Fire in the Firefly

by Scott Gardiner

  “I mean, I also got a cream cake from Dufflet’s. No way it’s going to last until next week.”

  “You can eat it yourself! Are you dieting again? You’ve been so edgy.”

  “I don’t even like cream cake!”

  “Yasmin!”

  “I’m sorry. I was just … looking forward to seeing you guys. I was hoping … you know … good company and all …”

  “What about Friday?” Anne is looking at the calendar attached with happy-face magnets to the fridge.

  “Friday?”

  “Friday’s better anyway.”

  “But that’s … four days away!”

  “Yasmin …”

  “How about tomorrow? Tomorrow might still work.”

  “Tomorrow’s no good. Besides, I doubt Julius will be up for company that soon.”

  “We could ask?”

  “Yasmin!”

  “I’ll get back to you, okay?”

  “Honestly!” Anne says hanging up. “That woman!”

  But Roebuck is in transit to the bathroom.

  18

  Fiction for men is getting the girl; for women it’s getting the fiction.

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  Yasmin turns up next morning, as Roebuck had hoped and feared, with a crock of chicken soup. “It’s vegetarian,” she says.

  Anne blocks her at the doorstep. “Vegetarian chicken soup?”

  “It’s from Pusateri’s! How’s Julius?”

  “Well, at least the vomiting has stopped.”

  Roebuck, in bathrobe and pyjamas, is seated in the front room in the sunshine with his morning paper. He is feeling better, though still far from up to solids.

  “So he’s better?”

  “I am,” he says, folding the business section and joining Anne at the door. “I think whatever it was has passed through my system.”

  His wife is much less certain. “You were throwing up all night.”

  This is true. Everything Roebuck put into his stomach has invariably returned by the same route. But he has slept the last few hours and tried a little of Anne’s decarbonated ginger ale, which has so far has stayed put.

  “Chicken soup!” he says. “That’s exactly what the doctor ordered!”

  “It can’t be chicken soup,” Anne says. “It’s vegetarian.”

  Roebuck is worried that Anne will pick up on the undercurrent, but Yasmin’s expression leaves no doubt that she honestly believes he’s subpar. “So thoughtful!” says Roebuck. “I’m so sorry I ruined everyone’s evening.”

  Yasmin makes appropriately sympathetic murmurs.

  “Well,” Anne says, “thanks for the soup.”

  “Let’s make toast!”

  “What?” His wife stares.

  “I prefer toast with my soup.”

  “Now?”

  “I’m starving. I have a feeling Yasmin’s soup is going to do the trick. Come on!” he says smiling at everyone.

  They all troop into the kitchen. Anne is not the happy one. “You have been very sick, Julius. I don’t think I’ve seen you this bad since Sri Lanka.”

  “God,” says Roebuck. “That was a thousand years ago.”

  “And that was seafood too.”

  He remembers throwing up for days on that trip; the aftermath of tainted prawns.

  “Twelve,” Anne corrects. “Twelve years. Katie is turning eleven this summer.” According to family history, Kate was conceived in a beach house at Hikkaduwa that same holiday.

  “Serendip,” says Roebuck admiring how words crop up. “We almost didn’t go. Remember? You booked that trip last-minute.”

  Yasmin is opening and closing cupboards, hunting for a pot; Anne shoos her off. Roebuck begins slicing bread. He is relieved to see that Yasmin is in no way trying to catch his eye, but he’s taking no chances.

  Anne has got the soup into a pot now warming on the stove. Roebuck keeps his own eyes on his loaf. “Ready yet?”

  Anne spoons a taste. When her back is turned, Yasmin slips out the sample jar and waggles it operatically. Roebuck wishes he could snap a photograph of how she looks, just at that moment.

  “A few minutes more,” Anne says.

  The sample jar has vanished back into the hideaway of Yasmin’s lap. Roebuck slots bread into the toaster. When he looks up, it’s his wife’s eyes he seeks. “I’ll be right back,” he says, heading for the staircase. Anne is pointedly wondering how a chicken is a vegetable. Yasmin tells her it’s amazing what they do these days. Roebuck kills some time in his bedroom. He figures he can get away with maybe five minutes. Any longer and they’re likely to come looking.

  Sure enough, before he’s finished, Anne is calling from the second-storey landing,

  “Julius? Are you all right?”

  “Dish that soup,” he shouts back down. “I’ll be there in a half a sec.”

  He has gone this far, invested this much. So now the price has notched a little higher. “L’chaim,” says Roebuck, because he has always liked the feeling of that word. From a disguised compartment at the bottom of his briefcase he has removed another bottle from his secret stash. He has considered taking two again, but lost his nerve. Roebuck raises a toast to himself in the mirror—he will allow a little ritual, this time—and drinks more slowly than last go-round. Before he rejoins the women, he tucks the empty bottle safely back into his briefcase. He thinks of everything, does Roebuck.

  “Oh,” says Anne. “I thought you were getting dressed.”

  “I couldn’t find my slippers,” he says, rebelting his bathrobe.

  “They’re in the drawer with your pyjamas.”

  Roebuck rubs his palms together like a man with an appetite. “What about that soup?”

  Yasmin is at the counter buttering toast. He saunters over, helpfully arranging slices in the rack. Anne is ladling the soup into the bowls. Yasmin rolls her hips and slips the sample jar into his pocket, licking butter from her fingers. Despite what he knows is just about to happen, he feels the pulse straight down into his groin. Roebuck hurries over to the table.

  “That aroma! Don’t you just love the smell of toast and butter?” He begins spooning his soup the moment it is set before him.

  “Well, isn’t he the hungry boy.” Yasmin is the picture of approval.

  “Slow down!” Anne, on the other hand, can barely keep from stamping her foot.

  As for Roebuck, he only wants to get this done.

  He can feel his stomach even now, sloshing like a half-filled can of motor oil. Yasmin is regarding him more avidly than is prudent. Roebuck keeps his napkin ready. Anne has set her spoon beside her dish too, studying his face. Roebuck feels the sweat begin to bead. He mops his brow. God bless the children: Morgan walks into the room with her geography assignment. “What’s the longest river in Canada?”

  “The St. Lawrence,” he says automatically and burps.

  “The Fraser,” Anne corrects.

  Yasmin surprises everyone. “Isn’t it the Mackenzie?”

  “You’re right!” Morgan beams. “Stupid parents. ‘The Mackenzie River,’ ” she reads, “ ‘is the longest river in Canada at 1,738 kilo­­-metres.’ ”

  “Oh, God!” Roebuck says and lurches to the bathroom.

  “Daddy’s being sick again!”

  “Damn, damn, damn! I knew this was a bad idea.” He can also hear—intermittently, though forcefully—Anne leaving no doubt where the blame for this belongs, insofar as she’s concerned.

  “I only thought it would help build up his strength …”

  By the time Roebuck is steady on his feet again, Yasmin has fled the premises.

  So all’s well that ends well. Except that Roebuck spends the rest of that week flat on his back in a hospital bed.

  19

  Fuck only thos
e who want to fuck you.

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  In retrospect, what he feels the worst about was lying to the doctors.

  Roebuck is seated in a subway car en route to Gama-Care Laboratories. The last time he made this trip, he got a parking ticket. Fate is telling him, on this occasion, that he would be wiser to avail himself of public transportation. Roebuck pays attention to these things: peak oil, greenhouse gases, global warming, and so on. It’s hot. Even underground he’s sweltering. Today seems to be that day that spring surrenders unconditionally to summer. Every May it’s like this. Every year it’s a little earlier.

  He has told himself that if the results are not positive—negative, rather—this is going to end right here. That’s it. Enough. Because he really has made a fool of himself. Though no one is aware of the full extent of it, fortunately, but Julius Roebuck himself. And, to be fair, after three days of intravenous tubes and bedpans, he himself was more than half convinced it was cancer. He’s still down eight pounds, although—admittedly—mostly because he’s decided the lean look is healthy. Roebuck is being very careful, lately, about what goes into his stomach.

  Based on his own on-line investigations, his best guess is that it was all some kind of off-the-chart allergic reaction. Nothing else that he can think of could account for the seizures plus the chest pains and the irregular pulse that had them all worrying—on top of all the vomit—that his heart was failing, too. Three days flat on his back with drip lines running in; nearly a week before he could take anything solid; and all the while doctors unable to come up with anything conclusive. Anne was a total mess, and Lily—poor Lily—couldn’t even come to see him, knowing that his wife was standing vigil. So she’d drafted Greenwood and made the visit look like a delegation from the office, clever girl. An awkward fifteen minutes, though: the two of them standing by the IV pole not knowing what to say; Roebuck mute and disabled; Anne drumming fingers on the stainless steel sink. It was very kind of Daniel to pass a card around the office for everyone to sign.

  Which, apparently, has set the rumours flying: Roebuck has been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Roebuck has undergone an emergency colostomy. The agency is bankrupt. The agency is up for sale. Ripreeler has put them up for review. Ripreeler is about to name them agency of record, globally. The company is in receivership. Omniglobe is offering a buyout. Roebuck wonders how that last part got out. But he’s not going to think about it. Not today.

  Today, the issue at hand is three stops up the line. It’s rush hour. He is lucky to have found a seat, but the car is a steambath. He will be very glad to get out into the air.

  He is sincerely resolved about this. Either the light is green or the light is red. Either he goes home an older, wiser, thinner man or he gets to see this through. Again he reminds himself that—whichever way this settles—he’ll have to buy some rounds at Matrix Three and let his people know that everything is hunky-dory. Maybe he should get hold of a colostomy bag and have the barman top it up with Guinness.

  The train rasps to a stop and a heavily pregnant young woman boards, puffing and sweating. Roebuck stands and gives her his seat. It’s still so early in the season, they haven’t got the AC going. He is hanging from a strap, now, perspiring along with everyone else.

  Two stops to go and a nearly naked woman occupies the car. She brushes by in an envelope of musk and arranges herself against an upright, radiating sex. Civet cat, thinks Roebuck—instantly—imbibing the scent. Across the aisle a security guard gapes, molars showing, then catches himself and looks away. Every man in the car is acting out some version of the same primordial response. Not naked, on closer inspection; though an awesomely well-crafted facsimile. Roebuck is startled to find himself once again wishing that Greenwood could be made to witness this. That, he’d say, is what we mean by epigamic. Here’s the word incarnate. She’s a minor-league version of Yasmin. Younger, cruder—more peroxide than Prada—but packing that same testicular punch. Stretched white crop-top sheared just below the breasts; dangly accessories glistening with the same auric gloss as the gold stud embedded in her navel—and of course those high, high heels propelling her into the world chest-first. Astonishing—truly—the chest. There’s a slogan of some kind printed on the fabric stretched across the curvature.

  Despite his occupation, Roebuck is at core a literary dweeb. When his eyes behold a string of letters, his brain requires him to spell them out. He tilts a little forward, but he still can’t make it out what it says. Several syllables are alarmingly distorted; letters dip and disappeared onto declivities.

  Roebuck leans closer. He’s got the first part, he’s fairly certain—clearly interrogative—but there’s a fragment below that he can’t make out at all. He is about to give up and get set to detrain when Miss Epigam lifts her shoulders with a fetching little yawn. Suddenly, shockingly, the message pops in perfect, 3-D precision.

  WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?

  PERVERT!

  Exactly at that moment, his eyes meet hers.

  The blast of scorn is so intense, so unabridged and unconstrained, that for an instance Roebuck feels as if the force of its percussion has rocked him back into his seat. Such carnal, conquering, all-encompassing contempt! Cortés must have worn that look while gazing at the corpse of Moctezuma. It’s another one of those moments he will forever wish could have been archived somehow magically on film. Roebuck would have dearly loved the opportunity to see the look on his own face, just then. Abject humiliation. Total and complete. An image to capture the essence of his age.

  He’s still laughing when he emerges up onto the street.

  A bus nearly nails him—and wouldn’t that have been a grand finale—but he makes it across the street with his heart thudding only slightly louder than the rumble of the traffic. Roebuck climbs to the stairs to Gama-Care Laboratories, already out of breath.

  The woman in the lab coat nods and grunts from behind her counter. He knows she has no memory of him, but he is encouraged that no one else is present in the tiny waiting room. Roebuck states his business, and she hunts through piles of folders. She can’t find his and for several minutes he wonders if she will have to consult the sliding window—but there it is at last. She removes a sheet of paper, scans it briefly, mutters something he doesn’t understand then folds it carefully into an envelope.

  Roebuck reaches for it, but she slides it back to her side of the counter. There is a bill to settle. Roebuck pays.

  He recalls a public bench across the street.

  Roebuck keeps both feet on the sidewalk until the traffic clears in all directions. It’s afternoon rush hour; several minutes pass before he finds an opening. A hot fist of wind nearly bats the envelope from his hand; Roebuck clamps down hard. He is glad the cardiologist is not present at this moment to monitor his heart rate. When he reaches the bench, he closes his eyes—opens them—and rips the seal. It takes him several moments to decipher the med-speak.

  But there it is, toward the bottom, clear in black and white.

  Negative.

  Negative.

  He has, of course, been tracking the calendar. Of course he has been counting days.

  There are plans to put in place. Groundwork to be laid. But Fate has rendered its decision: Julius Roebuck is now officially shooting blanks. The light’s officially gone green.

  Laughing still, Roebuck heads back down into the subway.

  20

  Heaven is where you have your cake and eat it too.

  The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck

  “Sorry I didn’t come to visit you in the hospital.”

  “Don’t be silly. Anne tells me you asked every day.”

  “I still think you should sue.”

  “And the flowers. Lovely.”

  “Yarrow, for health.”

  “Perfect. Perfectly appropriate.”

  “Really. I mean it.
The loss of productivity alone …”

  “They decided it was probably a virus …”

  “Anne said. But it started with that poisoned seafood.”

  “Water under the bridge, Yasmin.”

  “So you’re sure you’re in good health?”

  Now they’ve reached the nub. She has been having second thoughts, he is well aware, with regard to his genetic fitness: it’s a delicate thing to have to defend. Roebuck has been in business long enough to know when the hard sell is counterproductive. He lets the answer go unspoken because he also knows that Yasmin has already got the goods from Anne.

  Anne was worried.

  So worried that when the verdict came in that it wasn’t cancer, wasn’t anything at all in fact beyond a mystery, she raptured like a Baptist climbing back to Jesus. “We played tennis this afternoon and he beat me four sets out of six! Most games it’s the other way around! Oh, Yasmin, he’s completely recovered. I can’t tell you how relieved I am!”

  Anne takes her tennis very seriously

  Bottom line, in any case, is if there had been a change of mind, he wouldn’t be sitting here on Yasmin’s safari-inspired couch. Her basal body temperature, recorded just moments ago, is a perfect one degree above its sultry norm.

  “I’m fine,” says Roebuck.

  The loft is exactly how he’d imaged it: Tiger stripes and leopard spots; ebonies and cherry woods; feral reds with blazes of orange and emerald green; rampant nudes stretching tendons on marble pedestals; goddesses in nooks with snakes around their hips and breasts like perfect pumpkins. And of course a wealth of mirrors. Roebuck has never put his finger on exactly what kundalinic energy is supposed to be, but he figures this is it. He permits himself a sip of wine.

  “You haven’t been drinking, have you? I mean in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Are we going to do this?”

  Now that he is sitting primly with his back against her sofa, Roebuck finds himself surprisingly relaxed.