts I can analyze under a microscope in my mind until they make some kind of sense, but then he stops and says, “I haven’t had the chance to work through the list you gave me yet, but I listened to a song by that Howlin’ Wolf guy. You were right. He’s amazing.”
“My dog is named after him.” I immediately wish for a hole I could crawl into, but he just smiles again.
“I forgot to say, I’m helping out at the show, so I can put your name on the list.”
“Cool,” I say, and he walks out. “Shit son,” I say softly to myself.
Tina is shaking her head at me.
“What?”
“What do you mean what? What was that?”
“Nothing!”
“Ha!” She laughs. “Nothing. Yeah, right. That was young fucking love, is what it was.”
“Uh, no. You’re crazy.”
“Hate to break it to you, Jo, but I know how to spot young love when it sits down at my bar in a leather jacket.”
Benny comes out of the kitchen with a plate of food and puts it in front of me. Bless his heart. It’s the deep-fried-everything special.
“Thought you might be peckish,” he says, looking between me and Tina. “What’s going on?”
I pull the plate toward me. “Hell’s finally freezing over.”
“Jo had a suitor in to see her. Young guy in a leather jacket with a lot of hair.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Tina’s having some kind of freak-spring psychotic break,” I say.
“You shoulda seen it,” she tells Benny. “She’s got him wrapped around her finger.”
“Not possible,” I say.
“Why’s that?” asks Benny, helping himself to a fry.
“Because I don’t believe in love,” I say through a mouthful of deep-fried potato.
They look at each other. “What do you mean you don’t believe in it? Love isn’t like a Sasquatch. Its existence isn’t up for debate,” he says.
I eat an onion ring and my taste buds rejoice. “I mean, I don’t believe in it the way some people don’t believe in abortion or organized religion or capitalism. I don’t think it’s any good for you, and I refuse to participate in it. I’d rather focus my energies on something that isn’t guaranteed to one day fuck me up.” I shove a fry into my mouth to emphasize my point.
“That’s some big talk there, kid. You might eat those words one day,” Tina says.
“Trust me, I won’t.”
“Today’s Friday, right?” she says in a high-pitched, singsong voice I’m assuming is supposed to imitate my own. I glare at her, and she laughs all the way across the room.
The rest of the night is low-key. Nothing out of the ordinary occurs—no more debates on the existence of love, no more drop-ins by confusingly handsome young men with unknown intentions. I tend to my dish pile, smoke some smokes. Benny has just told me to take off early when Winston shows up and slaps a pile of bills down on the counter next to me.
“What’s that?”
“Your pay.”
“Oh. Thanks.” I put it in my pocket and take it out again when he goes. I’m getting paid again already? I count it once, twice, three times. On top of my hourly wage, I also get tipped out once a week too. I’ve already made enough to pay Maggie back and then some. I put the money away, then haul the mop bucket out the back door and dump it out in the alley. Steam rises from where the water spreads, and I think about what I could do if I keep making money like this. I could really go somewhere.
The house is empty when I get home, but a cloud of cigarette smoke hangs in the kitchen like a specter. Must have just missed her. I struggle for a few minutes trying to wrench the window open, but it’s good and stuck, so I prop open the back door instead and let the freak-spring air flow in. Howl is lying on the floor, long dog legs all akimbo. I grab an apple and sit down next to her. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good talk.
Hey, girl, I say. How about this weather?
Her rib cage rises and falls in a dramatic sigh.
What’s wrong?
She looks at me, and I remember. Oh yeah. The letter. I’m still not ready to open it, so I get up off the floor, and that’s when I find a note on the kitchen table. From Maggie. To me. Strange. We don’t do notes. She says she’s at the casino with Louie and that my school called and so did Ivy, and we need to talk. That last bit is underlined three times. I dial the number she’s written beneath Ivy’s name. “Tell me everything,” she says when she picks up.
“Tell you everything about what?” I say, holding the phone away from my ear because she’s yelling.
“Didn’t Graham come see you today?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Because I’m omniscient. I know all, I see all. Even you, oh oblique one.”
“Oh.”