Fire in the Firefly

by Scott Gardiner

  Roebuck has checked his watch as he pressed the bell and is aware of his delinquency. He notes too that Lily has opened the door with a mostly empty glass of wine in hand.

  “Yes. But only fourteen minutes.”

  He has driven through three amber lights and nearly clocked another cyclist. Lily stands aside and gestures him in, but Roebuck holds his ground. He has left his motor running. “We don’t want to lose our table,” he says, eyeing the pack of boys in low-slung pants and hoodies cruising past his car. Verisimilitude demands its risk.

  “You’re hot to trot for this seafood place.”

  “Like I said, I’m in the mood for oysters.”

  They have discussed, over other lunches, the aphrodisiac possibilities of bivalves; the likelihood that such qualities exist. Lily dislikes the taste, even more the texture, and disbelieves; Roebuck loves a plate of oysters and consequently doesn’t care. He is wholly truthful when he tells her that the aphrodisiac is Lily herself, not whatever dish he eats beforehand. But he does enjoy a plate of Malpeques with a side of coarsely grated horseradish and a shot of oily jalapeño.

  “You and your oysters,” she says.

  “Me and my oysters.”

  He takes a sip of Lily’s wine and sets the glass on the table by the door, holding the screen while she turns the lock. On the drive downtown he asks, as always, what she’s working on.

  “Today I am depressed,” she tells him.

  It turns out she has received a rejection notice in this morning’s mail. “You wait for months. Then you get a little yellow slip of paper saying sorry, try again. On-line submissions are worse. Sometimes you don’t hear back from those at all.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which journal or which poem?”

  “Which poem?”

  “Ha! Serves you right! It was the one about you.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  He could quote those verses back to her, verbatim, but won’t say that. That too would be cheating. He can’t decide what he feels about this: that poem in particular. Not her best work. And probably, he thinks, he has put his finger on why. He also wants to tell her that rejection is inevitable. Clients routinely turn him down; it’s part of what they do. What they all do. But that too would be facile. The goal of Lily’s writing is to reveal the truth. His is something else again. In Roebuck’s trade, sometimes rejection comes as a relief.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What?”

  Roebuck is shooting through another intersection; he can’t afford to turn his head.

  “Interesting.” Lily in the passenger seat bears no such restriction. “Now why did that startle you? You like me knowing what you’re thinking.”

  He has no comeback. What she says is true.

  “That’s what your aphorisms are for, aren’t they? Your collection? Those little squibs you like to have me read. Me. Them. We’re what falls outside the Roebuck brand, aren’t we? We’re your other self-expression.”

  It’s safe to look now, but Roebuck doesn’t. He is giving this his whole consideration. “We can’t all be poets,” he says gently, wearily. “Regarding truth, I mean. We don’t all get poetic licence.”

  “Ha! Good! You do impress. That may just be the first time I have ever heard that phrase correctly used.”

  “That’s my job, you know. Impressing you.”

  “Your job is fucking me. That’s what you should know.”

  The restaurant is packed. A young woman at reception informs them tartly that she was just about to give their table to another party.

  “Fancy,” Lily says, watching the hostess stalk away, hips first.

  “Fancy,” Roebuck echoes.

  “You look tired.”

  “People keep saying that.” He is vain enough to be annoyed. But there couldn’t be a better cover. “Just jet lag. I don’t usually get it. This time I did.”

  “It went well, your thing in the Philippines? We haven’t talked shop.”

  Roebuck feels the crinkles of his own smile. “Yes!” He wishes he could lay out for her all the ironies he’d love to share. “Yes. It’s possible this could turn out even better than I hoped.” But now the smile retreats. That trip has brought to mind its predecessor. “I want to say again how so sorry I am, Lily, that I missed the AFAs. I hated doing that.”

  “Don’t worry. Things went ahead without you.”

  “Ah.”

  A waiter appears with a wine list. Roebuck picks an Alsatian Gewürztraminer he knows she favours.

  “And why don’t you bring a plate of oysters,” Lily says.

  “We have some very nice Bélon.”

  “Malpeque,” Roebuck tells him. “A dozen, please.”

  “Two.” Lily has assumed her impish look. “Two dozen. Maybe I’ll swallow some too.”

  “What?” He’s a little sharper than he means to be. “You hate oysters!”

  “I am learning to broaden my horizons.”

  Roebuck scans the list of appetizers and identifies a workable alternative. “Then let’s have an order of pâté too, just in case. I’m told they do their own here …”

  The waiter does not contradict him, and Roebuck is reminded that the tip today will need to be excessive. He has a wad of cash, prepared and ready.

  “Okay. Pâté too,” says Lily.

  Roebuck returns the menu to the waiter who obligingly disappears. “We aim to please.”

  “So,” she says. “Catch me up …”

  The appetizers arrive before the wine, which in other circumstances would substantially reduce the tip, though the waiter is profuse in his apology: the bottle they have chosen is not to be found in the cellar; an alternative is offered and accepted. Roebuck is more concerned with making sure the oysters stay on his side of the table.

  “Why don’t we have a cocktail!” he says.

  “A cocktail? You never drink cocktails.”

  “I am learning to broaden my horizons.” He beams at the waiter. “Two Martinis!”

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

  Roebuck begins sliding shellfish down his gullet.

  “Vodka or gin?” The waiter is still standing at his elbow.

  “Sorry?” Roebuck’s mouth is full of mollusc.

  “Vodka Martini or gin Martini?”

  “Oh. Gin.” He looks at Lily to see if gin is all right with her. She smiles to tell him that she doesn’t care. “Dry,” adds Roebuck, although he doesn’t care about that either.

  By the time the drinks arrive, his pile of oysters is substantially reduced.

  “Are you starving, or fortifying, or both?” Lily is definitely in one of her come-hither modes. “That’s good. I have plans.”

  Roebuck lifts a half-shell in salute and washes it down with another swill of gin. He is relieved to see that so far she has dabbled only with her toast. He is downing the last of the shellfish when the wine arrives.

  “You’re a machine,” Lily says.

  Roebuck interprets this as not complimentary, but that’s all right now too, because now he can relax. The waiter takes away the stack of empty shells and still unmelted ice. “Any room for real food?” Roebuck’s appetite is dead, entirely. But that doesn’t matter either.

  “Why don’t you decide what to order while I visit the men’s room?” he says.

  Tucked into his pocket, opposite the wad of folded money is a pair of bottles removed this morning from his hidden stash. Roebuck locks himself in a stall and unscrews the first cap. He has told himself there will be no ceremony—no hesitation—and allows himself none.

  It tastes like tree sap.

  Most years, at the tail of winter, he and Anne drive the kids up to a sugar bush north of the city for the maple syrup festival. Anne enjoys the sweet smell of woodsmoke and the bu
bbling, ramshackled science of production; the promise of spring. Roebuck and the kids are in it mostly for the pancakes. The taste of ipecac reminds him of raw sap, straight from the tree. Not as bad as he’d expected.

  Roebuck waits.

  Nothing.

  He sets the empty plastic bottle on the toilet tank and deliberates a moment, reviewing. This has to work.

  He gulps a breath and holds it, bouncing on his toes.

  Nothing. There is no manual for this.

  Roebuck opens up the second bottle and knocks it back. He dabs his lips and drops the empties in the waste container, and—having washed his hands and examined himself in the mirror—rejoins Lily at the table. She has decided on a pasta.

  The next fifteen minutes are a challenge. Lily is amorous. You could never call her prudish, not in his presence anyway, but she’s not usually this forward. At one point she slips off her shoe and props her foot between his legs. Roebuck diligently fondles toes. He does his very best to keep up his end of conversation, but the uncertainty of what is going on inside his gut begins to weigh against his wit. Lily returns her foot to the ground and back into her shoe. It occurs to him that perhaps she too is ovulating. Roebuck is contemplating the uncertain symmetry of this when he feels an odd sensation in what he takes to be his salivary glands.

  “I’ve been worrying about you,” Lily says.

  And, at that moment, a crackling stream of oysters bursts across the table like a spray of fire from an AK-47.

  Roebuck’s choice of order has been carefully considered. Oysters, he has calculated, should come up as easily as they go down. And Lily doesn’t like them—one of the few flaws in her nature he’s aware of, but it’s perfect for today because if he’s going to put this down to botulism, it has to be from something he ate and she didn’t.

  “Oh my God!” says Lily, fork pointed to the ceiling.

  A froth of gastric juice backfills Roebuck’s sinuses and dribbles, bubbling, out his nostrils. He chokes, gags—now he’s having trouble breathing—Roebuck is being waterboarded by his own administration.

  “I’m okay,” he rasps as his lungs backfill with acid flux. He can’t stop coughing as the space around his table fills with horrified wait staff, then empties again as all parties back pedal, swinging arms and spilling drinks, avoiding the next gush. Through his tears, Roebuck frames an image of a middle-aged woman in spandex, two tables over, pressing a napkin to her mouth, shoulders beginning to hunch …

  He stumbles to the men’s room.

  Spasms rack his chest and a gobbet of emerald-green bile dangles from his chin for an oxygen-deprived eternity, then plops into the toilet bowl. When Roebuck’s breath returns, he teeters to the sink, tidies what he can with paper towel, and gropes his way back through the door and out into the open room. Lily takes his arm, though it glistens with saliva and much worse. “Hospital?”

  Roebuck shakes his head.

  Busboys with mops and disinfectant ring the table. Roebuck drops his wad of bills, heaving still.

  “Sorry,” he croaks to Lily.

  “Let’s get you out of here.”

  She has his arm again.

  The long-legged hostess has disappeared, but an older man, a manager, hovers by the door, aghast. “Should I call a cab?”

  “Fucking oysters!” Lily says.

  “I can drive,” Roebuck tells them.

  And he can, though he keeps to the backstreets where he can stop the car and hang his head out the window when the need arises.

  “I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Lily strokes his arm.

  When he has pulled up to the curb outside her house, she takes a tissue from her purse and cleans his mouth and kisses it. “Call me, please. Let me know you’re okay.”

  Breathing through his mouth, Roebuck promises to call.

  “Fucking oysters,” Lily says.

  He is able to strip off his clothes and shower, once he’s made it home, though the spasms continue on and off until it’s time to leave again and pick up Morgan. The deal is that Anne will collect her afterward, but it’s Roebuck’s job to get Morgan to the soccer pitch in time for warm-up. He would have to be much sicker than he is to leave his daughter in the lurch. Even so, Roebuck is relieved to have experienced no further vomiting since he’s left the house.

  Morgan crinkles her nose as she climbs into the car. “It smells.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “An accident.”

  She launches into an account of how Ginny Moragani tried to steal her pencil case and how Miss Cram, who hates her, gave her a time out, too. Roebuck manoeuvres his way through the chaos of gridlocks that paralyze this block every weekday at 3:35 PM. A Golden Retriever fogs the window of the car beside him; at the wheelhouse of a monstrous SUV, a Philippina nanny tries and fails to park. Roebuck taps the horn to let her know he’s there and gets a fright when she throws up her arms and shrieks.

  “Damn!” he says, slamming on the brakes. “I forgot your soccer stuff!”

  “I have it.” His daughter’s tone is a reproduction of her mother’s. “Mommy always makes me bring it with me in the morning.” All three children take after Anne much more than him, but this one is eerily identical.

  “Your cleats too?”

  Morgan roots through her knapsack.

  “Yes.”

  “Shin guards?”

  “Daddy!”

  She opens her lunchbox. Morgan saves a chewy bar for the car ride after school. It’s the one thing she can be counted on to eat. When she screws off the top of her drink container, Roebuck realizes he’s dehydrated.

  “Sweetheart. Can I have a sip?”

  “No.”

  “Please!”

  “No.”

  Roebuck calculates response against motive. His request is selfish. On the other hand, so is her refusal. He puts on his deepest no-argument voice. “Morgan!” It’s sufficient. She takes another slurp of orange juice and hands it over. They are good kids, all of them.

  He has worked his way clear of the school and the other parents he will have to sit beside next Christmas concert before the juice comes foaming up again. They haven’t yet made it as far as the arterial road, so Roebuck is able to stop, fling open the door, and heave most of the liquid outside the car in a lurid splash across the asphalt.

  Morgan’s still talking about it when Anne and Katie arrive home.

  He has parked himself behind the kitchen table, staring blankly at his laptop. Every time he tries to drink, he vomits. He would put this venture down as brilliantly successful, but he’s got to be a little worried now about overachievement.

  “Daddy threw up three times on the way to soccer!”

  His wife’s hands move from her gym bag to Roebuck’s forehead. “I can’t tell if you have a fever.” Anne’s hands are as accurate as any thermometer. Roebuck knows he has no fever.

  “Something I ate …”

  “What did you eat?”

  “Seafood.”

  Another thing Anne shares with Lily is distrust for all things piscine—though she does appreciate the fatty acids and affirmative cholesterols. “I keep telling you …”

  She turns to the refrigerator and takes out a bottle of ginger ale, shakes it, and carefully unscrews the cap. When she’s satisfied the fizz is down, she pours a glass. “Drink,” she says. “Slowly.” Flat ginger ale has settled many a stomach in this household; he has a pretty good idea what’s about to happen, but after all that’s the point. Roebuck drains his ginger ale.

  Six minutes later he is in the downstairs bathroom transferring soda pop into the toilet by way of his sinuses. In his hurry he has left the door open, but the sound effects would have done the job regardless.

  “Wow!” says Morgan. Katie has hung around downstairs too, to
witness the show.

  “Where’s Zach?” Roebuck wheezes, wiping his chin.

  “Working on a science project at Niko’s house. He’ll be home for dinner.” Niko has been Zach’s best friend since kindergarten. “Speaking of dinner, says Anne, “I’d better call Yasmin.”

  The plan had been for Yasmin to come over tonight for a barbecue. Anne was going to make a pot of mac and cheese for the kids, while Roebuck grilled some porterhouse.

  Today is Day Twenty-eight. On the button.

  “I’m sorry,” Roebuck says again.

  “It was her idea anyway.” Anne feels his forehead again, then his cheek. “Will you be able to eat?” He groans. “You have to be careful with seafood. I keep warning you. I’ll call.”

  Yasmin has seen to all the details. The plan—refined through a cascade of Hushmails—calls for Roebuck to pop into the bathroom after dinner and perform his special service with the orange-lidded plastic jar, which he will then slip into Yasmin’s purse—casually left open—while Yasmin herself maintains a stream of chatter with Anne in the kitchen; possibly offering to help with the cleanup. Soon after—freshness being key—Yasmin will yawn and say, “My goodness, look at the time!” and head home with his semen, where she will see to the next part in the privacy of her downtown loft.

  If he wasn’t feeling so raked-out hollow, Roebuck could almost enjoy this.

  Anne is talking on the kitchen phone. Yasmin’s voice is loud enough for him to hear both ends of the conversation.

  “What do you mean, he’s sick?”

  “Food poisoning.”

  “What?”

  “Food poisoning, I said. Seafood.”

  “What was he doing eating seafood?”

  “I guess that’s what he had for lunch.”

  “So tonight is definitely off?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sorry Yasmin. It was only a barbecue.”

  “No, no, it’s just … I bought a nice bottle of Barolo.”

  “Well, keep it, for heaven’s sake. We’ll reschedule next week.”

  “Next week’s too late!”

  “Too late?”

  Roebuck puts a napkin to his mouth. He isn’t listening.