Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  His life is built on carefully crafted self-deception.

  John’s cottage restaurant is not really a cottage restaurant. It just looks that way. There is a real cottage restaurant just over the road so it is not that John does not know the difference. Or that his customers are not readily aware. Everyone knows that the tin ceiling is not a real tin ceiling. Or that the hardwood floor is not real hardwood. The animal hides and heads hung all about the place were purchased at HomeSense with money that was not even John’s. It’s a facsimile they all tolerate for the sake of convenience and cost.

  The real thing requires legit effort and John could not summon legitimacy.

  John took no issue with appropriating identity. It suited him. He saw himself as a horse to stud. Not a real horse like a workhorse or a racehorse. But a beast built to insert a foreign quality. And if John is a stud horse, then George is his show pony. What good stock.

  And Iris his little grey donkey in a Mexican hammock. So cute. But not any kind of horse. Not even the best close-on horse like a zebra or gazelle. Iris is a pack animal from an underdeveloped nation. Sweet. Amusing even. Gets the job done but certainly not deserving of John’s serious consideration.

  Sometimes the truth is as sad as it is simple.

  He had told her as much from the beginning. So she had accepted the statement as true and refrained from expectation. But then he said there were doubts about his marriage. George, he said, really wanted something he could not give her. Which was unfair because George deserves to get everything, and more than that, he would say calmly, as he rubbed circles in the small of Iris’s damp back, tracing the sharp upturn toward her bum. A ski jump, he said. Then, you’ve got a young body. And then, turn over, Iris. And then, give me your face.

  Look into my eyes when you come. Say my name. Tell me you love me.

  So she adjusted expectation to meet changing information hand-delivered in a sex storm. Jesus, Jesus, the roads were basically impassable. But she would forge on in unfit weather for John. If there was an opening for the position of John’s person, then Iris would readily fill that staffing gap. She was already doing so on a part-time, on-call, contractual basis. He had told her he probably, likely, almost definitely would not leave his wife.

  But then he asked her to describe the wedding she’d imagined for herself as a girl.

  Then he asked her to describe how that image had changed. And then he asked her to imagine him in this new image. And then he said he imagined himself in that image too.

  Then he said he was already married.

  Loops and loops of ready-whipped turmoil sprayed aerosol-style all over her before running his finger up over her belly and inside her.

  But he told her he was an asshole. He had said.

  This is logic men like John prefer to lean on. He had not forced her, she had kissed him back, got in the car, gone for a smoke, opened the door. Every time she had opened the door.

  It’s not like I beat her door down.

  No. It’s not like that. Not exactly.

  Here is what it is like: John would regularly drunk text Iris from his car.

  Unlock. Your. Door.

  Iris, asleep in bed, would shoot up at the sight of the illuminated box on the nightstand. Look around the room. Wonder how close he was. How much time she had. Disoriented and confused, she would jet out of her bed at the sound of banging a few walls away.

  This way John could pretend Iris was an accident that kept happening.

  Certainly not the plan he had been planning every time he left his house since the first time he left his house. Never make plans because this seems intentional. Very nearly a relationship progressing naturally. Which could not be the case because John was already progressing over here with his wife.

  No, it had to be scapegoated on circumstance and definitely not because Iris was the person he needed to see. Don’t give her any ideas about her value.

  Instead, John would fire a warning shot in the air mere moments before he arrived at her door. Sometimes while seated in his parked car just up on the curb where he would watch her lamp light. And then the hall light. And then the kitchen light. The little one over the stovetop she reaches for first because she is afraid of the dark. Afraid of living alone.

  Afraid and alone.

  John could imagine her stumbling slowly through her space as he approached. He knew her way so well. Each step hardening him against her as they grew nearer to each other until they could see each other through the frosted frame in the double pane. John resting his brow against it in a gesture he well knew would break her soft heart.

  Because she loved him and he knew that well, too.

  It was not real for John but it was real for Iris. It was Iris’s real life and John used that against her. Maybe, perhaps, at some point, John even believed he cared for her. Say he did, or thought he did. Give him more benefit of the doubt than he deserves.

  Pretend he’s convinced he loves her.

  Then why show up in the middle of the night and wake her from her sleep when he knows this will scare her? Why do that repeatedly and at random? Is that how John loves women? Is that what his love is like? Reckless. Hurried. Guilty. Horrifying.

  Let me in, Iris.

  Bellowed across the threshold. Echoing down the street. Threatening to wake the neighbours. Alert Olive. Annoy the couple living upstairs, their Yorkie barking barking. John exposing them both as he stands fists up, banging weakly for Iris to let him in. In the snow. The rain. Before dusk. After dawn. Holding cookbooks or a tool kit under his arm. Gatorade for tomorrow. The shambled facade. A pretence of friendship. Chatting up the elderly fellow across the street while holding a shovel.

  Hard winter, b’y. Hard ol’ winter.

  Drinking a beer on the cement stoop leading down to her door. Or leaned against her shitty Golf as she stares up at him out of frame. Smoking a cigarette. Or sharpening his knives.

  Actually, literally, sharpening knives bought especially for Iris, who ate bananas when she ate anything at all. What the fuck would she cut with commercial grade kitchen knives? She doesn’t even slice bread. She doesn’t even eat it. John ignored every pixel that did not suit his picture of her. She was just a piece of skin to sear through. Something to envelop a bit of hunger. Thank you for the sex, Iris met with a shake of her head as she stood in the dark porch to see him out and up over the icy steps. She never had salt.

  You can’t fall up, she said. Thighs still wet.

  John tut tutting at her oblivion. Of course you can fall up.

  Stop pretending we’re just fucking, John.

  Sometimes uttered in exhaustion. Sometimes spoken with hands on his face. Into his mouth moments before a kiss. Attempting to breathe comprehension into his reluctant body. Because he has to know that this is not how the world works for Iris. She is not going to struggle in this snare indefinitely; she would sooner gnaw her own foot off and hop through a new world worse injured than before.

  Life is not a fucking pop song. Jesus Christ, love, learn to adult.

  But John lives his life in a mid-career Ryan Gosling movie. He fucking dies over forbidden groping in warm summer rain. Hair wet against a face in desperate need for him to reach out and tuck it behind an ear. Collars that crave quiet repositioning. A tag requiring tucking. John likes touching women without their permission. He stands behind Iris, puts his hands on her hips, presses his face into the nape of her in a public place and whispers. The possibility of discovery is too tempting for him.

  John’s a wolf. Iris his Little Red Riding Hood. He must have whatever is in her bas
ket.

  The whole notion that he cannot stay clear of Iris is his most favoured notion. It places all the blame on her. It’s a physical thing. He can’t help himself. Men just can’t help themselves. She knows what she does, little vixen, little minx. She moves her body like that on purpose. John has long been planting these ideas in her head. She’s a lot of trouble, he has said knowingly to a customer with a wink.

  Wink wink motherfuckers.

  They’ve complimented him on his hostess and John has said that she really is something. That he is lucky to have her. Everyone should have an Iris, John has said. To any human willing to stop steady for five seconds, John has said veiled affectionate things to amuse himself.

  Later he will undo them. They both know that he will take it all back.

  He will drag out his hesitation in that long implying way. Others will nod in recognition for fear of seeming daft. John will say that he doesn’t know if he’d go so far as to say Iris was great or gorgeous or a genius. She’s okay. She’s not bad-looking. She’s kind of talented for a baygirl.

  He will steal back from her every compliment as if everything about her was a gift he had bestowed. He will take everything back so he can give to another.

  He will do so slowly so as not to draw suspicion.

  And it stings Iris to watch John across the dining room listening intently to his wife, who has become increasingly animated in a discouraging way. George’s apparent joy does not make Iris feel well.

  The fact that this woman’s pleasure brings about such discontent is wrong too. Iris knows.

  * * *

  John thinks he’s having a stroke. He is actually stroking out this time.

  This is the most time John has spent out on the floor in his whole career and he hates it out here, but he can’t very well leave his wife and his girlfriend out here alone.

  On fucking Valentine’s Day.

  The strained feeling across his chest he sometimes gets when he thinks on things returned when the dinner service playlist started. In the confusion of the day, he had forgotten making it. And now he hears the first few lovely soft bars of High Violet coasting through to the dining room and he knows he is fucked.

  Tonight he is well and truly fucked.

  He had thought many times in the past that his order was up but it hadn’t been. Tonight, though, will be glorious. They are going to destroy him. And he deserves it. It will almost be a relief.

  But he has to at least try to save himself.

  John had poked his head out the kitchen door when the opening bars played. He had scanned the dining room for them and found them standing shoulder to shoulder, deep in conversation. He tried to take the temperature of the room, attempting to judge their body language, searching every ounce of physical knowledge to determine if the playlist had registered.

  George was swaying softly. She loves this album. She doesn’t know. She is still fine.

  Iris was not swaying softly. She loves this album too. She does know. She is not fine.

  It never occurred to him not to listen to the same music with them. Albums came out and everyone listened to them. That was how music worked. And of course they like the same music. They like the same man. It was easy. Simple even. He memorized the one hymn book and sang from it. Women love it when men serenade them. They think it’s romantic.

  It’s not, though, not really, it’s a lot of plagiarism.

  John plagiarizes feelings of songwriters with record deals and sound studios. John fucks them both to the same sad songs. Thank god he can’t play any instruments.

  If John was in a band, he’d be dangerous.

  John is dangerous enough just looking like someone who might play music. John looks like someone who might do a lot of things. But he doesn’t. He’s a critic. He has a lot of strong opinions on those that actually do the things. He’s an armchair centre, a back seat driver, a closed door politico. He would never be caught out doing or saying things that would shatter the perfected image he has of being a man who does and says things. John is insubstantial and therefore unsubstantiated.

  Which is how he fucking likes it.

  He should have kept himself scarce. But oh no. George said why be a cook when you can be the chef? Iris said why feed the wealthy when you can feed the poor? And now his life will be ruined in one go because of a melancholy indie band from Parkdale or Williamsburg or some other jesus hipster place.

  What’s more, he’s a little annoyed with himself for not thinking of it. He had covered so many bases, was fully in the splits when this flew by him. He had not foreseen them caught together under a sound cloud of his own hormonal devising.

  He had thought George would be out of town. He had thought it would make Iris happy.

  Now each song feels like it’s ushering in his own demise. This terrible love is his funeral march and he’s the fucking spider. Of course he is. But even spiders have the drive to live. It’s physiological. So John barks at Ben to turn it off. Put something else on, anything, he snaps. Maybe something a little more upbeat. Alternative or rock. Ben looked at him perplexed.

  You want to play rock music in the dining room on Valentine’s Day?

  Yes, Jesus yes, electronic music, house even, make it rave for fuck sakes, John said in hushed and hurried tones. He didn’t care if Ben put on fucking death metal right now as long as they did not continue through this particular melodic nightmare. God knows what Iris would do if they got to the end.

  John vows that he will not call the cops on her if she attacks him. Never.

  Or maybe. He might have to. It depends on how savage she gets.

  If that broken bird starts to sing, John will have it caged.

  He will say that she is emotionally unstable. A good person in a bad situation who misread the signs. He will say that some women are incapable of having male friends. He will suggest Iris is not fit for mixed company. In need of extensive counselling. If it comes to it, he will insinuate that the last violent asshole was not really a violent asshole, to discredit her. He will use question marks to poke holes in her well-documented domestic abuse. He will imply that she is the liar. He will declare her crazy.

  Bitches be crazy.

  If it really comes to it, if he feels trapped and can see no other way, he will claim poor mental health. That he fucked her, and kept fucking her this whole time, to keep her from self-harming. Oh yes, he will say all this and more. He’s got a script ready-made in his head. He’s even tried the material out. On Iris.

  These are the exact things he has said to her about George this past year to keep her compliant. And now, he will say these untrue things about her to whomever will listen. Even to people who don’t know the circumstances of their impending rift. He will pre-emptively and discreetly slander Iris as a means to make her words less meaningful. And John knows he has the upper hand in any blame game willingly entered into.

  Because Iris is a party girl and no one believes a party girl. Ever.

  Better than a party girl even. A very good girl with a wild streak. Iris is ninety percent weak milky tea and ten percent two hundred proof moonshine. This manifestation of her character makes her no bother to defame. Everyone has seen her drunk and in tears at the back of Bar None. Never mind John is the reason why. John will confide in a whisper, as if it pains him to do so, that everyone knows Iris drinks.

  John has maybe, likely, driven Iris mad.

  He can see it in her and it scares the bejesus out of him. Across the dining room, she stands, some half-feral thing focused on him like a nearly caught serial killer looking for one last homicide b
efore life imprisonment. He should have stayed in bed. Kept the restaurant closed all day. He could have blamed it on the storm. Made the weather an accomplice to his crimes.

  Forget blame it on the rain, blame it on the snow.

  Everyone lies for extra time in the bunk. John sure as fuck does. And he could have easily stayed in bed today. But there were the reservations. And food going off. And Iris.

  There was Iris. He had been thinking about her, too. He meant to calm her down after their disagreement, if you could call her tantrums disagreements. He wanted to make her understand his position before she went off her head, telling all and sundry what they’ve been up to.

  You need to talk to someone that is not me.

  Who?

  You must have someone.

  My friends would never speak to me again.

  They’ll forgive you if you’re honest.

  They won’t and I can’t.

  A doctor then.

  I don’t have a doctor.

  Your wife.

  Don’t be so cruel.

  Cruel?

  You know that’s fucking horrible.

  My best friend won’t speak to me anymore!

  I told you not to tell her.

  I used to be a different person. Nicer. Open.

  You’re the same person.

  But I’m not, John, this has changed me.

  You’re going to tell everyone, I know it.

  I might.

  John catches a glimpse of Iris with an idle look on her face which means she’s already drunk. It didn’t take much. John realizes he hasn’t seen her eat anything all day. And he reassures himself he will sort George and Iris out after dinner service.

  Had to have the both of them, didn’t you, you fucking asshole.

  No one hates John more than John hates John.

  Clock that, it’s vital.

  John can hear his team struggling to get the orders up in the kitchen. They are short-staffed and stressed. Half of them are hung because of rolling sessions of storm roulette these last few days. He is certain at least one of them is drunk now, but he can’t be bothered to pinpoint the smell because the whole space reeks of steaming lobster and he’s, well, John is experiencing higher than average levels of emotional distress. He is certain his bowels are going to come loose or he will burst into tears.