by Michael Rowe
Elliot weighed several options, all of them calculated to salvage the airtight security of the life and image he’d built for himself here in the years Jeremy had been away.
He could get up and leave, which might look unduly abrupt and draw attention. The other danger in getting up suddenly was the possibility of leaving Jeremy in the bar alone, drunk, and rambling. God knows what he’d tell Donna—or rather confirm, since everyone had heard rumours about the two of them, but Elliot had spent the last fifteen years fucking, brawling, and goal-scoring those rumours into oblivion. No, it was better to sit still and act like he was greeting an old friend. Normalize, neutralize. Maybe buy Jeremy a beer. Slap him on the back and bullshit about the old days. Or at least make it seem that’s what they were doing. It could work.
If it didn’t, Elliot was royally screwed.
Jeremy approached the table and, ludicrously, stuck out his hand to shake as though they had seen each other last week. He said, “Hey, Elliot, how’s it going? Long time no see.”
“Hi, Jem.” Elliot took Jeremy’s hand without getting up from his own chair. The part of him that wanted to rise from his seat and take Jeremy in his arms and hug him had been permanently crippled years before, largely by Elliot himself. He kept that part of himself in its place and he considered it dead and buried. “I heard you were back. What’re you doing here?”
“Can I join you?” Jeremy didn’t wait for Elliot’s answer. He pulled back the chair opposite Jeremy and sat down heavily. “So, here we are,” he said. “How’ve you been?”
When Elliot didn’t reply, he continued. “You’re a cop now, I see. I saw you in the cruiser today. Do you like being a cop?”
“What are you doing back in Parr’s Landing, Jeremy?” Elliot said again. “There has to be a reason you’d come back to town. What has it been, ten years?”
“Fifteen. You’re not happy to see me, are you?”
Elliot shrugged. “It’s a free world. You can go where you want. But no, I’m not really happy to see you. I’m surprised that you’re surprised.”
“It’s all right,” Jeremy said “No one’s really happy to see me. My mother just told me she wished I had been the one who died instead of Jack.”
“I heard about Jack a while back. I’m sorry. Was that Chris I saw in the car with you today?”
“So you did see me. I wasn’t sure if you had.”
“Yeah, I saw you,” Elliot said. “So, was that Chris? Did she come back with you, too?”
“Yeah, and Morgan, as well.” Elliot looked at him blankly. “My niece, Elliot—Jack’s daughter. Her name is Morgan. She’s fifteen. Jack didn’t leave any insurance, and Chris is broke. I brought her back here. She had nowhere else to go.”
Elliot looked over Jeremy’s head at Donna and held up two fingers. She signalled back the OK sign and took two fresh bottles of O’Keefe out of the beer fridge and carried them over to their table on a tray.
“Hey! Jeremy Parr!” Donna said, putting the beers down in front of them. “Long time no see, Jer! I heard you were back in town.” When Jeremy looked at her blankly, she said, “It’s me, Donna Lemieux. Remember? You went to school with my cousin, Rob Archambault. You remember Rob, right? I think he was a couple of years ahead of you. Maybe your brother’s class?”
“Oh yeah,” Jeremy lied. “I sure do remember him. Good to see you, Donna. How is Rob?”
Donna furrowed her brow. “He died. Ski-Doo accident, two years ago. It was so sad. He had a wife and kids. You didn’t hear?”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been away. I’ve been living in Toronto.”
“Long way away,” she said. “And you ain’t been back that whole time?”
“No,” Jeremy replied. “I haven’t. Been busy.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” Donna said. “I heard about him. We all did. There was a thing about it in the paper. He was a good guy. I knew him in school.”
“Thanks, Donna.” Jeremy forced a smile. “I appreciate it.”
“Thanks, honey,” Elliot said to Donna. What he wanted was for her to go away back behind the bar, sooner rather than later. He winked, dead sexy, something that usually opened doors for him with whichever woman was the recipient of the wink.
Donna rolled her eyes. “You with the winks,” she said. “All talk, no action.” But Donna smiled when she said it and she winked back, putting a little extra sway in her hips when she turned around and walked back to the bar. Under any other circumstances, Elliot would be looking forward to getting laid tonight, but right now he just wanted her away from him and Jeremy so he could neutralize this situation as quickly as possible. Bedding Donna Lemieux was the last thing on his mind.
For his part, Jeremy couldn’t take his eyes off Elliot’s face.
Late at night when he was alone in his bed, he’d let his mind wander back over the years. It was the only time he felt safe thinking about Parr’s Landing and what his mother had done to him by sending him away. He was able to safely scan the memories he had, sifting through them, bypassing the cruellest ones and fingering the ones that contained traces of love, or beauty, the way someone else might lovingly caress a favourite photograph in an album. Over the years, Jeremy had found that the easiest way to access those memories was to conjure Elliot’s face and body. The memories weren’t sexual, necessarily, because that part was so associated with the pain that came later at the hands of Adeline and Dr. Gionet. But they were resolutely romantic memories nonetheless fuelled by lovingly tended longing and desire.
Small things, flashes and mental snapshots; Elliot’s tanned neck as he saw it from his desk a row behind and two seats to the left in homeroom at Matthew Browning; Elliot’s dented red hockey helmet, and the way his black hair looked, wet with sweat, when he took the helmet off in the intermission between periods, his eyes never leaving the action on the ice, during the Friday night hockey games at the old Mike Takacs Memorial Arena out on Brandon Nixon Road, before the fire that shut it down.
Mostly, though, he remembered Elliot’s smile which, however rare (back then at least), lit up his entire face when it suddenly appeared. His voice, his laugh. Elliot’s powerful butterfly stroke as he swam out to the summer raft in Bradley Lake. The way the girls at Matthew Browning stared at Elliot when he passed in the hallway, the way Jeremy hated them for staring and knew that he hated them because he stared, too. But they could do it openly while he had to stare surreptitiously.
And Jeremy was still staring surreptitiously now, fifteen years later.
The face and body sitting in the chair in front of him, the man pretending that the two of them were just a couple of guys who had barely known each other in high school, and had now met again in a bar fifteen years later, was still Elliot’s. The body had hardened and thickened with muscle, and the face had the natural bronzed look of a man who lived and worked outdoors in a northern Ontario town.
But it was still somehow the same: the same thick pelt of black-brown hair in a military crew cut, almost like mink, tapering into the barest suggestion of a widow’s peak over a wide forehead; the dark eyebrows against the olive skin of his face, arching up over eyes the colour of black coffee; the strong nose and jaw, the aggressive five o’clock shadow, the sensual mouth, the white, white teeth. Jeremy’s eyes reverenced Elliot’s neck and throat, thick like the rest of him. More than anything at that moment, he wanted Elliot to laugh, so he could hear that joyous growl of pleasure he remembered better than any other part of Elliot. If he heard that, Jeremy believed, the rest of what had happened that night would go away, or at least not matter quite as much.
“So . . . are you still playing hockey?” He realized he was flailing for a neutral topic that might prompt even a minor thaw in Elliot’s demeanour, and that he sounded desperate and the question was idiotic.
Elliot shrugged. “Some. Why?”
“Elliot, aren’t we even still friends? Even just a bit? Even with everything else that happened, couldn’t we just .
. . I don’t know, talk?” His eyes filled with tears again, and he hated himself even more for allowing Elliot to see them.
“We are talking,” Elliot said, looking away. He took another pull of beer from the bottle. “This is us, talking. Jem, this isn’t Toronto. People remember things here, and what we did—well, it’s taken a long time for me to make it OK here, to convince people that rumours about us . . . well, you know. That they weren’t true.”
“Rumours,” Jeremy said. “Right, the ‘rumours.’ Jesus Christ.”
“You know what I mean, Jem,” Elliot said fiercely, keeping his voice down. “Do you know what my dad did to me after your mother told him about us? Do you know what your fucking mother ordered him to do? He beat me with a fucking whip.”
“Well, my mother sent me away to be tortured for six months, Elliot,” Jeremy said, matching Elliot’s tone. “What are we doing here, having a contest to see who got it worse? Do you want to see the scars on my body from the burns? I see them every day when I’m naked. Do you want to see them?”
“Keep your fucking voice down.” Elliot looked around, but no one in the bar appeared to have heard either of them. Behind the bar, Donna was washing glasses.
Jeremy said again, softly, “Do you? Do you want to see them?”
He nudged his beer bottle almost imperceptibly across the surface of the table between them until his knuckles grazed Elliot’s. Their eyes met. Behind them, the jukebox played “Maggie May.” Elliot allowed Jeremy’s fingers to linger there for a brief second, then jerked his hand away.
“You left,” Elliot said. “You ran away from home and left me here. I had to stay. You got a new life. All I had was the same one I always had, except I had to face everything by myself that you left behind. It doesn’t matter anyway now,” he said. “I’m normal. I have a normal life. I’m somebody in this town. The past is in the past. I don’t want you fucking it up.”
Jeremy looked down. “I’m sorry.” He took another sip of his beer. “You know what? No—I’m not sorry. None of this was my fault, and none of it had anything to do with you. I came back to Parr’s Landing with Christina, for Christina. Not for you, and certainly not for my own good. Thanks for reminding me of that, Elliot.”
“Jem—”
“Forget it, Elliot,” Jeremy said tiredly. He raised the bottle to his lips and drained it in one long draught. Then he pushed the bottle away. “I won’t bother you again. But please, it’s a small town. If we do run into each other, can you just not act like . . . well, can you just be nice? I don’t think I can handle any more shit right now from anyone, least of all you.”
“Don’t drive drunk now,” Elliot said, trying to joke, and failing. “I don’t want to have to arrest you.”
If he smiles now, I’m done for, Jeremy thought. If he laughs, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk out of here. Please, God, don’t let him laugh.
But of course he didn’t laugh, nor did he smile, and for that Jeremy was profoundly grateful. It made it easier for him to stand up without saying goodbye to Elliot, and to walk calmly out of the bar, nodding to Donna and smiling, but otherwise drawing no attention to himself.
And because he didn’t turn around, he didn’t see Elliot watching him, the longing in his face breaking through the mask of ruthless masculine efficiency. For a moment Elliot looked seventeen, not thirty-two. The sight of it would have broken Jeremy’s heart all over again and shattered his resolve. Elliot knew this and was likewise profoundly grateful that Jeremy hadn’t seen it.
Still safe, he thought, looking around the bar. Everything is good. And even if it’s not good, it’s safe. Elliot walked slowly and deliberately over to where Donna was polishing glasses behind the bar and sat down at one of the stools.
He leaned in on his elbows, laying his arms on the bar. Looking deeply into her eyes, he smiled and said, “So?”
“So yourself, “ Donna said. She flushed slightly and unconsciously touched her hair. “So, nice evening with your friend?”
“Not a friend,” Elliot drawled. He increased the heat of his smile. “Just somebody from high school. We were in the same class at Browning, but I really barely knew the guy. He’s just passing through town.”
Donna had dismissed the rumours she’d heard about Jeremy Parr and Elliot years ago, hinting—to her girlfriends, at least, not to men, because she didn’t want them to think she was some kind of slut—that she had proof he wasn’t a queer. Certainly she had entertained no doubts herself during the hours they’d spent in her bed together, with Elliot on top of her pumping away, hard as an anvil.
If she’d thought—well, not thought, really, just maybe felt, if even that—some trace of energy between them when she’d brought the beer over, she told herself she had interrupted a discussion about the death of Jeremy’s brother, Jack. She’d had a little crush on Jack back in the day, but that Christina Whatshername (now there was a slut) had gotten herself knocked up. She’d heard that they’d run off to Toronto and that she’d forced him to Do The Right Thing and marry her. The Parrs were filthy-loaded, so Christina must be sitting pretty by now.
Donna sighed. She ran a lacquered fingernail along Elliot’s index finger. “So, Elliot,” she said. “Why did you never go for me?”
“I went for you plenty of times, babe,” he said lazily. He wrapped his index finger around hers and held it down. “You do remember, don’t you?”
“No, I mean proper-like. Why didn’t you ever ask me out. You know, like on a date?”
“Well,” he said, “for one thing, you were married.”
She laughed. “Is that all? Lucien wouldn’t have even known. He was drunk most of the time we were married. If that’s all that was stopping you, you should have asked.”
“We had some great times.” He leaned in closer. “We had some really great times. Didn’t we?”
“You’re so conceited, Elliot,” she said. “How do you know it was as great for me as it was for you?”
“I know,” he replied. “And so do you.” Her pupils were dilated and her lips were moist. He knew from experience that her nipples underneath the blouse she wore were now stiff. And though he felt nothing for her at that moment, either in his head or below the waist, he said, “So, Donna. Do you want to get a drink later?”
“We’re in a bar, Elliot.”
Donna liked delaying the moment as long as possible, especially with Elliot when they’d first been lovers. She was all about the slow moves and she’d enjoyed teaching the then-teenaged Elliot restraint and discipline.
But it was a cold night, and nothing was waiting for her at home but a hungry cat and a bed with cold sheets on it. And, to be honest, though she’d never admit it, she wasn’t getting any younger.
He leaned into her, his cheek nearly meeting hers. He smelled shampoo and some drugstore perfume that was sexy precisely because it smelled cheap. “I mean somewhere else. Later. Some other place.”
“What other place did you have in mind, Elliot?”
“Your place,” he said, showing all his beautiful teeth.
Elliot covered her hand in his and squeezed gently. When he turned her hand palm-up inside his grasp, offering the softness of it to the press of his fingers, he knew he’d scored. Maybe the day was going to end on a better note than the one it had started on.
Whatever else happened, though, Elliot realized he had almost succeeded in driving any thoughts or memories of Jeremy Parr from his mind, at least for now.
It would have been impossible for him to say how long he’d been searching since he didn’t habitually wear a watch, but Richard Weal knew he had two choices: he would either find his sleeping friend here, or he would die of hunger and thirst in the Cimmerian blackness of an abandoned mineshaft, not even knowing where he was, much less remembering how he’d gotten there.
He guessed that he had long since wandered off what was left of the actual path through the mine and into some sort of interconnected underground cave system forme
d of arches of natural rock, but the voice—and the trace imagery that remained in his brain long after he’d heard actual words—somehow continued to guide him.
Living as he did almost entirely in his own mind, memories and dreams were important to Weal—not only immediate memories, such as how beautiful his friend’s voice was, but more recent memories—the slaughter of his victims, of course, and the way they suffered and bled, but also the images he’d gleaned from the pages of the manuscript he’d killed the old man for—the translation of that letter from the dying priest, Father Nyon, who’d followed his faith in God into the northern wilderness of New France in 1632.
In spite of his hatred—and he loathed the priest for what he’d done to his friend, and with as much murderous, steely hatred as if the priest had done it to Weal himself—he had to admire his faith in God.
Well, perhaps admire was the wrong word. He could identify with it, intellectually and emotionally. Had Weal himself not first heard his invisible friend’s voice that hot day in 1952, calling to him from behind the granite walls of these very cliffs, begging for release? Had he not been listening to that voice all these years, calling him into the wilderness, and was he not as eager as any postulant, now or then, to touch the Divine?
He would still have liked to put the young priest to his knives for what he’d done to Weal’s friend—to peel his eyeballs in their sockets like grapes and cut his fingers off in quarter-sections, taking his time and enjoying the screams before he took an X-Acto knife to Father Nyon’s murdering tongue.
Since the manuscript he’d taken had been incomplete, he had no idea what happened to the priest from 1630, but as a scholar, he was well versed in the gruesome history of the fates that had befallen the unluckiest of the Jesuit martyrs. Weal hoped Father Nyon had met an end like that, and that it had hurt terribly.
Out of the subterranean silence, he suddenly heard the voice again. It spoke one word: Here.