When Judy said, “You could cut steak with the man’s chiseled good looks,” Marta, avoiding any questions about the logic or aptness of Judy’s image and bowled over by her friend’s force of nature personality, had shrugged in turn: “Sure.”
“What’s our commonality?” Marta had wanted to ask, and in retrospect lamented the question’s failure to launch.
The last date in a skimpy, unremarkable series had been a thudding fiasco—with a preppy button-down Oxford cloth tenure stream History prof so dull and career-obsessed that the responses of ire and unveiled boredom, and, later, grey despair that came with imagining an entire life shared with such a blinkered specimen who evidently preferred crumbling folios to living flesh, had seemed predestined. With the new proposition Marta had thought Why not? with the irrational yet pigheaded assurance of a gambler already long into a meteoric losing streak. And, anyway, she reasoned, the single-occupancy shell that at the moment she felt so eager to discard could always and easily be revisited, like home.
Judy’s goading expertise played a part too: “God, branch out a bit. Who the hell wants to date another graduate student? Too much braininess kills physicality. Ker-splat. You’d try to impress each other with your peerless insights about Lacan until 11PM and then shake hands like abstinent Christian teenagers on some pimply, tight-assed high school debating team.” Marta refused to share the fact that she’d willingly, happily participated in debate competitions—with other teens in matching green polo shirts who, yes, kept the tetracycline industry bullish—throughout grades 11 and 12.
The date did in fact dislodge Marta from terra firma, which was, she’d admit, small to begin with. SRLFI chose an It Space, his idiot term, capitalized and italicized judging from the intonation, used to describe a fussy overdressed start up restaurant that begged for interior design magazine photographers and coolness credibility, not messy humans prone to spilling fashionable alcohol concoctions and filling bellies that bulged ever so subtly over expensive waistbands. Between courses, Marta watched, curious to see where he stowed the gum he chewed so tirelessly. He seemed the type to stick a wad under the table.
After eight oblong plates of Minutia—“Appetizers as a concept are just so 1970s-Galloping-Gourmet-scallops-wrapped-in-bacon-and-served-in-a-brown escargot-dish, right?” he’d sputtered, inciting a facial reaction less impassive and pleased than she wanted—they’d driven, Marta listening, SRLFI motormouthed, to Transfiguro III’s wrap party. “We’ll check out the vibe,” he explained before speeding into a tangled, angrily-toned story about the search to finalize the sequel’s official name. Watching passive captives in other cars, Marta nonetheless caught “so-called marketing geniuses,” “brain-dead focus groups,” “La La Land,” “child’s play,” “give me a break,” and “total clusterfuck” before intuiting that “their heads shoved all the way up their asses” amounted to his summary statement and a request for her nodded or vocalized sympathies. “Unbelievable,” she’d enthused.
Scrutinizing the narrow gastro-lounge restlessly—all shiny plastic beige surfaces, as though clamped together from Space: 1999 set remnants—Marta counted people using their mobile devices. The average was 3.5 per dartboard-sized table.
SRLFI spoke at a canter, blithe self-love a fortress completely impervious to her purposeful arrows of silence. Marta fixed on him with a baleful, dismissive stare; she meant it to shout “O joy! A shallow movie guy who yearns to be a shallow fashion guy,” and was shocked that—she supposed—the man misunderstood so completely, believing her to be conveying instead, “Please go on. I’m fascinated by each and every verb.”
His conversational stride exhibited no sign of fatigue as he steered and prodded and nudged her through intimate groupings of crew, all the while oblivious to the affront of his trespasses into Marta’s personal space.
Hardly a complete disaster—exoticism saved him from becoming a deadly bore, and the partygoers did not ever whine competitively about the job market, funding applications, tenure, students, busyness, conference papers, or research plans—neither could the date ever warrant being judged a moderate success.
Introduced to SRLFI’s “peeps,” Marta noticed how one after the next looked beyond her shoulder or else right through her with the keenly focused eyes of a dog bred to retrieve. The single guy who broke the pattern—tall, rail lean, black shirt unbuttoned two places below decorum—had turned the conversation to Alice Munro. Since he’d managed, moments earlier, to drop the names of a famous Manhattan fashion visionary and a Hollywood producer (likewise “truly visionary”) with whom he claimed to be very close friends, Marta registered surprise at the sudden literary tangent. She perked up.
On the next beat he asked: “I heard she’s a real bitch. Is that true?”
Marta eyes widened, aghast. Was he for real? She had wanted to slap him, douse the man’s fatuous face with the table’s bottle of Swiss water and exclaim “How crass can you be?” but had chosen a prim “Well, we don’t really study authors in quite that way.” Back on campus the vulgarity had made for an entertaining tale of heresy.
The gaze of anyone else seemed to lose predatory gleam—undisguised assessment complete, the eye tracked movement at distant tables—when Marta revealed a lowly, would-be lecturer status rather than “I’m a writer with a hot screenplay recently green lit and gearing up for cast.” She thought, I am not worthy of being prey. Such relegation struck her as an insult of a strange kind.
A few of SRLFI’s underlings persisted, wondering in coy tones if she had a little something in the works—as though they could not actually conceptualize a word person who wouldn’t trade body and soul for a screenplay catching Hollywood’s favour, or at least be readying an option-able book that had in fact been written with the movie version already in mind. Disheartening, the narrowness was not essentially different than the purblind careerism of her own tribe, whose members wore the Knowledge Producing Intellectual badge with undisguised pride.
Marta had actually choked slightly when after another long hour passed SRLFI leaned close to her ear and asked if she wanted to “do some blow” back at his condo downtown. Declining, naturally, she claimed loyalty to a long-planned early morning hike that demanded complete focus: “It’s going to be epic.” The lie hung in the air, a ludicrous excuse, and clumsy as well, so patently was she not outdoorsy or someone who’d describe huffing up a rocky hill as “epic.”
Beneath the offer’s sheer embarrassing banality—cocaine with a movie guy: where were the $100 notes, the loud sniffing, and Studio 54 clone when you needed them?—Marta felt bothered by a less welcome sensation: she’d never tried the drug and a priggish dread warned that something lamentable might happen. Instantly, an image had flashed from a moralizing television episode deep in the past in which a foolish high school A-lister experimenting with LSD had leapt from a rooftop fully believing that he could fly.
But worse was the idea that she’d look like a rank amateur, unclear about the real-life etiquette and technique of cocaine usage. What if the reality didn’t match the vision: rectangular pocket mirror, rolled bill, hasty parallel lines of credit card chopped powder, eye-watering tingling in the nasal passage, hyperactivity, altered vision? She could live without the spectacle of someone laughing as she fumbled or coughed while snorting. Other than too-animated conversation, the story of what happened after inhalation refused to coalesce. Maybe he’d expect them to get it on: that would fit the disco- and Reagan-era pattern.
There’d been another murmured statement, too, directly after: “And then I’ll eat your pussy.” Ah, Marta had thought, I am worthy of being prey after all.
SRLFI’s declaration had been accompanied by a trial wolfish leer that her eyes measured as being distinctly unsure, half-apologetic, and not cuspid-baring predatory in the least. The words might be those of a boy trying out an elder brother’s surefire technique.
The silence that followed proved laughab
ly absolute.
Thinking My kingdom for a phrase!, Marta didn’t utter a syllable because she could not imagine a response with sufficient bite. What would Judy say? Playful witticism and blistering riposte eluded Marta equally. No one had ever offered cocaine. Cunnilingus matched to it floated well beyond the map of experiences, even fantasy ones; she’d spent more time pondering the existence of UFOs.
Marta had returned to the context later. In SRLFI’s world, about which she could only speculate, how would a woman reply? “Sure, babe, bring it on”? “Uh huh, let me take off my heels”? “Drop dead, you worm”? “Are you fucking joking”?
In this case, though, shared awkwardness emerged as the single outcome.
Following instructions, SRLFI dropped Marta off a block before Undre Arms. Though making no effort to park the Audi, he said, “Nice place. We should do something sometime.”
“Yes, I agree.” Mutual insincere smiles had sealed the negative transaction.
Marta closed the car door without great force. Pretending to fish out keys as she trod toward the entrance to a building of strangers, she hoped the refusal to turn around and fondly wave would convey a simple message: “Get lost.” The coupe sped off. The security of Undre Arms beckoned from two minutes away.
Mood beginning to curdle with the recollection, Marta reminded herself that the biopic consultancy didn’t represent a career move; nor was it a blind date. The work contract would be for desirable professional expertise—not heart, not body, not soul, the deal not Faustian. If the studio meeting hinted at unsatisfactory conditions she’d easily refuse them, a diva in her own right.
SARDINE TIN CITY
1.
Military thundering from the Mishima soundtrack pushed Jake out of sleep. He reached across the bed and nudged Gleek. “Hey chubster, what’s happened to my feline alarm clock?” The tabby responded by coiling tighter. As the piece reached a tympanic crescendo, Jake rolled over to address the device: “Lower volume.”
This early, the room’s light-absorbing surfaces produced a restful muteness, an effect Jake thought might be akin to reclining within a Victorian crypt, or stretching out under a heavy canopy of autumnal trees: comfortable and sedating. Walnut-finish furnishings, mortar-toned drapes and bedding, and walls painted Sullen, Jake recalled, comprised the “complementary palette” the decorator had highlighted on her laptop’s virtual model. Calling the stark black and white photograph of a spherical natural gas tank in Belgium an anchor piece for the living room, she’d replied with a sigh when Jake sputtered about the cost: “It’ll appreciate in value, you know,” peering theatrically over the balcony off the kitchen to survey the street below, “unlike that shiny German car of yours.”
An enthralled audience of one, Jake had watched Marilyn, a bubbly and trucker-mouthed California blonde, sell a vision with a realtor’s gusto, minus the false camaraderie: “Masculine, yes, but not Hemingway-running-bulls-in-Spain-macho, right, or Joe-Beer-Can-watching-the-fucking-Superbowl. Tasteful and refined. Solid.”
Strutting around the condo, right hand chop-chop-chopping into left palm, she’d told Jake about taking pride in profiling a client’s exact needs. “This developer’s off-white completely misses the mark, obviously,” she ran a hand of fingernails along the chalky wall, “unless you’re cloning a Motel 6 next to the Arby’s on Exit 234.”
Jake had enjoyed the unexpected bluntness. After the rapid strings of description, he guessed what choice words she’d summon for the Joe Beer Can man-den pitch.
Down to the last detail the project had been Marilyn channeling Jake, and he was flattered by the implied compliments; he’d give kudos to anyone who intuited which buttons to press—knowing the right thing to say and not registering as kiss-ass, that art took skill to master. When she’d taken a misstep with a Tommy gun floor lamp—“ironic,” she’d called it—Jake figured that even Mother Teresa had run into off days.
Tracing a line along his sleep-warm torso, Jake grabbed the morning’s erection and pumped slowly at the base for a few seconds. Now that is solid, he thought. To greet each and every day with a substantial pole pointing outward, what a proclamation of intent. Carpe diem. He wondered if all men did so. Of course they must; it’s the male prerogative: go forth, thrust, and multiply, Johnny Appleseed, the rush surrounding orgasm the never-diminishing reward. As hardwired as breathing, and the build up and jet-speed release felt better. He scrolled the blankets down and scrutinized the black hair and muscular undulations of chest and belly. Not quite rippled, but not at all bad for early forties, he nodded, I wouldn’t say no.
Time to move, Jake thought. He’d store his juice till later.
Naked, Jake crouched and slid the laptop from the messenger bag. Veering toward the kitchen, he clicked on the television; blasts of noise kicked his senses awake. As for bladder urgings, he’d wait for the erection to subside.
In the kitchen he stared at the weather channel—drizzle till noon, mixed rain and sun from then on—before switching to Murder, She Wrote. As much as he liked the widow detective’s observant, puzzle-solving mind and spotting the has-been guest stars, Mrs. Fletcher’s happy amnesia intrigued him. Anywhere the woman moved she walked into a murder or two, about 300 stabbings, shootings, hangings, and poisonings over the 264 episodes of the series—Jake had ordered the DVD boxed set on a whim—and yet remained unflappably optimistic, her demeanour calm. Never taken aback or weighted down in the least by the littering of victims, she took the world’s seething murderousness in stride as though it were no different than ho-hum traffic on the day’s commute, when she ought to be in session for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and chasing her AM and PM coffee with Zoloft. Jake couldn’t deny he’d be a paranoid wreck if every social setting festered with deadly secrets, ulterior motives, and a minimum of one stiff.
The mounting bombast of Philip Glass from the bedroom competed with Mrs. Fletcher’s revelations. The player had been a gift, but along with puppies or teenagers it demanded instructions three or four times before the information sank in. In the hallway Jake bellowed: “Volume down.” Hearing no change he strode closer to the mic: “Vol-ume DOWN.” He’d assumed kinks in voice recognition software were buried in the past. Gleek didn’t stir.
Throwing jeans on the bed, he decided to go commando. He grabbed a black T-shirt. Justifying the V-neck’s $110 price tag, the clerk in Yaletown had stroked the fabric: “Your skin can tell the difference.” He’d read the tag—Made in Malaysia—and told her to get real. He bought it anyway.
2.
As 8-grain cereal bubbled, Jake checked email, just the personal accounts. He’d save the occupational addresses for the office. Jake strived to keep mornings at home work-free; border patrol was essential with Hollywood, a demanding boss with Old World beliefs about fealty. And his ass already dragged about the location shoot in the middle of nowhere—a part of the job description that always felt punitive, not least because the move threw him from a comfortable orbit—and wanted to stamp that reality out of his consciousness until the last minute. It’s a whore’s life, Jake supposed, and not every john is a trustworthy high-roller paying big bucks for pillow-talk and snuggles, not by a long shot.
A respondent to Jake’s online hook-up profile began with a false-step subject heading, “Cease the day!” The attached lure: a regulation towel-wrapped torso shot at a bathroom mirror. Jake leaned close to the screen inspecting the image. Not bad. A little pudgy and years out of date probably; the accompanying message scanned as moronic: “Hi: I thought u look Very Familiar to guy that work out from my gym . . . Do u by any change work out at Noth Vancouver . . . ? Go with the floor type guy here. Anyway I just want to say Hello . . . How is life threatening you?” Another dud in a world full of them, Jake lamented.
Before replying, Jake lifted the cereal off the burner and forwarded “Cease the day!”
He’d ordinarily pass one or two to Jeremy on any given week,
those messages entrenched in his routine, like morning espresso. Receiving was another. Jake grinned opening “FW: check this out” emails from Jeremy since the message in the bottle—compelling or deranged: which kind to arrive was anyone’s guess—often surpassed the snippets he sent. Jeremy prided himself on a curatorial sense of the exceptional, ugly though bizarre.
Incoming messages stoked Jake. The left-field and potent charge of the swapped mail reshaped the waking world, adding bracing fathoms of depth to the otherwise flat, death-in-life schedule of obligation and routine—“I really need to get that report finished before my 2 o’clock with Peter in Finance”—and rote sentence volleys about politics, movies, vacations, kids, weather, and real estate, solid performances but empty as toilet paper tubes. The incoming details exposed the customary assumptions about sex—clearly defined, biologically motivated physical exchanges involving insertion of Tab A into Slot B in bed once a week right after the news—as lacking, a popular belief posing as fact that actually came nowhere close.
This discovery echoed a sci-fi plot: with special glasses the hero can see past the deceit of surface appearances. Of course Jake didn’t unearth the stealthy alien invasion of They Live. For now, extraterrestrials remained fiction; but realizing life contains more than the flock’s clustered movements had the elegant simplicity of a truth.
Jake counted on stumbling into like eurekas even though no one’s average with luck batted a thousand. He held firm that dropping out of the B. Comm program—the fast track to office tower hivedom—had been the wisest decision of his twenties. Concrete limits to shoehorning exist, Jake had seen. In a borrowed tie and so cleanly shaven his cheeks shone, Jake had shuddered with a cold sweat convulsion steps past Price Waterhouse’s half-circle security desk on day one of a work-study placement. The glimpse of the office maze of muffling grey felt cubicles had swelled into a revelation: before him stood a hasty engagement that would never lead to marriage. The barely masked disappointment on the sensible faces of the parental units? A bargain compared to a future of ongoing regret.
This Location of Unknown Possibilities Page 4