You Could Believe in Nothing

by Jamie Fitzpatrick

“No, we can talk. Absolutely.”

  “I’m retired this ten years,” said Mrs. Ennis, trying to turn a rusted bolt with her fingers. “And he won’t even finish his marine cooking diploma up to the college. I said, ‘Phillip, for once in your life, finish something.’ On the Internet all day.”

  His phone went off again.

  “Anyway, New Brunswick now.”

  “I’d better go,” said Derek, pointing to the phone and raising it to his ear.

  “You were talking to Eileen?” asked Gover.

  “Just checking in about tonight.” Derek crossed the street. “All the boys are going over to Lenny’s to watch, but I don’t imagine I’m welcome. Not after the other night.”

  Gover laughed with glee, gulping for breath.

  “That CBC arsehole is lucky to be alive,” he said.

  “Anyway, Brian made it clear that I’m no longer welcome. I don’t respect the tradition. That’s what he said.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said Gover. “Brian’s a tool. He should just collect the money, play in net, and shut up.”

  “Anyway, I’m not going over there tonight. Fuck ’em.”

  “Yeah, fuck ’em.”

  “Goddamn it,” said Mrs. Ennis, bent over the mower. A girl pedalled up the street on a bicycle.

  “Here,” said Mrs. Ennis, waving. “Give me a hand with this.” The girl stopped and extended a leg to stand over her bike. The two of them stared at the machine.

  “Listen now,” said Gover. “You can drop over to the house if you like.”

  “I think I’ll just stay home,” said Derek.

  “Me too. Stay home and see if I can get a piece of tail later on.”

  “You needn’t fuckin’…” came a distant voice, obscured by Shawn’s staccato laughter.

  “She looks up for it, man,” he said, delighted. “Get a few beers in her.”

  “Oh my Jesus, you wish,” said the voice behind him.

  “Talk to you the week.”

  “Talk to you, Shawn.”

  Derek was drinking beer when the Indian takeout arrived. Silent snow had been falling since dusk, enough to coat the lawn mower, still bottom-up on the sidewalk across the street.

  “Wow,” said Derek, feigning surprise at the snow. “That came out of nowhere.”

  “Twenty-eight ninety,” said the delivery girl, running a sleeve across her wet face. He felt bad giving her thirty bucks, and searched his pockets for change. The couple who ran the restaurant, a sharp-eyed bayman and his wife, were notoriously cheap. The wife was the Indian one, known by her faded sari and big glossy eyes.

  Closing the door, Derek mouthed the names scribbled on the bag. Allo ghobi, palak paneer. Greasy and pungent. The foil trays released steaming aromas, filling the apartment with an earthy presence it hadn’t known in weeks, intimations of full-bodied pleasure. The day before he had watched a couple in a poorly lit car, almost nothing visible above the dashboard except the voracious humping of thin female buttocks. He peeled the lid off the chicken and dipped a naan in it, and scorched his tongue on the first bite. Maybe he could eat at the computer, find some new stuff.

  But it was already quarter to nine. He sat in front of the television and dined from the restaurant trays while the game got underway.

  “Wow!” said the announcer, seeing two bodies collide at centre ice. “Roberts! That should get them going!”

  The exhortation gave away more than intended. The first period was a scoreless bore, the players circling, looking wary. Derek pushed a fist to his chest, the feed repeating on him.

  “It’s a funny thing but I seen it happen every time,” said Don Cherry. “They get out there and the crowd and everything and they go all dopey.” His voice sounded fragile tonight. But the weathered face commanded the screen, deep and rich as fresh-cut meat.

  “Okay,” said Don. “Can we show the Pronger thing?”

  “In Calgary,” said Ron. “Or do you want to do the guys in St. John’s?”

  “Oh yeah. Those guys, I tell you, folks.”

  Derek moved closer, sitting on the coffee table. The glow of the television flickered blue on his bare forearms. He set his beer on the floor between his feet.

  “This, folks, let me tell you. Wait. Don’t run it yet. Gail told me about this.”

  “Gail, out in the truck, who looks after our video.”

  “Yeah. Now don’t run it yet. I just gotta say, I mean, this is hockey, folks. These guys. Okay, you got it there now? Let’s see it. This’ll bring a tear to your eye.”

  The excerpt was brief, and Derek couldn’t connect it with himself. It wasn’t about anything, really. A flurry of images and disembodied voices.

  It ended abruptly. Don and Ron returned to the screen, two figures twitching like a pair of marionettes. They know me, thought Derek. He was almost certain of it. They had known this vigil, with its yeasty beer buzz and the consoling drone of sports on TV.

  He turned up the volume to quiet his thoughts.

  “So that’s just a taste of a special feature from St. John’s, and thanks to Allan Marleau, a reporter out there. Great stuff. And Don, you said—”

  “I know what I said!”

  “Okay. But I know you wanted to make the point that this is just an ordinary bunch of guys. Could be any hockey team in Canada, really. And that’s the beauty of it, because without that bedrock—”

  “Knock it off! I’m trying to do the thing here!”

  The pink, mastiff face turned towards Derek, and a finger pointed from the screen as if in accusation.

  “Now, all I’m trying to do here, if this guy will just…I just want to say something to you guys watching out there in Newfoundland, ’cause I know you’re watching.”

  Derek leaned forward.

  “All those people out there, they don’t know and they’ll never know. But you guys know. You guys are part of the brotherhood of hockey players.” The pink mouth drooped. “Don’t you ever forget it. The brotherhood of hockey players.”

  A momentary silence.

  “Don Cherry in the Coach’s Corner, on Hockey Night in Canada on CBC.”

  The heads disappeared from the screen, leaving brief silhouettes before a Canadian Tire commercial broke the spell. The television was old, and ghostly images often lingered when the picture went black.

  Derek stood, raised the vertical blinds, and looked out onto the street, where snow drifted ankle-deep, untouched. He crossed the living room into the kitchen and devoured a heel of bread. Wet flakes pelted the window without a sound, clinging to the glass. Hemmed in by the spring storm, the apartment felt old and used up. The life he had made here was vanishing, and he had no idea what might arise in its place. He opened a beer, then remembered he had one half-full under the coffee table.

  Maybe Nicole was right. Derek didn’t share his past. He dealt with it in his own way, leaving versions of himself scattered around town, where he might quietly slip back into them if required.

  More immediate was the prospect, however slim, that she might come back. The thought of waking up with her was both thrilling and faintly repulsive.

  The telephone rang. He knew it was Brian, and waited for the message.

  “Holy fuck, man. I don’t fucking believe it. Where are you? You had to be watching Don Cherry. We’re all at Lenny’s. The fucking brotherhood is at Lenny’s. You got to come over. We’re getting a team picture tonight. Don’t mind what I said the other night. We’re stronger than that. Call me on my cell.”

  Upstairs for a long, dark piss. Derek tilted his pelvis like a gunslinger, turning his head to look out the window. The rope of urine shimmered in the streetlight and sounded a high note on the porcelain.

  What does Don Cherry do when his show is done? Watch hockey, then nothing left but to go home. Derek pictured an old man sitting in a silent kitch
en.

  He zipped his pants and turned to survey the scene below. No life, except the light from a second-floor window across the street. Derek waited, half expecting someone to appear. Perhaps a young woman in her underwear, thighs white and luminous.

  Nothing.

  He grinned and let his head drop. This set his insides in motion, so he reached a steadying hand to the window frame. He could hear the television, crackling and spitting up the stairs and into the hallway. The gloom began its descent; the bloated grief peculiar to men made stupid by beer. The hour was right and his senses blunted just so.

  A voice made him look up. Three men were rounding the corner and heading down the middle of Mullock Street, boots puncturing the fresh snow. They were young, maybe teenagers. They all smoked, and one held a beer bottle to his chest. The fellow with the beer trailed a step behind the other two. He wore a jean jacket and hunched his shoulders against the cold. The others had winter coats, unzipped to the elements. They laughed and snorted and shouted to each other.

  Young arseholes.

  Gritting his teeth, Derek pulled at the window. It jammed against the wet snow, then opened an uneven crack. The trio had already passed in front of the house.

  Young arseholes who don’t give a shit.

  “Fuckheads!” shouted Derek.

  The others didn’t notice, consumed by the night. But the jean jacket kid stopped and lifted his nose, like a cat sniffing the air.

  “Wake up, you fucking arseholes!”

  All three stopped now, looked up and around. Derek leaned back into the darkness. The jean jacket kid shouted something and turned to face back up the street. He spread his legs, brought the bottle to his crotch, and jerked it a couple of times, beer spitting from its neck and into the snow. His mates laughed and carried on, the jean jacket kid dancing a little jig as he caught up with them.

  Derek rested his forehead against the cold glass.

  They don’t know. They’ll never know. But you guys know.

  The brotherhood of hockey players. What fucking good was it?

  THIRTEEN

  “It’s not something you plan,” said Joey. “You don’t think, ‘Tonight I’m going to buy a blow job.’ ”

  He looked Derek in the eye, then Curtis, and Derek again.

  “I mean, seriously. You don’t sit at home and think that, right?”

  They examined their drinks. Joey gave his glass a shake, coaxing a few more bubbles from the beer. Derek had figured the bar at the mall to be the perfect location for him and Curtis. Huge and noisy, it was sectioned off in a series of antechambers, suggesting a main room that never appeared. Derek and Curtis had taken the table beneath a larger-than-life photo of John Lennon, who looked over them with a pleading gaze. They didn’t see Joey. He spotted them when he turned and searched the room, looking to order a round for the crowd from work. He had a paisley green necktie bunched in his fist, and swung the end of it overhead like a lasso, hoping to flag a waiter. The sweat stains on his pale blue shirt reached from armpits to shoulders.

  “You got to understand what it was like,” he said. “Three years I worked in Alberta. We had money to fucking burn. Burn. But you hardly ever saw a woman, let alone…I mean, I didn’t get a sniff. Not a sniff. Now this is years before me and Cynthia. Just want to be, I mean, you know…”

  He leaned both elbows on the table. “When you finished your rotation you’d get out to Edmonton for a week. We’d pool our cash and throw parties at the hotel. One of the boys arranged these girls.” His belly pushed the table, slopping their drinks. “I mean, you knew it was an arrangement. They’d come to the party, hang around. They don’t wait for you.” He wiggled his fingers and flicked his chin in a knowing way. “They egg you on.”

  He was speaking too loud and pounding each syllable. But nothing carried over the gurgling country music, or the clatter and sizzle of the open kitchen. Also, the place had no front. One side was open to the mall and its cavernous mall noise, swallowing everything in its airspace.

  “Hoo, boy!” said Joey.

  “How much did you pay?” asked Curtis. He was in his woollen sweater again, one arm slung over the back of his chair, casual and unruffled. There was a large hole under the arm of the sweater.

  “It was a package deal. We’d pool our cash. Five, six hundred bucks each. Book the suite and fill it with booze. Where they found the girls I don’t know.”

  Derek shook his head and grinned, because it seemed a safe, noncommittal gesture. The wall facing him was stencilled with a sepia-toned photo, a cityscape from an unspecified past. Men in mustaches and straw boater hats escorted ladies in fancy dress. The ladies toted huge bustles on their asses, like beasts of burden.

  “I better catch up with the crowd,” said Joey. “We’re going for fish and chips.”

  “See you in court next week?” Curtis rose from his chair and extended a hand.

  “Yeah. One of us will be there for sure.”

  Handshakes all around, sealing a conspiracy of masculine silence.

  “Look, I know it’s bad for your dad. I’m not saying it’s the same thing as I did. But there’s only so much a man can take. I mean, my balls were busting.”

  A few feet away the men from Joey’s office looked spent, silent in their chairs, watching the pool table. He was very much the ringleader, cajoling and grabbing jackets, hustling the group to the exit.

  “Sorry about that,” said Derek.

  “Oh goodness, not at all. I’ve heard far worse. Yvonne and I do pastoral work at our church. British Columbia, you see so many people who’ve gone badly astray.”

  Derek seemed to be the only one who assumed discretion. The rest of the family could look each other in the eye and say things like “prostitute” and “blow job” and “see you in court.” Now here was his brother taking him for an innocent, a prude. Derek wanted to counter with something filthy and outrageous. But Curtis looked unflappable.

  On their way out, Curtis lagged behind to exchange small talk with a bartender, a big man dressed in black. Derek waited at the door, trying to guess what they might be chuckling over, what they could possibly find in common.

  “How did you meet your wife?” asked Derek, when they were sorting out seat belts.

  “Through the church. Yvonne was heavily involved when I joined.”

  “And you’re going to live on the farm?”

  “I’m keeping my place in town,” said Curtis. “I’ll be at the farm a good deal. But we thought it best for the marriage if we both have our privacy.”

  They took Freshwater Road towards the centre of town. It was an uneventful drive until Fleming Street, where Derek braked hard for an indecisive cat.

  “Cats,” said Curtis. “We had a bad time with feral cats on the farm. They had to be dealt with.”

  “The farm is the best place for the baby,” he continued. “And we have our church. That’s our community.”

  They were on Mullock Street when Derek suggested they stop at the apartment. Curtis cast an eye around the living room and formed his sympathetic smile. It was the only smile he had. The curve of his mouth never changed, never expanded to amusement or joy. He used it on everyone and everything, sometimes opening his arms in a gesture of tolerance. There was disapproval in it, like an aftertaste.

  “Nice. Bachelor pad, eh?”

  Derek saw that his brother had sniffed out the absence in the place, a stillness in the air. A home without momentum.

  He dropped on the couch, in Nicole’s spot, the first time anyone had occupied the left cushion since her departure. His knees were together and his hands joined in his lap. A clergyman’s visiting pose. Derek offered a drink.

  “I’d be glad for a cup of tea, if you have one.”

  “I want you to watch something,” said Derek. He started up the TV and disc player, kneeling on the floor and work
ing two remotes. He knew where to find the right spot, about fifty minutes in. He started the disc in time to catch Bobby Hull’s goal, and went to find tea.

  “If the Wings are just going to back off like that, you know Bobby will take it,” said the one with the boozy drawl. Bill, was it?

  Curtis watched intently, his forehead folded into ridges over the brows, and whiskers rising to his eye sockets.

  “Goodness, look how old it is,” he said finally. “Why was this on TV? Was it an important match?”

  Derek explained how game seven in the playoffs is always important.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Online. I wanted to see it because Dad used to tell that story a lot.”

  “What story?”

  “About him and Mom going to Detroit. Getting married and bringing you home. And he always talked about that game, how it was your first night out as a family. He didn’t mention how it went wrong. You running away.”

  Curtis stroked his beard and sat back, the baggy sweater sinking around his small chest. Derek found one of Nicole’s tea bags. The water was boiling when he heard the announcement in the arena. But Curtis registered nothing.

  “Listen closer,” said Derek, rolling the video back. “It’s the voice in the stadium. Never mind the picture.”

  The players on both teams turned lazy circles, waiting for the next faceoff. The arena voice was unmistakable now: John Ogilvie, please report to the main office.

  “You’re right,” said Curtis, laughing gently and squinting at the screen.

  “It must be the woman at the stadium, after they caught me,” he said. “She asked the sort of questions you would ask a lost child. What’s your name and so on. I didn’t speak until she asked the only question that mattered. She says, ‘Who’s your father?’ and that’s when I spoke.”

  He lifted an index finger to indicate a climactic pause.

  “I said, ‘My father is John Ogilvie.’ I had them page a man who wasn’t even there. That explains it, I guess.”

  Curtis slurped and gave the television a searching look. Derek could see that he wasn’t following the ancient game, which continued in its leaden shades of black and white.