Juliet Was a Surprise

by Gaston Bill

  But when he saw her that next afternoon on the Malecon, she wasn’t drunk. Dale followed at a distance. He noted bracelets and bangles, silver, stacked up both wrists. She was carrying a bouquet of dyed feathers in the most garish colours. She wore a new peasant blouse, that unbleached cotton. She appeared pretty much carefree. She wasn’t looking for anyone, for anyone at all—that was clear enough. Every twenty seconds or so Dale mumbled “No, gracias” to the latest vendor shaking a trinket or T-shirt in his face, and he watched her strategy for handling the same. She had the pockets of her shorts pulled out, and to turn down a vendor she shook her bangled silver wrists at him and then pointed to her empty pockets, smiling. She had a phrase or two to share with each, and to a man they laughed back and left her alone.

  Leaving the Malecon, after several blocks she entered a café called the Blue Shrimp. The way she turned in to it, without looking, told him she’d been there before. He waited outside long enough to hear her say something in Spanish, hear something said back—a clutch of women it sounded like— and then Anna laughed as loud as Dale had heard her laugh in years.

  He realized what was different about her. She had the look of someone who hadn’t had a drink in three days. The exact amount of time since she’d last laid eyes on him. She looked uncomplicated, and fresh. She looked free of both of them.

  NO, SHE’S NOT DEAD, though they do say it’s either all or nothing for people like her. It’s not a case of being smart or stupid. Lowry was a genius, as Anna never ceased pointing out. It all might just be luck. Or who your companions are.

  But what’s she doing? He doesn’t know what she’s thinking right now, doesn’t have a clue. He suspects that their famous fatal intimacy was bullshit all along. How could he not have a clue? He opened new bank accounts but kept their old joint account with enough in it to keep her going awhile, though the two times he peeked it hadn’t been touched, and he’s since forced himself to stop looking. He knows she would have had to come north to get her visa renewed by now. So likely she’s been in town. She might still be. Her work never did call, nor did any of her friends—so they all must know, and they must have been given instructions. He takes nothing from this; it could mean love or it could mean hate, and isn’t that funny? Mostly what it means is confusion, because that is their epitaph. In any case, he bets he’s not far off when he pictures her wearing something colourful—turquoise, rose, yellow—and giving lessons of some sort, maybe working in that café where he heard her laugh. Keeping up a simple, clean, one-room place. Keeping birds. He sees her as someone he’d like to meet, and take walks with. Have adventures.

  Dale was back home more than two months before he noticed the Speak Spanish! book. He was in the process of packing everything up to move to a smaller apartment, because a single man does not need two bathrooms, and he found one with a decent view from the balcony, a silver-blue glimpse of Burrard Inlet up through to Indian Arm, which, irony of ironies, was where Lowry lived when he wrote Volcano. (Delighted, as speechless as a little girl, Anna had taken him along to explore Lowry Walk, a surprisingly serene path through beachfront forest.)

  Dale found the bright red Speak Spanish! book in the small bathroom, as they used to call it. The book was sitting plain as day on the back of the toilet where she’d left it, ready for her to pick up and commit one or two more words to memory. As soon as he saw it he realized he’d seen it quite a bit, lying around the place. He thinks he saw Anna prone on the couch reading it, saying words aloud, trying her accent, excited for their vacation and boning up for it—but to tell the truth, she was right, he hadn’t been paying attention. None at all.

  Only since finding the book had he begun to see the size of his mistake.

  Now every few days he opens her closet to check her clothes, feeling the fabric, trying to remember her wearing this blouse or those jeans. Sometimes he can. But these clothes of hers, which was everything she chose not to bring to Mexico, feel like cast-offs, and part of what she’d happily left behind.

  Black Roses Bloom

  Sharing his pillow, Katherine asks if it’s ever happened to him. Redmond goes up on an elbow. His sandy hair is mussed and boyish, despite the high, intelligent forehead. She finds exotic the permanent snarl of his lips, and that trace of English accent flips her heart.

  “Never. That’s never happened to me, Kath.”

  Even lying naked beside him, Katherine finds it hard to talk about sex. She’ll use timid hand gestures, or resort to the worst euphemisms. Your peter. My—he laughs at this one—nether region. Redmond is the first man with whom she’s talked about it. This morning they have ten minutes to linger before they must shower, dress and drive to the bank where they work.

  What’s happened is, she mentioned the flood of dreams she had at her orgasm, and he was surprised.

  Katherine adds, “Lately it’s happening even more. Maybe every time. Should I be worried?”

  Redmond presses a knuckle into her shoulder and lies back on his pillow. “Well, I’m jealous. I don’t even get to have my pillow-smoke anymore.” Redmond quit smoking at her insistence a week after they met (just as he got her to quit her glasses for contact lenses). Though it’s been three months he jokes about it constantly, slyly blaming. One thing he says is, Europeans are elegant smokers, so they should be allowed to.

  Redmond asks her, more softly, “So what exactly did you see today? In your post-coital reverie.”

  Katherine tells him it’s hard to describe because it’s a flood, a stream, of random images. But little stories too. The main thing is, it feels like memory. It’s dreams she’s had before. Lots, she’s certain, are from her childhood.

  “So I’m not having them,” she says, understanding it more herself. “I’m remembering them.” All feel drenched in nostalgia. The sweetness of long-lost.

  “Give us an example, then.” Said like a plucky English schoolmaster. Hello, Mr. Chips.

  Mostly Katherine is afraid of boring him. She knows she’s stiff; she knows she’s not colourful. If there’s one thing she’s afraid of with Redmond, it’s that. And aren’t people famously bored by others’ dreams? She’ll keep it short.

  “One was, I’m in a pet store. There’s a goldfish, it becomes the dog I always wanted, and I think as we’re walking home, it turns brown and gets old and dies.” Back on the pillow, Redmond stares straight up, blinking. She says, “And one I was in China, that place with the craggy mountains rising out of the water, and I fling myself off this cliff, because apparently I can fly, since I had this secret training. But I just fall into the trees. I’m completely embarrassed, because I was bragging about flying to all these tourists. Chinese tourists. I try to fall deeper into the branches so they can’t see me anymore.”

  “Wow,” Redmond whispers. He may in fact have said “Oh.” He’s either bored or concerned.

  Katherine can’t help herself.

  “And there’s this pineapple I pick, and it’s full of wonderfully cooked meat. A stew, a curry. It’s spiced like heaven. There’s gold nuggets shining up from it. Then there’s this ceremony for me …”

  “This happens every time you cum?”

  At first she thinks he means does a ceremony happen every time. And she so dislikes that word, cum. He somehow even pronounces its abbreviated spelling.

  “Maybe. Yes.”

  He smiles. “It’s usually the man who does the passing out.” He looks sideways at her, vast brow furrowed. “You actually do pass out?”

  Katherine simply nods. She’s already explained that she does. She wants to ask other things, wants to know that she’s not some kind of freak. Is she too loud, or not loud enough? Or would he like her to resist a little at first, or maybe he’d like to be stroked after, in “the afterglow”? Part of which she spends stricken by dreams.

  Redmond squeezes her knee and is first up and into the shower. Her revelation seems to have made him quiet, but then he’s humming in the spray. Katherine can smell a waft of her shampoo, which he doe
sn’t mind using. Lately he’s been staying over two, sometimes three nights a week, and there’s been mention of finding a place together. She’s fond of her condo and proud that it’s mortgage-free, and though it will hurt to lose it, it’s necessary that they find their place. They have yet to discuss her equity and his lack of same. But—as Redmond might joke as they divide a restaurant check—they’re both bankers, this shouldn’t be hard.

  REDMOND LOVES ME. Katherine can say this and does daily, aloud to herself, in smiling amazement. She is forty-five and had almost given up on that part of her life—the relationship part, the love part. Over the years she’d worked at two ragged and prolonged affairs, but until Redmond, there wasn’t love. She’d even begun telling herself that this part of life, the love part, didn’t really matter, almost convincing herself that since you’re born alone and die alone, the long middle part would only be muddled by a partner. Loneliness, she’d been whispering to herself, built character. She sees now that in life’s bruising race to the finish line, she’s been positioning pillows between herself and her greatest pain. But now Redmond loves her—she’s sure of it— and she loves Redmond, and there’s nothing muddled about it. Their love is a sentence that began clear and continues clear. The orgasms, the first in her life, are magical punctuation. Are proof.

  THAT NIGHT: A FLAME-GREEN BIRD, its song the tink of a cheap souvenir bell and poignant for it. Then her father’s face in the side window of a black car, a criminal’s car. He sees her, points at her, laughs behind glass. She’s on the weedy sidewalk in front of her childhood house. A long-forgotten truth: the smell of her trike tires.

  RESTLESS IN THE WAITING ROOM, Katherine almost gets up to leave. Magazine beauty ads can’t distract her. Her horoscope in the back is spectacularly good and says her love will grow, but she reads the others too and they’re all spectacular and apparently good love is everywhere, which she knows is garbage. She feels foolish coming here and doubts a family doctor would know anything about orgasm dreams anyway. But last week, before Redmond’s special dinner for her, she promised herself she’d get it checked if it happened again despite her efforts to stop it. They ate the Sicilian macaroni, finished the wine while listening to the wily jazz Redmond had brought, moved to the bedroom, enjoyed sex—after the peak of which she sank instantly into dreams. In that way of dreams, she was aware of herself having them but at the same times helpless to stop: she’s beside a beautiful glacial river, with a smell of dry, hot pine needles, it’s Banff, she’s barefoot and shouldn’t be, she’s lost her shoes and is hunting for them. Then mostly it’s glimpses—like thumbing through colour swatches—whiffs of emotions that by turns tug, gladden, make restless. They all feel like memory.

  In her inner office Dr. Reynolds asks awkward questions. Katherine would prefer being physically naked to this. Dr. Reynolds is roughly Katherine’s age and her name is Dorothy, but despite knowing her for two decades, Katherine has never been invited to call her that. Which is fine, especially now.

  “So let’s clarify. Sexually—you’ve never had orgasms before. Not even through self-stimulation.”

  Katherine nods, won’t meet her eye. So let’s clarify my freakishness.

  “And, the effort it takes. To reach orgasm. You say it’s lots of work. So can you tell me, out of ten, with ten being the highest, how much effort it takes?”

  “I didn’t mean it’s just work. I don’t know quite what—”

  “Of course it’s ‘enjoyable.’” Dr. Reynolds does quotation marks and almost smiles. Imagining this thick woman in the crisp smock having orgasms too, Katherine doesn’t know if it’s endearing or nauseating. The doctor continues, “But, subtracting the enjoyment, can you describe the effort? Is it distressing? Do you ever feel faint or—”

  “Ten. It’s ten.” But an enjoyable ten. Please, Dorothy, shut up. She will not describe herself at her peak. She will tell no one that she is desperate to burst but can’t, and that what it often takes in the end is Redmond saying her name, with his low voice, his accent, and it is proof of their love that he could know this.

  TODAY, A SATURDAY MORNING, Katherine is extra self-conscious. She’s in the middle of telling Redmond three lies. First—a lie of omission—she’s not told him what her doctor wants her to do the next time they make love. Second, she’s told Redmond that her dripping faucet is driving her crazy, she thinks it’s just a washer, will he please, please come over and fix it, she even has tools and an extra washer—when in fact she opened the faucet herself and purposely mangled the washer with a pair of pliers.

  Redmond arrives, game to try, looking annoyed but proud, she can tell, to have been asked. He’s cute in his plaid workshirt, which looks brand new, perhaps bought right after her phone call, and it’s also cute that he’s deemed such a shirt necessary. She hands him several wrenches, hoping he will be able to figure out the right one—he does—and she drops just enough advice while watching him fix her faucet.

  When Redmond finishes, one knuckle is bleeding. He taps the faucet and, so English, announces, “Right,” and tries the taps. He’s slightly amazed and then proud of the water gushing into the basin.

  She hands him a coffee to sip while she tries hot, then cold, cooing amazement too. Katherine’s not a good actor, but she takes his collar in both hands and says, “My hero,” coy as Marilyn Monroe. She adds, “There’s something about a man and his tools,” the line made lamer for being pre-planned, and declares that she can’t let him leave without giving him his reward. This, the third lie, she knows won’t stay a lie. His work clothes and clumsiness hadn’t been arousing at all, but once in bed she knows she’ll rise to the occasion. She takes Redmond by the hand, senses reluctance and, Marilyn again, tilts her head to undo the buttons over his chest. Redmond asks if it’s this Bob the Builder shirt that’s caught her eye, and she says, yes, it’s absolutely unbearable, joining his joke. And Katherine sees how love can deepen even in lies and frivolity.

  All part of the plan, she must have him gone by two because the clinic closes at three. Dr. Reynolds wants Katherine tested within an hour of having sex. That is, of having an orgasm. That is, of being stricken with dreams. In her office, face falling professionally soft, Dr. Dorothy had told Katherine that the brain releases an enzyme into the blood when part of it dies. The blood test will be for a stroke.

  Today, after the faucet repair: She’s on a plane, a propeller plane, and there’s turbulence. The pilot sings to them in what sounds Mexican, then becomes Irish. The plane isn’t falling yet, but everyone seems to know it’s about to. She’s the only one afraid, though she isn’t really, and her screams are insincere, though she tries her best to make them real. As the plane’s nose tilts down and things speed up, the woman in the seat to her left dares her, hands her a knife. And from Katherine’s wrist black roses bloom.

  SUCH IS THEIR LOVE that they don’t discuss much. She doesn’t understand men, but she and Redmond seem to share a knowing. She is sure of it. They haven’t, for instance, had to speak of work, where she’s branch manager and he occupies an echelon or two below. Redmond jokes about his smaller office and salary—in the parking lot he once shouted across to her, At least my car is bigger. They both know that he entered the financial world late, and that he is capable and might keep climbing. None of this needs to be mentioned. And though Katherine yearns to proclaim their love, would proudly arrive at work hand in hand, they both know to keep it hidden due to the perception that their relationship might be advantageous for him. She knows there likely are odious murmurs that he is sleeping his way up the ladder. But he can joke about this too. It felt dangerous, it felt almost like sex, when he surprised her that time in bed, announcing deadpan, “If you promote me I’ll marry you.” When he left it at that, unexplained, she lay there paralyzed for the longest time, until finally he coughed out laughter, and then she joined him, desperately and with relief that they were laughing, she feeling like a dry well suddenly filling with water, the sweetest, warmest water. It brimm
ed in her eyes. She could see that Redmond knew just how dangerous he was to her. And he knew that she knew, and they didn’t need to say a word.

  KATHERINE UNDRESSES FOR BED. Redmond is in the living room, comfortable in her recliner, enjoying a magazine article on the Vancouver Island mountain lion. She half-listens as he explains to her loudly from the other room that the big cat was bounty-hunted and almost wiped out, and that only the fiercest survived to breed, which is why there are more attacks on Vancouver Island than the rest of North America combined. She slides into bed with her book. He will join her eventually, and even if he has to wake her, they will make love. When he sleeps over, they have never not made love.

  She is scheduled at the hospital next week for a strange procedure involving electrodes, shaved head and more. It also involves a vibrator and an orgasm. She knows she won’t go through with it. She simply won’t show up. She would be alone in a room, but her pleasure, as well as her blackout and her dreams, would appear onscreen as angry red or glaring green, indicating bleeding or oxygen or a shrieking lack of it, all to be interpreted by men in long smocks. Ever since the blood tests proclaimed the worst—a series of small strokes—and a neurologist confirmed the losses in brain function, Katherine has paid more attention to the dreams. They have grown precious to her. How could they not? She imagines each brain cell as a vault that holds a single image and blooms proudly with it as it dies. They have her on blood thinners. She has been told to avoid stress and exercise, especially sex, sex most of all, since this is what, mysteriously, is killing her.

  Redmond enters her bedroom yawning grandly, head kinked against shoulder, arms flung out, hands in fists. Katherine pretends to read. Her body is minutely shaking. He loves her. How has she managed to do this? He will interrupt her reading with a loving hand on her shoulder.