by John Brooke
But Last Days has a talent for reading hearts. He reaches over, slaps Miko’s leg. “Ah, fuck ’em all! Stick it in every single one of ’em! Right, Miko?”
Carolyn has to speak up — for her self-respect. “Last Days hasn’t been laid in years, at least not without paying for it. Eh, Last Days? Admit it, now.”
Last Days belches: “…bluuah!” Then he laughs, high and horrible, like a witch.
Miracle of miracles: Miko cracks a smile. “She lives across the street. Claudia.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Last Days is dumbfounded, and that’s rare. He whispers, “This is fucking cosmic!”
Miko shrugs. He’s not a cosmic type of guy.
Carolyn thinks Last Days might be right. How do you ever find that one person somewhere in any damn city? Last Days might have had to search forever. Now here’s Miko and this Claudia’s right across the street! For sure it has to do with Carolyn and Miko’s love. Which is the result of Last Days’ need to go and find Claudia! Yeah…there’s a connection there and cosmic might be the word. But Last Days doesn’t travel much in winter — his chair’s not built for it — so his Claudia will have to wait.
Like Carolyn and Miko have to wait.
7.
Toronto is supposed to be their secret, but Miko spills the beans.
One day Last Days heaves his can of beer at Carolyn’s wall and announces, “I’m going to partition the fucking Cartier Bridge! I live under that bridge when the weather’s good — me and about fifty other guys I know. It’s our fucking roof. Our home!”
Miko bites; he has to show Last Days he knows what’s going on. “Yeah, keep the bridge in fucking Canada!”
“Nah,” snarls Last Days. “Fuck Canada. Keep the bridge for me! For us…for Montreal!”
Miko gets worried. “What do you mean — you one of those separatists or something?”
Last Days mutters, “I’m already separated.” Distracted, pulling at a knot in his beard.
Carolyn tells Miko, “Last Days fights for Montreal.”
Miko says, “Well, yeah…” thinking about it while Last Days works on his beard. A fighter sounds good to Miko; it’s something like he might want to be. He tells Last Days, “I got this brother-in-law…almost: Stan. Real solid. Kind of guy you like to have on your side when it gets down to the short hairs, you know? Me and Stan got a plan to do that creep Parizeau for what he said about the ethnics. Because, you know, I’m an ethnic, if you want to get picky about it. My ma had me three months before she and my pa got on the plane over there in Athens.”
“No shit.” Last Days cracks open another can. “What are you — one of those Greeks?”
“Nah, we’re from north of there. Crna Gora. Montenegro.”
“Where?”
“Never mind, man. Anyway, me and Stan are going to get that guy and send his pecker to Ottawa in a box. They do it like that in the old country.”
“Far out,” says Last Days. He loves this kind of stuff. He tells Miko, “Better put his balls in too. They don’t have any balls in Ottawa.”
Miko swigs beer. “For sure.”
But Carolyn knows he’s trying to back away, that he doesn’t want to get in too deep. Miko and Stan may be related — almost, but they’re not in the same league. They aren’t planning anything. At least not together. It’s just more bullshit. And Last Days smiles at Miko, sort of soft, like he knows it too; like he knows Miko’s just another guy with nothing happening but he won’t hold it against him.
Miko doesn’t like it when you see through his tough guy thing. He tells Last Days, “I’m doing some projects with Stan and getting the car fixed up. We’re splitting for Toronto as soon as the snow melts. Me and Carolyn.”
“Toronto?” Last Days rears back in his chair. “Toronto’s for fucking wimps!”
Miko says, “I know.”
Suddenly Carolyn wants to tell Last Days to clam up and get the hell out of her place.
But she keeps it in. It isn’t Last Days…it’s the two of them, both so wrecked. And it’s so cold out. And Carolyn is fair gone too. She’d got some hash from her friend Josée and is enjoying it. She doesn’t want a fight. She sure doesn’t want to go out and work. Uh-uh, no way. So she only sighs.
Last Days notices. He has an eye for dark spots. He asks, “What’s the problem, C.?”
Miko answers. “She wants us to go to Toronto.”
Last Days shakes his head. “Nah…” As if that couldn’t be true.
“She thinks her life’s gonna change if we go to Toronto.”
Last Days lights a smoke and drags on it, all the while looking at Carolyn out of the corner of his eye like he’s a cop checking out a dead body. “Because of your mother, right?”
Carolyn rolls over, snuggles close to Miko’s tummy.
Miko asks, “What do you mean, her mother?”
Last Days says, “She killed herself. Didn’t she tell you about her mother?”
Miko doesn’t answer.
Carolyn has. Sure she’s told him. But it’s always Miko’s ma and never hers.
Last Days says it again. “It’s her mother. She gets fucked up about her mother.”
There’s silence…just the hiss and rasp of Last Days dragging on his smoke.
Miko says, “You know, my ma sells the best smack in this whole city. Eh, Carolyn?” Carolyn surfaces, nods. Miko brags, “Man, my ma’s got this connection and if I even dream the guy’s name when I’m sleeping, you can bet I’ll be dead before I wake up. That’s how high up it comes from. Eh, Carolyn? The shit up at my ma’s place — like a fucking rocket…eh?”
“Yeah, Miko, like a rocket.” She lays her head back down on his tummy.
“Toronto’s for wimps,” repeats Last Days.
“Yeah,” says Miko, “that’s exactly what I heard.”
They repeat a lot of things, those two. Carolyn closes her eyes. Glides…
No, Carolyn doesn’t want a fight, but sometimes she doesn’t get Last Days when he starts going on about Montreal. Look what it’s done to him. How can you defend a place like that when bad things happen? Will Carolyn ever go back to Chandler? Monique asks sometimes on the phone and Carolyn tells her, “Not in this lifetime.” To tell the truth, Carolyn doesn’t really notice where she is anymore. She feels like she lives in a zone — a kind of endless passageway between places. Between English and French, the memory of her mother and the idea of her father. It’s her body, too — how on one side it’s a machine that needs to be kicked…deserves to be kicked!…and on the other side it’s the most special thing she can give to Miko.
But usually even Carolyn’s body feels suspended, and her thinking isn’t in words.
Montreal is the land of Miko’s ma. Toronto’s a place where he can be just hers. So far in her life, Carolyn’s favourite place has been Miko’s car. It’s where she’s felt the most alive.
“Oh, baby!” With the radio blasting. So let’s drive it to Toronto.
“Yeah!” Last Days is howling about something. She misses it — the hashish can take you away into small corners. Last Days yells, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Like it’s the hockey game. He loves making noise. Then, “More beer!…more fucking beer!” so that old Jerôme next door starts pounding on the wall and Miko’s loving it. They both throw money at Carolyn and she goes down to the street for more beer. A woman’s got to take care of her guests.
When she comes back in, Last Days is grilling Miko. Claudia again:
“So this tree thing: what is it really?”
“It’s really what it is. She believes she’s married to them.”
“But how? I mean, why?”
“Her pa set it up, and he’s nuts, and I guess she is too.”
“You ever talk to her about it?”
“No… I don’t get too close. I got enough problems of my own, you know?”
Last Days nods. He knows. Then he asks, “She cook or anything? I love that Italian food. Me and Claud
ia, we can sit under her tree and eat Italian. And then, you know, we’ll make love.”
“Man,” says Miko, “you don’t understand. It’s like…it’s like if she cooks anything, she’s going to give it to the fucking tree. To both of them. See?”
Last Days’ demented eyes are getting huge.
“She’s out there, man…really far out there. I’m not kidding you.”
“Ah, Jesus,” sighs Last Days, “I think I’m gonna get a haircut.” Sitting there staring at himself in Carolyn’s mirror, dreaming about Claudia.
This Claudia sounds like a strange piece of work.
But love is everything, thinks Carolyn — just like in the song.
And Miko’s staring into space.
Last Days says, “She loves you, man. Don’t blow it.”
Then Carolyn begins to feel her body needing something stronger than hash. She takes Miko’s hand and holds it on her lap, to let him feel her getting nervous.
There’s no sound for a few minutes, except a grunt through the wall from Jerôme.
8.
Love. Hope. One good thing about living in between the forces that made you is that at any moment you could just go shooting out — whoosh! the pressure…and you’re gone. It happened to Carolyn once — that day she just walked out to Route 132 and hitched away from Chandler — and she feels it waiting to happen again. But you have to stay on top of things if you want to make a move. The winter’s long — freezing her ass earning money, getting high and coming down, the tension that’s built into the cycle, and knowing he’ll always leave and drive back uptown. That kind of routine may not look like much, but it’s not easy.
Another day, Carolyn makes him come with her, has to practically drag him, over to the Cactus Clinic for an AIDS test. They are both OK.
And they both keep talking about it. But Miko’s back to “Maybe” and “Let’s see what happens in the spring.” It begins to make Carolyn feel she isn’t doing a good job of it — that Miko’s backsliding, back to his mother. She keeps a close eye on Miko’s heart.
There will be a moment when he can do it. Break free. Just go. She does not expect it to be some romantic escape. It will more likely be the opposite, God knows…a low point, one of those times when his ma gets him completely messed up, so dark, and all he can do is hate people. Carolyn makes herself stay ready. She puts some hash and some downers aside. She sees them stopping for beer before they cross the border because you can’t get beer at the corner in Ontario. Then they’ll drive. She’ll drive if he can’t. She doesn’t have a license, but she will drive.
Or stay low and do her magic — all the way to Toronto, if that’s what Miko needs.
Get your suce down, darling… Mother, it’s down to an art. She’s ready for it.
They finally get the car registered. When March comes, Carolyn won’t let Miko touch her until he agrees to go to the Régie and get it done. He stomps out yelling. But then he comes back, and they go. The car passes the test, Miko signs the papers, he gets the new plate. Guess who pays? It doesn’t matter. Getting it legal; giving him something he can have in his pocket; that seems to help. Now Miko can feel he’s coming into it with something to contribute. The car. She tells him, “That’s your job, Miko. The car.”
“Yeah, big deal — you think I don’t know how to drive?”
“I think you drive great.”
“Then stop bugging me.”
“I’m not bugging you, Miko. I’m getting us organized.”
And she keeps track of the weather, showing Miko the weather on TV, how it’s melting in Toronto but not in Montreal.
Miko’s ma hasn’t seen Carolyn in front of her door since the summer. Even if she suspects, Carolyn’s feeling she must’ve relaxed a bit. The cops have too. She works up on St. Denis in the mornings; if those cops pass and remember her, they don’t show it. Then Miko will come to find her and they go back to her place. He’s living on his mother’s stuff but he rarely brings any with him, so she’s getting by on whatever she can find around. No more of Ma’s rocket fuel for Carolyn… She doesn’t say a word. She knows that if he tries and his mother catches him, it could be the end.
Then he doesn’t come to find her on St. Denis one April day, and it’s still so damn cold. Carolyn dares to walk across to Miko’s place. The car’s up on a jack across the street from the house, and Miko’s underneath it. “What happened, Miko?”
He slides out from underneath, all black and oily. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. What happened?”
“The fucking ice.” Turns out the night before, trying to park, Miko had crunched his universal joint on a mound of ice that’s been there for a month waiting for the City to come and clear it away. He says, “Goddamn City — it’s all their fault.”
Sure. Carolyn can see Miko getting madder, and crazier, banging back and forth, trying to clear a space. Maybe the pressure of love is getting to him. The night before — before he’d gone home and crunched the car — he’d been crying about how Gerry let him know he had her address now. Well, that was just great. And she’d told him, “Fuck Gerry! Sometimes you have to be a man, Miko, and push through.” Of course that only made it worse and he’d left totally pissed off.
And now he has doubled the problem by screwing the car. All Carolyn can think is: Stupid man!
She feels herself getting panicky. “For God’s sake, Miko! Can you fix it?”
He says, “I’m working on it — stop bothering me.”
She tells him, “Take it to the corner. I’ll pay.”
“To hell with that.”
“Miko, you’re going to spend the rest of your life fixing this car…I know you.”
“Just get out of here, OK?”
“I know you like I made you,” says Carolyn.
He yells, “What d’you know? Nothing! Can you speak one word of my language?”
Carolyn can’t control the panic running through her body. She screams back, “You did this on purpose! One more excuse not to leave your mommy. You’d rather die here in Montreal than live with me in Toronto.”
Miko says something in his language. Probably fuck off.
Carolyn asks him, “Why are you such a chicken?”
He asks, “Why are you such a slut?”
“For you, Miko…just for you.”
Miko makes a face and slides back under his car.
Carolyn thinks, That’s it. She says, “Have a nice life, Miko. Salut, asshole.”
From underneath he calls, “I’ll be down to pick you up on Saturday.”
She calls back, “Bullshit!” And starts walking.
Miko’s ma is standing in her doorway. She has a shawl around her shoulders and her face looks like she’s going to bed — all smeared with cream. She’s alone there, but Carolyn can see two men behind her in the shadowy hall. Gerry and Stan? Gerry and Miko’s pa? Miko’s pa and Stan? Carolyn can’t make them out exactly because she has tears starting to come into her eyes. She also has that tightening-leash feeling starting up in the back of her neck. The pressure of love gets to everyone.
“What are you doing with my Miko?”
Carolyn shrugs. It’s a dumb question.
She says, “My son is not well. Someone like you, you only make him worse.”
Carolyn says, “No — that’s not right. I’m helping him. He needs me.”
Miko’s ma looks past her, across the street at the snow-covered yard behind the retirement place. “You degrade him — in front of all the people.”
Carolyn says, “You tie him up like he’s a dog.”
She tells Carolyn, “You go away and don’t come back here. Never. We know where you live. If we find my Miko there anymore…” Miko’s ma shakes her head, slowly…and tilting it, like she’s thinking, deciding what could be the worst possible thing she could do to someone like Carolyn.
It goes straight to Carolyn’s nerves. Everything starts to get worse much faster than it usually does. She’s
hugging herself, bouncing too. But she doesn’t move from there. No way.
Miko’s ma turns away from Carolyn’s eyes and looks inside. Now they came out. Miko’s pa and Stan — he’s big. And Carolyn thinks his pa looks like he’d seen a million people die. Well, that’s the business they’re in. Carolyn knows because she’s a customer. But she can still love! Even in Montreal, in a winter that will never end, she can do it. She has to make them know it.
Stan comes down off the porch and takes her by the arm like a cop. Drags her like a cop.
Suddenly Stan makes a grunty noise, swears in pain and stumbles — and Carolyn gets loose.
She runs. She’s halfway down the block before she turns. There’s Miko with a wrench in his hand, standing over Stan. He’s yelling something at him. Yelling in their language.
She calls, “Miko, come on, let’s get out of here!”
Miko makes a move to follow. But his ma calls something from her porch. In their language. Whatever it is, it stops Miko in his tracks. It gives Stan enough time to get back up on his feet.
Carolyn moves back toward them. “Miko!”
Stan catches Miko by the arm like he’s a bad child, slaps his face and throws him down on the street.
Carolyn screams it. “Miko!”
Stan looks like a bear. He says, “Leave now — and listen to what she’s saying or you’re going to have a lot of trouble.” Then he picks Miko off the ground and pulls him up the steps and into the house. His pa follows them inside.
Miko’s ma stays there on her step, glaring down the street. A kid comes up the alley, home from school for lunch. She’s staring at Carolyn like her head has just exploded.
Which is how it feels. Carolyn turns and runs.
Carolyn’s head’s about to burst, but what she’s seen is stuck there: Miko…my Miko! He made a move for me and not for her. Bravo, Miko! You can survive whatever they throw at you. We both can! Carolyn thinks, Time to be born, Miko. You get that rusty little beast back on the road. I know you’ll do it. I’ll be waiting. Carolyn and Miko: Toronto, here we come!
There’s something else that Carolyn sees, hears it too, as she packs her stuff and paces back and forth by her window. It’s the excited thing, the happy thing she remembers in her mother’s eyes, it’s there in her reflection. And the thing in the voice that sings in her heart? Carolyn hears her mom.