All my cats were stuffed in a bag and sleeping well together. I hardly ever went off the deep end anymore, and when I did I usually had warning. Sometimes I even managed to watch myself calmly in an “out of mind” rather than “out of body” state. In those days, before she walked into my life, I inhabited a barebones state of nirvana, watching the flies buzz hypothermically in the cold air and rivulets of water run into cracks of shattered pavement.
But she showed me for a fake. All my equanimity sprang from one thing, and one thing only, which was not that my life was nearing any kind of enlightenment, not at all. It was that I was dead.
March 13 |
The city was quiet with a quiet that didn’t exist before the die-off. No traffic or pile-drivers, leaf blowers or airplanes, just the hum of an occasional electric vehicle, the tinkle of cyclists’ bells, and the sound of gears spinning. It was dinnertime, and hardly anyone was about. I was on my way home from work, just passing the community dining hall where people eat to save deductions from their monthly power ration from cooking. The hall’s side door by the kitchen was wedged open, and the percussion of plates and cutlery and chairs spilled onto the sidewalk, but instead of the usual roar of conversation, a woman’s voice addressed the diners over a sound system. I paused.
You have to OPT out—One Pure Thing—one pure thing to dedicate yourself to, she proclaimed. Freedom or love or nature or community. Opting out gives your life simplicity and purpose. I am opting out for freedom. That’s my cause. A trolley full of dirty dishes went by and one of the wheels jammed on a potato peel, so I missed the next part of the speech to the clatter. I started hearing her again at … never belonged to the corporations, and it doesn’t belong to the government either. OneWorld is good enough right now but, she snapped her fingers, like that it could change, and what could we do about it? They have all the information, all the records of our civilization in their control, and we have nothing but what we know in our heads and the few books remaining in our libraries and on our bookshelves. That knowledge belongs to us. We made it. Tomorrow we march for the right to elect representatives to protect our birthright! Noon at the old post office!
I’ve always hated politics. Even before. I get restless at the mere mention. So I simply took it as a sign that things were getting better if people had the energy to demonstrate and continued on my way home. A few blocks later, as I was stepping carefully over a large slab of broken pavement and listening to the wind snap sheets of plastic tacked across the broken windows high up in the old post office, a new sound penetrated my consciousness. Clack, clack, clack. It was the kind of sound you don’t realize you haven’t heard for ages until you hear it, and then you instantly realize how long it’s been absent.
The contact of the high heels with the paving was stable and assured, so not a spike heel, I assumed, yet the pitch of the contact was too high and airy for a thick heel. The pace was quick though not clipped or striding. Purposeful.
I am a large man and can defend myself against most members of my species, prosthesis notwithstanding. I am blessed with a dense skeleton and well-defined muscles whose only limitation is lack of flexibility. My hands have the weight of hammers. I don’t fear being overpowered by an antagonist but, since my illness, I only have two minutes before I break down. Crying doesn’t do it justice. Torrents, gasping, mucusy sobs and tremors. I am trained in Krav Maga and I’m quick, so I haven’t failed yet.
The steps came up behind me on the left and a perfume, a complex scent—tea, cloves, freshly mown grass—expanded its radius around me. I knew exactly where she was without looking.
When she passed I could have turned my left hand sideways and grazed her hip with my thumb. I had an impulse to reach for her wrist. My eyes slid to the left and saw her naked foot in a red high-heeled sandal, the skin of her heel callused and slightly cracked, her baby toe turned out. The grey-blue light of the cold January dusk made her skin almost fluorescent. The tendons and muscles of her foot seemed hyper-defined and taut in their attachments to the small bones. Her foot so enchanted me that I only thought to look at her face after she had passed. The back of a large army-green bomber jacket with black trim and gold-buttoned epaulets, possibly from some kind of uniform, flapped open above a brown dress with a fringe of rags. She marched to the end of the block, dark ponytail swinging, turned right, and looked directly at me before disappearing down the street.
I hurried to the corner, hump and stump, hump and stump, but the street was empty. I turned my mobile on to see the time: five-thirty p.m.
I climbed the three floors to my apartment by memory because the only light inside the stairwell is from a skylight. I fumbled my key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. The living room was dimly visible in the blue glow of other people’s lights spilling in from the building’s courtyard. My furniture: a green velvet easy-chair, beat-up even by today’s existential standards, stuffing bubbling out at the arm and seat cushion; a worn leather ottoman; a white bookshelf that’s wobbly because the hardware’s reamed out the disintegrating particleboard; a wooden bar stool; a table with three chairs; my charging station; and flashes of gold under the cool light of my aquarium. I took my coat off and hung it on a hook by the door. That hook, a classic bronze one like we used to have in school locker rooms, is the only change I’ve made to this apartment.
Billions die from starvation, thirst, disease, and war, violence is done to the mind, a human life shrinks to the emotional range of a hummingbird guarding his territory, cataclysms come and go, yet someone of the opposite sex walks by and really looks at you and your whole world comes to a stop.
I swear that with that first look from the end of the block she saw me—the soul I was born with, the man I had become, and the thorny crosshatch of my life—wounds received and wounds delivered. She saw my strength and my—I won’t say weakness—my ruinedness. In that instant, when she looked back, I knew she was interested in me. I mean, why not? With my fake leg, the scar on the left side of my face, a body on the downhill slide past fifty, sterling-grey highlights in my hair, and riveting, half-dead eyes, I’d be hard for any woman to pass up, let alone a woman with bare legs striding through the evening haze in red heels.
I went into the kitchen and opened the coolbox. I pride myself on keeping it neat and stocked only with the essentials, yet sometimes I still can’t seem to find anything inside it. I could hear my mom—Close the fridge, you’re letting the cold out—not that it matters anymore, at least not in winter, because the temperature inside the coolbox is virtually the same as inside our homes.
I stared at a carton of eggs, a packet of sausages, half a bottle of goat milk, and a bowl of puckering apples, unable to remember what I wanted. The sound of heels on the sidewalk echoed in my head, accompanied by the image of pale, slightly blue feet.
March 14 |
I went looking for her the next evening, same route, same routine, hoping she’d repeat her path. I leaned against the wall at the exact point where she’d passed the night before. I looked up at the sky. For once it wasn’t raining or windy. Twenty minutes passed. A man walking on the other side of the road stopped and yelled, Hey Mercy! Is that you? What the fuck!
I don’t swear. My father stopped swearing near the age of forty-nine when he was doing graduate studies in history for a promotion to Brigadier General and he had what he called an epiphany: swearing devalued the profession. Predictably, he decided to impose his epiphany on his family. My mom, a high-school English teacher, ignored him and kept swearing like a trooper. My younger brother Leo argued that since Dad had had thirty good years of swearing, he and I still had thirty coming before our bill was due.
Leo and I swore, Dad docked our allowance and went around looking disappointed. Leo never did stop. In fact, he swore extra around our father until the day our father died. After I graduated from the Royal Military College in Kingston I got posted immediately to Afghanistan. Over there I noticed the difference between our troops and the Afghani p
eople. We were vulgar and crude, almost pornographic, while they were polite and gracious. I realized my father had been right and stopped swearing.
My buddies found it insufferable. They thought I was acting superior. A fellow officer went after me one night on leave. He was drunk and one of his buddies had recently been killed by an IED, so because it was the booze more than rage I was able to let him punch himself out on me. He threw one last wild blow, fell back on the banquette, lifted his beer off the table, and slowly let it sink back down as he blacked out.
At first it was hard to articulate myself without swearing. It took me forever to find the right words, and I sounded prissy even to myself.
I looked up. Mercy was my army nickname. I called back, Lola? Is that you? What are you doing down here?
He crossed the street. His head was shaved but he had a five o’clock shadow. He was still solid, almost as broad across the shoulders as he was tall, though he looked like he needed a good chiropractor—one of his shoulders was low, and his trunk was torqued to the right. He was wearing his old combat coat.
Yeah man, it’s me. Visiting my kid. How the fuck are you?
I have my days. You?
He looked twenty years older, which was about right since it had to be twenty years since I last saw him. Now that we were face to face we were having a bit of trouble with the proximity. He looked at the wall over my shoulder and I looked at the curb to his left.
Never better. Never better. Yeah. Not bad for a fucking old guy.
I switched to looking at the curb to his right.
You seen Mixed Nuts? he asked. I shook my head.
Still dumb as shit no doubt. Fuckin’ hell. I’m doing the work a machine should be doing—digging, hoeing, loading. At my age. No one knows how to do anything anymore. My back’s fucked. They’re going to put me on record keeping. Old lady fucked off.
Yeah, well. Join that club.
Saw Randy about a year ago.
Of all the guys I knew, only one of them was still married. Randy. I mean, what are the odds with a name like that? But he was the real deal. Get the job done, move on. Never hopped up, never in a rage, no overkill, just did his job and let it go. We didn’t make the world the way it is, he used to say. No second thoughts. He was just as happy pushing a pen as throwing grenades. He tried to mother-hen us all at first, keep us in touch with each other, help us out, but I guess he got tired.
Some of the guys still hang out, from Kandahar, but none from that last group in Mexico. We’re not like the vets from the old days. We don’t march in parades or drink together at the Legion.
He still doing okay? I asked.
He looked fine. I was in a hurry you know, so we didn’t hang. Lola tried to look me in the eyes. I appreciated the effort. He managed for the count of two then looked up the street.
Gotta run. Let’s have a beer, eh? Next time.
He pulled me in for a hug and we gave each other backslaps.
Yeah, absolutely. Good seeing you. Take care.
Sure. You too.
The only hurry Lola was in was to get away from me. But that’s all right. We understand each other. We’re all like that. It’s not a problem. We’re like a family who has buried a murdered child.
Seeing Lola might have set me off, but I was lucky that day because I was so focused on finding the woman from the day before. I watched him hurry down the road and went back to my wall, looking up at the clouds. I saw her this time before I heard her, or rather, the second I set eyes on her I heard the distant clack-clacking.
She seemed taller from a distance, but it must have been the way she held herself because as the distance between us shrank, she seemed shorter. The scent of freshly turned mossy earth preceded her.
I pulled away from the wall and held my hand out.
Hello, I’m Allen Quincy.
Hello. Ruby. Just Ruby.
Since Jennifer died I’ve heard plenty of women’s voices, but this woman’s voice—warm, with the grainy hint of a growl of laughter at the beginning of each utterance—made me feel like I hadn’t heard one in years.
I fell in beside her but had to work to keep up because of my peg leg. I was looking at her face: crow’s feet on the outside corner of her eye, a brown eye with a shot of green; the redness of her lips, not particularly plump but not thin either, with perfect peaks where the trough under the nose makes a wave; her cheek the colour of milky tea—all of it imprinted on me right away. I wasn’t looking where I was going and stepped onto a huge shelf of broken pavement that tilted upward.
I fell back against the building to my right, face up to the sky, and slid to the ground. Although I was sitting I felt as though I was swimming through the city, but with no idea what was up or down. My endocrine system fired up, adrenalin poured from a gland near my recovered liver, my chest tightened, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up like mowed hay, and my testicles moved up and down like a pair of marmots.
Since the die-off large shelves of concrete have broken from flooding and from fallen trees, and the sidewalks often look like a madman took a jackhammer to them. Normally I keep my eyes glued to the ground because if I step unknowingly on pavement that tilts, even as little as twenty degrees, I can be catapulted into a state of extreme vertigo. Then I have to crawl home dragging my prosthetic leg behind me and pressing my shoulder against the façades of buildings for orientation. At intersections I pray that a vehicle doesn’t hit me. If a passerby offers help, I ask only that they accompany me across the street without touching me because physical contact can trigger extreme nausea, which makes further movement impossible. The whole scene is hard on the dignity and on my knee. Usually by morning, after a hard-fought night’s sleep, the vertigo will have receded.
You don’t ever want to meet a woman for the first time in a state like that. She must have continued a few steps, then turned around and come back. She crouched in front of me and I could feel the heat coming at me from her open jacket. I prayed she wouldn’t touch me.
I’ll be fine in a while, I said. Please, for my sake, go where you were going. I’ll see you tomorrow. Same place.
Other people came over and two men started to help me up, lifting me under the arms. Let me lean against the wall, I ordered. It will pass. It just takes time. I turned away from them, spread my arms out, and gripped the cement of the wall with my fingertips. I pressed my cheek against its cold stable surface, willing my nausea to pass, willing the world to stay still. My hands tingled. My chest felt too full. I focused on breathing, not deeply, but regularly, regular in, regular out. I waved them away but no one wanted to leave me alone.
In the end I had to let them take me home. Two men put their necks under my arms and carried me, my head flopping left and right because I couldn’t keep track of which way was up. I told them where my key was, and they got me in bed and insisted on programming their numbers into my mobile. I asked them to get me a damp towel and a glass of water before they left.
I heard the door to my apartment close. I lay the back of my hand across the bridge of my nose, breathed out, paused, then slowly let the air return. I opened and closed my hands to relieve the tingling. The nausea eased. Then I heard breathing.
Who’s here? I called out, but I thought I knew. Someone came into the bedroom. I tried to open my eyes but everything was still spinning and lurching. I glimpsed Ruby’s hair, then had to shut my eyes again.
Have we met before? she asked.
No, I don’t believe we have.
Who are you?
As you see. A dizzy one-legged man.
Why were you waiting for me?
I saw you the other day.
Hmm.
My nineteen years of celibacy had been effortless and so complete that not even a kiss had brushed my lips.
What do we do now, Allen Quincy?
It would help if I could open my eyes without the room hurling itself into every dimension known to man. Could we start over tomorrow?
I fel
t her looking at me. I had never thought of eyes as weapons, or as shields, but I was defenseless, unable to open my eyes and look back at her. I did manage to lift the corner of an eyelid and see her tongue lick her lips and disappear back into her mouth. I had to shut the eyelid again because the ceiling tilted to the floor, the nearby wall whipped past the ceiling, and the light fixture ricocheted off everything. I gripped the side of the mattress.
Her hand covered mine, the inside of her wrist touched the hairy back of my wrist, and she leaned over and pressed her warm lips on my cold ones. It wasn’t a kiss so much as an experimental applying of pressure. Her tongue pried where my lips met. I sank fast. I opened my mouth and fell down a whirlpool to the centre of the earth.
I won’t write another word. This memory I intend to keep.
March 17 |
The words above, what I’ve written until now, I have just finished transcribing by pencil onto paper from my mobile. My hand is aching and cramped. I haven’t held a writing tool for so long the activity feels only distantly familiar, like snapping Lego pieces together.
When I began this document the only action for “writing” I could imagine was voicing words into my mobile. My words were transcribed on screen and I saved each entry to a cloudfile named Allen’s Oblivion. But two days ago I came home from work and sat and stared at my mobile. My mind writhed with memories and thoughts but my lips were sealed shut.
I fed the goldfish and watched for a while, following the flounce of their long, feathery, pale tangerine fins as they moved.
The Mercy Journals Page 2