Monoceros

by Suzette Mayr

  She walks so fast her hair blows around her face. He pulls open the door to the north staircase, she pulls open the door to the north staircase. She sees the principal pass the pookah head guidance counsellor— they don’t know she’s there above them in the stairwell too. The door below snicks closed behind Walter and she knows from how they don’t look at each other, the arctic cold in how they do not acknowledge each other, that they are in the middle of the kind of shattering war that only very intimate couples can have, what she should have known all along and what the gossip flung around the teachers’ lounge has been saying for so long. The principal and head of Guidance are secret lovers. Bastards.

  Sixth Monday After Furey

  Faraday

  Faraday dumps her bag on the stairs and knocks on George M.’s bedroom door. George M.’s smell steaming around her. She drops a box of Timbits on his desk.

  — I can’t get Patrick out of my head, she says, leaping onto his bed, then rolling herself in the top blanket until there is not a single air pocket touching her, wrapped tight as a burrito, wrapped tight as a mummy. The less room she has to breathe, the smaller the chance of her finding the air to cry hysterically and pathetically about a dead boy she barely talked to, unicorns that are taking forever to come and a boy named Jésus who is suddenly too good-looking for words.

  — I can’t help wondering if he’s cold where he is, she says. — If he’s lonely. I know it’s illogical. I can’t help it.

  George M. sighs. He opens the box of Timbits and tosses a plain old-fashioned into his mouth. He makes Faraday watch a video of a decaying piglet on the computer screen over his shoulder. Her lips parted, she breathes through her mouth.

  He stretches his neck sideways until it cracks. Stretches it in the opposite direction until it cracks again. — Done yet? he asks.

  — Noooo, her voice nasal.

  — This too much for you? he asks. He sniffs. Cracks his knuckles. Crams another Timbit in his mouth.

  — Naaah, she exhales.

  He crinkles his nose as he chews, scrolls down another page of Decomposition: What happens to the body after death?

  She watches the piglet on its side bloat and then blacken.

  — Why are you showing me this?

  — Death is a fact of life, toilet brush, says George M. — Just because you don’t want it to happen doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It’s going to happen to you, it’s going to happen to me. It’s natural.

  — No it’s not. Not like that.

  — Oh it’s not? Because you’re immortal? Are you made of some kind of synthetic material? Ho ho, I don’t think so. As much as you want to believe in life after death, it just isn’t the case. Certainly not with the body. I wish sometimes I was made of synthetic material, but wishing is ultimately irrational.

  — I want to be cremated. I don’t want worms eating me.

  George M. turns back to the computer screen, and scrolls back to the beginning of the video of the decaying pig. He presses Play.

  — Oh, burned instead, he says. — Yeah, that’s a big comfort. Especially if you’ve been misdiagnosed and they put you in the coffin before you’re completely dead and you wake up with flames shooting up around you. You’ll be dead. You won’t have any idea what’s happening. You’ll be sizzling like bacon when you’re shopping for unicorn posters in hell. Ha ha!

  The dead piglet on the screen inflates into black bloat.

  — Oh God! Faraday says. She swallows to keep the tears down, the vomit in, she has no more saliva. Patrick was a perfect gentleman; he gave her her eraser back. He ordered an iced cappuccino from her and said thank you. He had clear, perfect skin on his cheeks, shiny, black hair. He was not a piglet.

  — It’s a possibility, says George M. — People have been cremated alive before.

  Faraday jams the heels of her hands into her eyes. Pulls her hands away again.

  Her stomach spasms as she watches the blackened pig burst, then dissolve under an unfurling blanket of maggots. Being buried alive is her second greatest fear. Being burned alive her worst fear of all.

  George M. clicks the website closed. Clicks around until he finds a short video about an ant whose body has been invaded by a parasitic fungus.

  The narrator has a British accent. The ant curls into fetal position. One of its legs twitches.

  Max

  The rainbowed lights spin and bob around Max. Twenty-five-cent wing night. Go-go dancers gyrate on pedestals, the one directly under the disco ball resembling an accountant from the chin up, all jaw and horn-rimmed spectacles like he’s stepped out of 1955. He’s naked to the waist, hips grinding, whirling a glowing hula hoop around his middle in time to the music, flat, muscled stomach shiny, he casually wipes his glasses on a cloth from his army pants, perches them back on his nose, his sparkling, rippling biceps, triceps, deltoids, his astonishing muscled arms rising as he lifts them to the rhythm of the music, the hula hoop whizzing, his achingly beautiful Clark Kent face in the half-dark.

  Max will walk in, full speed ahead, Warp Factor Ten, locate Walter sitting at the bar with a heaping plate of chicken wings or at a table scarfing a heaping plate of chicken wings, then withdraw, also at Warp Ten, and try not to transform into an anthropomorphic salamander. Max is wearing a suit and tie, he wants to stick out like a badger in a cage of blowflies. He wants to look like someone’s vigorously heterosexual father there to retrieve a lost sheep from this den of iniquity.

  That drag queen he knows stilettos by, a seven-foot black Wonder Woman, all shellacked hair and thigh-high crimson boots, delicately toned arms, snapping her gum. Max scuttles behind a pillar so she won’t see him. He peeps around the pillar. As Max expected, now that Walter has lost his morals and his marbles, he is leaning against the bar— a drink in hand and a plate of chicken wings beside him. Max ploughs forward to retrieve him. But Walter is bent toward the chemistry teacher, their drinks glowing in the black light, Walter no doubt telling the chemistry teacher about Max, spilling, spewing out the story of their seventeen years together, outing Max, sucking Max’s life and career into Walter’s corrupt vortex.

  Max is like a computer program with a virus.

  He is an unembalmed corpse eaten by the bacteria in its own stomach, turning inside out.

  The principal ducks between two high tables. He trips over a bar stool and slips in spilled martini, falls backward, legs pinwheeling as his feet scamble on the slick floor. The tangle of stools collapsing in on him, the whirling of hula hoops, and those shiny, beautiful, topless accountants who wear them.

  Clark Kent calling to him, the horn-rimmed glasses, Clark Kent mouthing then shouting. Max flings his hands up to his ears. His shoulders brushed, dusted off, a firm hand under his elbow, his suit jacket dabbed with a rag, a pretzel stuck to his knee. Through the jungle gym of table legs and upended stools, Walter and the chemistry teacher are still chatting, laughing on the far side of the bar. Did Walter see Max? Walter wouldn’t tell the chemistry teacher about Max. He wouldn’t.

  Clark Kent and Wonder Woman jostle Max into sitting position. The accountant pats Max’s hand, the skin on his chest hot and gleaming.

  — Mr. Applegate! he exclaims. — Bryce Campbell! I went to St. Aloysius five years ago. Suzette’s gone to get you water. Never thought I’d see you here.

  Of course he’s run into an old student, a topless student, one nipple a pink dot, the other sparkling with its very own earring. He is ogling a student! Max about to retch.

  — Of course I remember you, Bryce, he gags. — Of course. I’m just here looking for my nephew. His mother wants him home. Good to see you. What are you up to these days? I should find my nephew and head straight home. Well, this bar is certainly different. His mother’s waiting up. School day tomorrow. I’ve never been in a bar like this before.

  — I’m studying to be a chartered accountant.

  — Top grades in math, eh? Max clutches the table above him and leans himself into standing, stomach lurching. He
bends over, clutches his knees. He. Cannot. Have. A. Heart. Attack. Here.

  Hands framed by Wonder Woman’s bulletproof bracelets scoop a plastic cup full of water and ice under his nose. He follows the hands, up the arms, and peers into the mouth chewing gum as though it were an Olympic sport, eyes glowing blue in the black light, head crowned with its golden Wonder Woman tiara.

  — Here you go, Max who owes me money, says Wonder Woman.

  — Thank you. Max takes the water.

  Wonder Woman clasps Max’s face with both hands, brings her brilliant blue eyes close to his. Purses her generous ruby-red lips.

  — You bruised your forehead. Maybe your brain is bleeding, pushing litres of blood into your skull, and you’ll be dead in a matter of hours. Should we call an ambulance? You owe me money. I get my money before you die.

  — No! No.

  — Or, says Wonder Woman, — you get to be my sex slave for forty days and forty nights. Tell me forty stories, one every night.

  Max swallows a splinter of ice, coughs water into his hand, spills his cup on his lap.

  Suzette’s breasts jut out even more as she takes a great breath. She crosses her arms.

  — I’m looking for my nephew, says Max. — His mother wants him home. I’m not here for any other reason.

  Suzette blows a large, juicy bubblegum bubble, her tongue sticking out at Max through the bubble. She leans into Max’s face and pops it.

  The wafting smell of artificial grapes.

  — So that’s your story? smacks Suzette through her gum, through ruby-red, cherry-red, mercury-red lips. — You owe me $2,495.62 .

  The drag queen’s eyes, the long, beaded eyelashes, the silver eyeshadow, the unnerving blue eyes themselves, brimming with lights and drum machines. — Colonel Shakira? says Max.

  — I’ve got your wallet, Colonel Shakira says.

  — Please, Max pleads, — I’m not trying to rip you off. Let me get my wallet. He pats his empty jacket pocket. — Please, he says.

  — How about this, pretty man, Suzette says as she flips open his wallet. — I take your driver’s licence and credit cards as hostage, what’s this, I’ll take your video card, your, hoo hoo, your Sector Six fan club membership card? Hoo hoo! That’s mine too! Your AMA card, your health card — no I’ll leave that for when you’re rushed to the hospital for your bleeding brain— and your business card. I take a business card for myself, I write my name and phone number on the back of another one just for you. Bryce, hand me a pen.

  — Now see here … , says Max, gathering his principal self together. — You just hold on a minute…I was just looking for my nephew Colin…

  — Oh, honey. Just let your nephew die a natural death.

  Suzette folds Max’s cards and money into the top of her boot, then scrawls on the back of the business card. — You will phone me tomorrow by 11:59 a.m., but not before 10:59 a.m. because I am not a morning person, or I will phone you again at your office, she says, — tomorrow, and this time I will not let up. I will let the phone ring and ring until you pick up the phone because I’m head over heels for you, Mr. Maxwell Matthew Donald Applegate, yes I am, you all confused and Alice looking for your way back to Wonderland. I will come to your office and belt out every love song I know, I will stand naked wearing nothing but a sequined G-string and pasties, singing your name, Mr. Maxwell Matthew Donald Applegate, begging you to spank me, spank me because I’ve been a very naughty girl, oh yes I have, Mr. Donald, until you give me $2,495.62 .

  She hands the emptied wallet to Max.

  — Mr.Applegate’s gay? shrieks Clark Kent.

  Max retrieves the wallet. Tucks his damp shirt back into his pants.

  Clark Kent whizzes his hula hoop around his waist, around his chest, around his neck, around his waist. Clark Kent, the man of steel, watching this whizzing away of Max’s disguise.

  — Thank you, mumbles Max.

  — No such thing as heroes, says Suzette. — Just a bunch of ones and zeroes.

  Max slip-stumbles to the door, the spinning lights and music drilling, a declawed, defanged old circus bear shambling in his clown suit.

  — I know where you work, ’n’ I’m gonna get you, baby! shouts Suzette. She twirls a kiss curl next to her ear, stretches a blob of gum from her mouth with her index finger in one long, elastic string.

  — Mr. Applegate’s gay, babbles Clark Kent, finally whirling his hoop to a stop. He flips it once completely, jumps over it, like skipping over a jump rope. — Who’d a thunk it?

  — Oh, Superman with your Superbrain, Suzette says. — He’s not gay. His boyfriend is.

  Joy

  Joy, Maureen and Pam sip their drinks, each woman sequestered to her side of the table, elbows in, coats still on. Maureen the English teacher and Pam the guidance counsellor the only ones who answered Joy’s invitation to a wake for Patrick Furey. Everyone else telling her, — You’re new here, huh? Or— That’s not appropriate. Or, silence that stunned her worse than a face slap. Joy wonders why she hasn’t found a single kindred spirit at this school even though it’s almost been a year since she started.

  Except for Maureen and Pam. They had to do the wake on a school night because Pam teaches dog obedience on the weekends.

  — Well! chirps Joy. — Thanks for coming, ladies.

  — I’m not a lady, growls Maureen.

  — So you like Guinness? asks Joy, nodding at Maureen’s drink.

  — You said it was an Irishwake.

  — She didn’t say Irish, says Pam. — She just said wake. You can get Guinness in cans now.

  — Really? Who knew, says Maureen. — Anyway, she says, lifting her glass, — here’s to Patrick Furey, the boy we all failed, goddammit. Her pale, thin lips start to quiver. She drinks from her glass.

  — Yeah, breathes Pam, shaking her head.

  — No, says Joy. — We’re here to celebrate his life. That’s the point. I’m going to stop my watch. Like they did in the old days.

  — I’m Italian, says Pam. — I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  — My family’s Irish, says Maureen, — and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  — I’m from Guernsey, Saskatchewan, says Joy. — It doesn’t matter. I’ll start. I remember him as being a sweet kid. A handsome young man. Polite. And he wore an interesting necklace. A heart locket. He seemed sensitive to me. Artistic.

  — I know that he always carried around his skateboard when he could get away with it, says Maureen. — He talked to me in the Pita Pit about how some other kids stole his skateboard.

  — That’s terrible.

  — Yeah, well, kids, like adults, can be right shits. Problem is, I hardly remember him at all except for that time at the Pita Pit. Maureen rubs her forehead. — I know he was a good kid, I just know it. But I can’t remember a thing about him except that skateboard, except him telling me they stole it when I was at the Pita Pit. Me ordering a roast chicken pita, no onions, even though I really wanted some onions so I could piss off my ex-husband with my onion breath. I cared more about that, I was so selfish. It’s always the fuckers are the ones we remember. Jésus García Hernández. I’ll never be able to forget him. It’s not right. He gave me an apple the other day. I don’t know what the hell is going on.

  Pam’s head down, she lifts up her glasses to wipe her eyes, then blows her nose into her Kleenex, limply wiping away the tears and snot. — He was an angel, says Pam.

  Pam’s upper body sags in her chair. Joy pats her hand.

  — Did he have a girlfriend? asks Joy.

  — What difference does that make? Pam pours more foam into her glass.

  — Well, I just wonder, you know, maybe that had something to do with it?

  — Who knows, says Maureen. — Love’s overrated anyway. She lifts the beer glass up to her mouth and drains it to the very bottom.

  A man on a skateboard rumbles by their table, glides to the bar, then catches up the skateboard, tucking it away behind the counter. He s
tarts polishing glasses.

  Music at the other end of the bar starts up, a woman burbling into a microphone.

  — Karaoke, groans Maureen.

  — Love karaoke! says Joy.

  — You would, mutters Pam.

  Joy hops up to the microphone declaring, — I’d like to dedicate this song to a beautiful young man who passed away recently, bless his heart. I didn’t know you very well, but this one’s for you, darlin’, up there in Heaven.

  The screen behind her announces the song, and Joy launches into ‘Wind Beneath My Wings, ’— Did you ever know that you’re my heroooooo…

  — Oh God, I hate this song, wails Maureen, her spirit finally crashing. She starts bawling, bawls her head off, tugging her shawl up around her face. — Oh, you poor little skateboarding little jeezler, she says, the shawl catching around her chin. — Oh, Alexey.

  The bartender who skateboarded in to work scoots out from behind the bar and pats Maureen on the shoulder, plopping another pint of beer in front of her. — On the house, ma’am, he says.

  Pam, rocking in her chair, crumples her damp Kleenex in her hand. Hums along to the song.

  Seventh Monday After Furey

  Max

  The woman swings open the door in a whoosh of hairspray, humongous gold breasts and nyloned bare feet.

  — Greetings, alien, she says, and Max nearly urinates his pants in the first 0.2 seconds of disbelief because Colonel Shakira has answered the door. Tears prickle behind his eyes. The woman of his dreams in the flesh; he can even smell her. Then it is 1.2 seconds and he realizes, no, it’s just someone dressed like her. And 2.2 seconds when he understands, no, it’s the female impersonator whose car he totalled, and he deflates. Because this is real life.

  Five minutes later, Max perches at the edge of the slumping easy chair in Crêpe Suzette’s living room. Just a regular cardboard-cutout Calgary apartment. Decorated with cardboard-cutout Ikea bookshelves, Ikea desk unit, a porridge-coloured sofa, a sewing basket spilling gold and pink tulle, silver ribbons. The computer screen naked and irresistible with the Wet & Wild Guys screen saver. He wants to smash the computer with its rotating photos of glistening gym bunnies, he has to pry his eyes away from them, but they flick back to the screen saver with a compulsion beyond his control. The only art in the apartment poster after poster of different galaxies, the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Sombrero Galaxy, the Antenna Galaxies, the Magellanic Dwarf Galaxy. The man clearly obsessed.