Still, it was anger he was after and he couldn’t remember why. Maybe it was anger at himself — he’d come here to celebrate, to get himself a small treat, and he’d even said that to the boy at the counter while the girl pouring his coffee greeted him.
“Hi young fella,” she’d said. “How’s it going today?”
That’s what had gotten him smiling, needing to wipe his mouth. And he’d seen the four digits on her name tag and remembered she was Anna. Why don’t we all wear name tags? The world is so civilized with names.
“Fine,” he said, and felt himself blush a little. “What about you?”
“Only an hour left till my shift is over,” she told him.
Then the boy about to take his money said, “Is that all?”
“No. Today I’d like a slice of chocolate pie,” he said, and continued, more for the girl, who was always there when he came in, than for this new boy, who he didn’t know. “You see, I did something really good today.”
But the boy was already ringing it up and just told him the cost, and the girl was already in the back, and Ray watched the swinging doors to the kitchen and saw one of the bakers laugh at something he couldn’t see or hear, and now, remembering that, he couldn’t remember what had been so good. He knew it had to do with completing his will, with making all the arrangements, and he knew his will gave the money to someone, but was this anger he wanted to feel because of that?
He knew his daughter’s death wasn’t Nancy’s fault, but he knew others disagreed. He could see it now: that woman Madge, with her fish eyes and stunned look, saying she was sorry. What for? For the way she’d treated them both after that summer. But everyone had treated them that way, even years later.
“Don’t!” he heard someone hiss, then looked up to see the young girl blushing, and the boy walking out the door beside her, slowly and shaking, with a thin line of spittle hanging from his open mouth.
Ray took his hanky from his pocket and wiped the corners of his mouth, then replaced it. The parking lot outside was darkening and he stared at the doors, just forgetting something else, and kind of shocked by the cold air that had come in when the kids left. He picked up his fork and cut into the pie.
The young girl was suddenly beside him and he looked up but he couldn’t talk because his mouth was full.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
She was waiting for him to speak, but he couldn’t. He looked into her eyes and lowered his fork to the plate, then pointed at his mouth. She waited and he tried not to think of how he must look. He lowered his eyes and finally swallowed.
He felt her hand on his shoulder and without thinking he reached up and covered it with his. She didn’t pull away and he smiled.
“No,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
And the wrist, as he removed his hand and did his best to smile cleanly, reminded him, of course, of his wife’s wrist. Nancy, who was in the next room. When she’d died she’d been the size of a child herself, and it wasn’t the same beach they’d looked at, but still. They sat on the balcony there in Vancouver and watched the sun set over English Bay, but she’d been stuck in her body, and what if she hadn’t wanted to be held? He’d been selfish.
And what if she hadn’t wanted to see water?
But had he been angry? That girl and the boy she didn’t like were gone, and the girl from behind the counter sat down across from him. Anna. She sometimes did that. Sometimes she walked him home and, once — he could remember with such clarity the act itself, the delicate memory, nimble and young, held in whatever calloused part of himself could still hold such a thing — they had stopped on the bench outside his building before going up. The world smelled of freshly cut grass and it was still early enough in the spring that they enjoyed the sunshine without removing their coats, and her young boy ran from the school bus. Or somewhere, he ran from somewhere — this part was not coming back to him but never mind because the boy ran with his shoes that lit while he ran and he jumped one jump into Ray’s lap. And it must have been because he’d just run from out of the sunlight toward the dark shade of the building, but the boy hugged him tightly to his face like he’d known him his whole life and no one corrected him. Ray could picture the boy’s face, with its fierce smile, as his little arms squeezed him with all their strength. Then, without thinking, he was standing, and he didn’t go into the building and up to his room, but walked with mother and son to someplace in the fresh air, he didn’t know where, and the boy talked the whole way, like boys do, and it was nothing to remember everything.
Leave Her Alone
A MAN WALKS INTO A BANK, rubbing his throat. He is dressed in a groovy coat and humming stuff into the air. What a gas! He doesn’t unwind his scarf, man, ’cause that’s working too.
What do you do? he thinks to the head of the lady in front of him. It’s a long line. He thinks questions of each of them. He thinks things like How do you do? What do you do? and Why do you do? which is just a question his old English teacher kept hammering home. Ha! Why indeed.
But the woman in front of him he really did just wonder what. What do you do? Never mind she was a kind of maid he bet. Not a maid but maybe a nanny. He met a nanny once and the nanny was about that height, which is to say, there is a height for a nanny in this poor man’s mind.
Anyway, the man walks into a bank and finds himself behind the nanny who he thinks is a nanny due to her height, which he estimates by looking from her to the doorway where the measuring stick for robbers is. Because he’s worked for a long time in precise measurements, he tries to calibrate the measuring stick beside the door with the world around it. He is, himself, six feet and two inches, but he had never measured from his top point to his eyes, though he estimates, correctly, the distance is 4 ½ inches. That would mean he should be looking at 5’ 9 ½” on the ruler (and he is).
But the man is feeling so good he’s a little sloppy on the swivel of his head. His head bobs a little, man, in between his laser-like straight-edge eye measurements and the air above the back of the nanny’s head. And that’s because of the song in his car, the song singing: Well, when will I be back home?
Soon, man, soon. He will be back home soon. There is just this stop at the bank before the trip. The song is more mournful than the man’s own celebratory mood. He’s going home free and clear, with no bones to pick, no scores to settle, no money to beg, no bills of any kind. Just love there, man. Just love.
Why don’t some of these beautiful creatures around him look to him with questions? Why doesn’t the nanny, for instance, turn around and open up her smile? But she can’t be the nanny, though she is so similar — the eyes in his swivelling head measured her too tall. She is too tall to be that nanny, but never mind she is a nanny here — they are all people in his world, man, and he loves them all.
They have the weight of the world on their shoulders. He sees it, and he knows it’s because they are hanging on to their precious egos, and he almost slipped, in fact, when he thought of the nanny ahead of him, the perfectly dressed little woman who reminded him of a nanny he’d dated long ago. Let’s be honest: he was obsessed. She gave him a new world and he believed in all of it, man. But he lost himself. He was gone.
It still caused a little pop in his head. It still opened a little space in that hollow cage of signs. He had lost himself, but not the right way. The right way was love, man, not desire. It had taken so long for him to learn, but that’s okay. This is no race. And then this small woman in the bank line almost triggered a relapse. He wanted briefly, before the desire could form into words, that nanny to be his nanny. He knew he could love her now.
He felt like he hadn’t eaten for a long time, a long long time. Something odd was on the inside of his sleeve. It was, oh yeah: he’d been to the blood bank. That’s the kind of bank to be in. That’s giving, man. Through his sleeve he pulled the little cotton ball from his skin, then shook his arm, trying to loosen the cotton, trying to drop it out of his sleeve and into his
hand.
The others in the bank were all on the same journey. The old guy behind him wanted new stuff for his home. He had big gold rings on his knuckles. He smelled the baby smell of old men who’d done well, clean and powdered, with nothing but time. The sharp woman walking away from the other teller, jabbering into her tiny blue-and-grey earpiece — somewhere deep down she must want peace. We’re all the same. We’re all the same.
The man in the groovy coat wanted to hug them all to him and share this journey. He smiled. The nanny-sized woman in front of him was quick. There was a flurry of paper in and out of her worn purse, then she left the counter. He was still smiling as she turned around. She was not smiling, but she was very happy. Her eyes were alive, that’s it; mischievous. That’s okay, he thought. You play your tricks my little nanny. We can all love you without wanting anything back. He swivelled his head on a plane perfectly parallel to the floor and kept smiling at the nanny, then turned back to the teller.
His head bobbed a little as he set his gloves on the counter. He didn’t look at the teller. I love this coat, man, I love this scarf, but I wish I could’ve been in the rat pack. I could be as cool as any of them, watching that little nanny walk away, going home, for no reason at all. He bobbed his head, then remembered where he was and smiled at the teller.
She looked at him with a closed mouth and handed him a slip of paper with precise handwriting in blue ink: You have a gun. If I do whatever you want, I won’t get hurt.
But this is impossible. Is it possible? He looked behind himself. Has he misunderstood the way time works? Could he be going backwards? This is his world, isn’t it? He felt his back pocket for his deposit slip. The teller shrieked. Everyone was on the ground. There were screams all around.
It’s not that he hadn’t paid attention. There was so much of greater importance with which to occupy his mind — the good feelings, man, the vibe that he was responsible for, the shit that made him live — it’s true, there was so much of greater importance than the quick flight of papers between grabbing hands.
His hands had held each other sometimes, as he had watched the nanny he had dated, in the old days. Actually, she is the only woman he has loved. Actually, his grief at losing her was what eventually led to his discovery of this new way to live, which was, to be honest, working beautifully.
But when he and the nanny had been together, he seldom heard her words. Instead he might watch the thin hair on the top of her lip and wonder why on her it was lovely; why could he look right at it in wonder, why could he also stare for long moments at the birthmark on her shoulder blade and feel nothing but desire, despite the way this patch of skin the size and shape of a rodent was repulsive on its own? But he knew the answer was simple — she bore it, and it tasted like skin, like her all over again. He might stare at the thin wrists holding the bowl of latte to her lips and be amazed, as if she had engineered the entire fragile machine, only to reach the obvious conclusion that no, she was human, and had grown into her body as simply as he had. Still, that this delicate condition was not hers alone, that it was for us all, that bodies were being broken and destroyed every day, today, on this earth — it only made his love grow.
Of course it was unhealthy. He knew that now. Love doesn’t need to know, man. Love doesn’t look so closely; love doesn’t need to explain. It just doesn’t need. Keep your ego out of it, man. And playing it all back, looking at it all over, that’s natural, but keep the word should out of it — you can’t fix the past. There’s no such thing as should.
He learned it all, but he couldn’t forgive everything.
When he and she had spoken, now and then, her perfect smooth skin had swelled briefly below her brown eyes. It was a normal human response; it was an adjustment made on countless other faces. But because he had held the back of her neck in his hand, and because that hand had travelled down to her shoulder, to her cheek, down again to the tips of her fingers, and again, because he loved her, he wanted to take a thumb and touch that spot below her eye, and soothe it.
But it was gone so quickly, and meanwhile her voice continued its usual operations, her smile returned. Had that small look been sadness? Where did it go? Did he imagine it?
But he doesn’t want to be fixed of this — he should have touched it. That sorrow should exist so physically, that it should be hidden, that its description should not love him . . . this was too much. He could not forgive her for this burden unshared. He would have worked, man, he would have worked.
But what does it matter, because the shrieking also brought bullets. It was a lucky shot, through the kneecap, from behind. Jesus Christ, man, shut that off. That hurts. I’m sorry. All sorts of things and through the pain he heard someone yell and oh no, they wanted him to put his hands somewhere and holy fuck it hurt so they were fluttering, man, they were fluttering; they shot up around him, even though it was only air, so if he were a rhino they would have just drugged him but no, that’s what he thought, no, for a man just going home given some strange note, it’s got to be bullets, it’s got to . . .
The craziest thing: he was propped up in his bed, with his thin hospital gown on. Think positive, man, think positive. It was warm. He felt clean and there was his mother in a chair at the foot of his bed. He smiled at her, but then the craziest thing:
He was looking at six faces on a page. One cop held this in front of him, the other cop watched his eyes intently. He laughed. Where is my coat?
He kept laughing, looking into the cop’s eyes, not looking at the paper at all.
We’ll try later, the cop said, and his partner pulled the paper away.
It was just that funny, and then his mother was there, shoving a straw into his mouth. He obediently sucked the water and then started laughing again. He was choking and spit water onto his chest. Fuck, he said, turning red. Why did you do that?
His mother smiled sadly at the cops. It’s the drugs, she said. It’s not really him.
Hey, it’s the drugs, he thought. That’s true.
Okay okay, he said. It’s just the drugs. I can do it now that I know. Show me the nannies please!
No, his mother said, and the policemen left through the door. Oh. It did feel good. Oh, they had left four bullets in a plastic bag on the table. Don’t tell them, Mom. That’s our evidence.
Wait a minute. It only felt like one. Whose bullets are those?
He smiled and asked his mother. Whose bullets are those?
They’re yours honey, and this is your kneecap, she said, pulling a jar from her purse.
Wait wait wait, he said. Show me that again. It was a security tape being shown on the monitor above his bed. The nanny spoke briefly to the security guard at the bank door, then two seconds later the guard pulled his gun and fired four bullets.
Is all that necessary? he asked.
Concentrate on her face, the man with the remote said. Is that her?
I mean the bullets. I only felt one.
There were four.
I know that. I see those little pops from the gun, right? One, then a gap, then three more.
Four bullets.
Why?
The cop used the remote to pull the tape back to the nanny. Look, we’ve got a blow up of this one, he said.
You know who it is, the man said.
Yes.
Okay then.
He was still angry at his mother for giving the bullets to the cops. She sat at the foot of his bed still true, still smiling, still watching out for him. No, if she were watching out for him the morphine would be on its way right now. These cops wouldn’t ask dumb questions.
We have the woman in question.
All the while, tape keeps rolling. It’s from all the angles. He sees himself in his groovy coat falling to the ground. His hands are there in the air but they’re moving. Stop it. He knows they should stop, he knows to lie still with his hands where they can see them, but one falls and stretches again to the ceiling, dropping a dark, bloodied swab of cotton into his mouth.<
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More bullets follow, of course, and he doesn’t care about the nanny at all.
Let her go, he says, and his whole body hurts. Let her go, he says, feeling all his wounds. Then his mother’s there with the nurse, looking ragged but trying to smile.
Don’t let them take that tape, he whispers to her. Don’t let them take the bullets or the tape.
His mother’s smile fades and as he feels the morphine begin its work she puts her hand on his forehead. Shhh, you can keep your kneecap, she tells him. You should have been kind.
So Does the Body
THERE IS NOTHING LUSH ABOUT HIS imagination. He sees one stick figure walking toward another, if he sees anything at all. There is no sun but the sky is lit. There is no remembrance of flesh, but the stick figure walks toward something. Or away, depending on the mood he’s in.
Or one stick figure waits, with its legs crossed. Here, when this imagined thing waits, the green begins to grow. It’s the first colour. The grass he may be sitting on (his gender insinuating itself easily, because he’s still a man) is of course green, but this is less his imagination than a programmed default position.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter how. Out of the normal syntax of things he has created a stick figure that assumes its own masculinity. Where the world and the stick figure meet, the world grows and so does the body. There is no need for a mouth, for eyes; the body knows its place in the world. It destroys every self that is not itself, automatically.
Later on, Ron sat at a table in an outdoor café. Someone came and took his cigarette from him, changed it to a cigar. Two men moved the table, then the man. He sat instead in a winged-back chair, thinking, just the same as he’d always thought. About the time he was younger and the things he had done wrong: Sure there was the beautiful girl he’d loved, but then he’d lost that love. And now he pictured her smiling in front of him, water flying as she shook her wet hair above him where he lay until he chased her back into the empty lake. He remembers it in black and white. He remembers it in colour. He shifts it around. It’s changed again. He can’t remember it anymore.
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