“How exactly?”
Two of the Saholes (even Soon was now calling them this) had been arrested for outstanding warrants. Booze, drugs and poker winnings had been seized. And Soon had sprained his ankle. “Well,” he said. “I could have broken it.”
“True.”
The cops had let them go after a cursory search. It hadn’t been easy getting Willy up the stairs to his apartment with Soon limping like that. Once they did, she’d fallen asleep on the couch. Mason didn’t want to wake her, so now here they were: out on the roof, keeping an eye on the back alley. Mason had left the wheelchair in the Dogmobile. Chaz, he assumed, was eating beans and listening to Gowan.
Soon began to sing:
“First is the worst
Second is the best
Third is the nerd with a hairy chest.”
Mason pulled out a dime bag.
“Can I try some of that?”
Mason thought about saying no, but he was high and wired and eventually he just shrugged. He poured some out on his brand new Ontario health card and passed it to Soon with a rolled-up bill. “Plug your other nostril and draw in hard.”
Soon did so, then caught his breath. “Just two more months,” he said, and pointed at the downtown skyline.
“What?” said Mason.
“In two months the CN Tower will no longer be the tallest free-standing structure in the world.”
“Dubai. Right?”
Soon nodded. “I had a plan, you know? To save it from second place.”
“You had a plan to make the CN Tower taller?”
“No, not taller. It was about embracing things.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Art,” said Soon. “Something for the entire city. I brought an idea to the lighting designer guy, and he actually liked it: ‘The CN Tower of Babel’—languages not of sound, but of light.” He moved his hands in the air like his fingertips were fireworks.
It occurred to Mason that Soon’s third breakdown shouldn’t be happening on his roof. He looked at the tower. “So what happened?”
“When ‘The Wings of Hope’ failed I kind of blamed everyone. The collaboration ended. Who knows? Maybe he’s still working on it?”
The sun was starting to set.
“What do we do now?” said Mason.
“About what?”
“About our plans.”
“I like the T-shirts,” said Soon. “And what about that chant!”
“Well, we can’t do it now. My cover’s blown.” Mason took a hit.
“I can still do the jump.”
“We’ll see. We can figure it out when we’re sober.”
Soon appeared to think about that. “Can I have another coke?” he said.
“That’s not how you say it.” Mason passed him the baggie.
Soon tried to take a hit, but ended up sucking air. Mason took it back.
“It’s rare, you know,” said Soon. “People who jump off bridges.”
“Not rare enough,” said Mason.
“No, I mean percentage-wise. It takes a special kind of person to do it that way. Most people kill themselves in really depressing places, like garages and alleys and things like that. That’s just fucking sad.”
Mason looked at him, and started to laugh.
And then Soon was laughing, too. “Man,” he said. “Cocaine is really good.”
They looked at the skyline, laughing.
39. The night sky is blue, not black.
40. Pain is a psychic construct.
Soon was gone. Willy was awake. She was shaking. Mason held her in his arms.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
Sometimes everything is terrifying.
“What would help?”
“Water,” she said.
“I’ll get you a glass.”
“No, I mean being in water. Do you have a bathtub?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. He wanted so much to make her all right.
“How about whisky?”
“Okay.”
He stood up to fetch a bottle and stumbled a bit.
“You’re all fucked up,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She was shaking so much. He spilled the whisky as he poured. He did a line and went to the closet.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He unfolded the suit he’d worn to Warren’s funeral.
“I’m taking you out.”
When he was dressed he lifted her onto his back. It was a long, steep way down and Willy wasn’t light. “Reach out,” he said. “Hold onto the railing with me.” They started the descent.
Almost halfway, his body began to shake. His legs were burning.
You’re going to lose her.
You’re both going down.
His heels slipped and he grabbed at the railing, wrenching his shoulder as they dropped—but thank God, backwards—just two stairs down, thudding onto the landing.
They sat there, crumpled, catching their breath. Mason felt trapped—it was down to the bottom, or all the way back up.
You can’t do either.
He muttered apologies and they started the second flight on their butts—one stair, two stairs—a gutless midnight descent.
You haven’t changed a bit.
You coward.
Then, just like that, he was up with Willy in his arms and barrelling down the stairs. She yelled with surprise and terror—much better than fear. They burst through the door and onto the sidewalk.
“Oh, my God,” gasped Willy. “What the hell was that?”
He felt good all of a sudden. Powerful. And it wasn’t just being high.
He sat Willy down in the alley then collected her chair and a bottle of Dewar’s from the Dogmobile. He put the bottle in her lap and buckled her in.
“You plan on racing?” she said, and then they were off—flying down the street.
What the hell was that?
It had almost got him, but he’d dug in his heels and leapt.
You’re going to crash.
It was true. He’d been up for two days. But now he was flying. And feeling all right … At a steady run they were there in twenty minutes: up the ramp, across the rotunda, to the sparkling entrance of the Sheraton Plaza Hotel.
He nodded to the doorman, who had on a red coat with faux gold buttons, and the doors slid open. In the lobby he waved a quick hello to the desk then headed for the elevators. He pressed the up button, and a moment later they were in.
He pressed the button marked R.
“What does R mean?”
“Rooftop,” he said, and they began to rise.
43
Willy floated naked beneath the night sky, thirty-one storeys above the ground. Mason held her head and stroked her left side. The water was warm, the air cool, stars pulsing above them.
“What if someone comes out here?”
“We’ll offer them a drink.”
Mason felt at peace. He looked at Willy’s body, laid out in the blue sheen, an alien landscape. Her right half, the one that felt nothing, was lush and pulsing and strong. Her left side was not withered, but utterly passive, moved by the shifting water. It was difficult to fathom, that everything she felt was inside of there.
“How do you feel?”
“Good.”
Mason kissed her. She tasted like cantaloupe.
He pushed her gently to the side of the pool, then held her as they smoked some heroin, a cigarette. They sipped more whisky.
“This is the first time I’ve done it,” said Mason.
“What? Swimming with a cripple?”
“Heroin,” he said.
“Careful. It hits you harder if you smoke it. And I’ll probably need help getting out of here.”
“What happened to you, Willy?”
“What do you mean?” she said. And he didn’t ask again.
He
held her head as the water lapped against his chest. “I’ll tell you something I don’t tell anyone,” he said.
“Why?”
He felt like he was close to flying, but not in a blissful way. More like he was rising through air, pulled by the sky—and at the same time in water, tugged gently downward by tides.
He thought he was going to tell her about Warren and Sissy and the awful things he’d done for money, but then he was talking about the swallows instead. He described it all—stomping down with his boot heels in the morning. And then the afternoon:
“I stayed angry long after they got back from the lake. I helped set up for Aunt Jo’s birthday party and I just got angrier. At dinner I sat at the kids’ table. Everybody thought I was being sweet, but really they were the only ones I could bear to look at. My cousin Sarah sat with me—she was eighteen at the time—and we kept sending one of my nephews over for bottles of wine. I drank a lot—kept looking up at those fucking nests: the six of them left. Nobody even noticed—I’d killed them all for nothing. Anyway, I’d been drinking all day. Sarah was drinking too….” Mason felt himself slipping, the stars reflected in the water. “Have you seen The Man from Snowy River?”
“Yes,” said Willy. “I love that movie.” Her voice seemed far away.
“You know that scene?”
“With the horse, of course …”
“Down the cliff …”
“Of course …”
“Down …”
The cliff.
“Mason!”
The stars were shaking above him.
You’ve let go of her.
He felt himself falling.
You’ve let go of Willy!
It was only a few seconds, but by the time he had her in his arms again he was crying. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry….”
She was gasping. He held her, crying.
They caught their breath.
“It’s okay,” she sputtered.
“I don’t know what happened …”
Willy said nothing.
“I can’t believe I let go of you. I’m so fucking sorry …”
“Forget it.”
There was silence, then the rippling of water. “I’d like another hit,” she said.
Mason pushed her slowly to the poolside and rested her swaying against his belly in the water. He reached his arms out, dried his hands on his black suit, scooped her pipe into the ziplock, and lit it.
“You’re good at that,” said Willy, then took a long drag. “You could probably shoot me up sometime.” The smoke trailed from her lips and he kissed her.
And now she was kissing him back. Her arm was out and so was his, pulling them along the side of the pool, all the way to the shallow end.
The corner was long and sloping, like a submerged wheelchair ramp. Willy lay against it, legs in the pool, hips at the waterline, her breasts like the moon’s reflections. Water shed from Mason as he rose, out of the pool and into Willy. He thought he might die, the pleasure was so great. She held him with all her strength—the side that felt nothing pulling him in deeper to the one that felt all. And then they were gone together.
“I don’t think you’re ready,” said Willy.
“For what?”
“To tell whatever story you were trying to tell.”
He gave a laugh. Willy smiled. They smoked some more at the edge of the pool, drinking whisky too, until Willy began to talk.
“It was 1985. I was six years old …”
Above twelve hundred hotel rooms, beneath twelve million suns, Willy floated in the dark as she told her story. Her voice, the heroin, letting her go, being inside her—Mason was focused like never before. And as she spoke he could see it happening.
It is 1985. She is six years old, in her daddy’s apartment in Scarborough. She is sleeping—then suddenly awake…
There’s something wrong. Her stuffed monkey, Randolph, is slipping off the itchy orange couch and she pulls him back under the sheet—soft with a Bay blanket on top … Something else is wrong. The lights are on. It’s bright, but not just from the lights … There’s a fire—right where she’s looking—through the door into the bedroom. His bed is on fire.
“Daddy!” she screams. And there he is, rushing through the door, right in front of the couch, across the room and back again. But it’s like he can’t hear her. There is music playing. She can hear it now, and it sounds like the xylophones in music class—she’s never heard them in a real song—with a weird voice yelling: “It’s gone. Daddy. Gone—the love is gone …” It is the Violent Femmes. (She knows that now, but didn’t then.)
“Daddy!” she shouts, as loud as she can—and he turns and leaps towards her, picking her up into his arms. She’s holding Randolph and they’re whooshing across the room. The breath is gone from her. She is relieved to be in his arms. They’re whooshing back across the room the other way, and in front of them the whole bedroom is on fire. She sees flames like tentacles, reaching through the door, and her daddy isn’t saying anything. He’s turning again, back across the floor and there’s just the weird voice singing: “Tell by the way that you switch and walk. I can see by the way that you baby talk …”
The xylophones are even louder now—and when she starts to scream it comes out like coughing. We have to get outside! She holds Randolph with one arm, banging on her daddy’s shoulder with the other.
“It’s gone, Daddy, gone. The love is gone. It’s gone, Daddy, gone. The love is gone. It’s gone, Daddy, gone. The love is gone away … Gone away …”
The fire is spreading. Willy is yelling and coughing in her daddy’s arms. He stops and turns, not towards the door to the hall but past the couch instead, to the rickety screen door out onto the balcony, which screeches as he pulls it open.
Willy gasps. They’re finally outside, seven storeys above the ground. The night air rushes into her lungs and suddenly, instead of a scream, she’s got a question. Her daddy clutches her tighter—then lunges forward, over the railing.
“I don’t know if he was trying to kill or save me.”
Mason held her tight.
Notes on the Novel in Progress
You can explain it all later, for fuck’s sake.
If things are moving, don’t slow them down.
44
He drove his fedora slowly. He wanted to be going fast, but the Dogmobile wasn’t meant for highways. He turned down the country road. The cart bounced. He checked the time and switched on the radio. Stevie Nicks was singing about a white-winged dove. He lit a cigarette, trying to calm his nerves. Whatever was happening, he was pissed off at Soon. His first sleep in days and he’d woken up to this:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Soon rather than later
Cocaine’s not as good the next day, is it?
Now’s the time, I know.
I’ll meet you on the Jackson.
Twilight cut through the windshield as he approached the bridge. There was no one to be seen. Ahead was a parked rental car and a camcorder, like toys plunked down by a giant hand.
He stopped and got out. Clouds moved fast overhead. He bit hard on the end of his cigarette. There was a Post-it note stuck to the tripod.
If you find this camera please don’t touch it. If your curiosity is too great for that, I ask you to make the footage public. If you are Mr. D, then hats off to you.
I’ll see you, Soon.
Mason didn’t like this one bit.
The camcorder’s battery was dead. He checked that the digital card was still in it, then stepped to the railing and looked down. Hundreds of feet below, white waves were churning and he could see something purple snagged among the rocks: Soon’s gypsy leather coat. That had been Mason’s idea: unbutton as you turn, so they can’t see the harness. When you dive, the coat is a flourish behind you. It’s a cape! It is wings!
By the looks of it, he’d done it well: unharnessed on his own then left the coat behi
nd. Towelled off. Changed his clothes—the wet ones in a backpack with the bungee—then walked to Fort Jackson to take the Greyhound who-knows-where. The act of disappearing.
When Mason got home, Willy was asleep. He plugged in the camcorder, connected it to his laptop, poured a drink and pressed Play.
The screen is dark then flashes to light. No voice, but the sound of birds. Images come into focus, turning: the top of a railing, parts of a bridge, another railing, a vista of far-off trees and open sky, the roof of a nondescript car, 360 degrees. The bridge appears desolate.
A kitcha kitcha sound. Fingers. Then the camera is steady. Bootsteps, a chest. A man walking backwards away from the camera, flashes of light over his shoulder, his face …
And now Soon is standing in the middle of the screen. We see him from the knees up, a deep purple coat, his back to the railing, behind him sky.
He stares for a moment into the camera. And then he begins:
“They’ll come for you. You’re sure of it. When it comes down to it, they’ll come for you—over the hill, bugles blowing, when the wagon is surrounded and the ammunition spent …
“The ancient Greeks could have used linear perspective. They had the means—a hand sticking out of its frame. But they figured it was better, I guess, to leave the hand on the wall. The ancient Greeks could have painted in oil. Instead, they used it to coat the bottom of their boats. So their boats wouldn’t sink. So they wouldn’t drown.
“They’ll come for you. When the air is burning, when the flames reach the top window …
“The most perfect frescoes we have from ancient Rome are on the walls of Pompeii. Preserved when the volcano blew—the destruction of an entire city: ash shadows on the sidewalk, burnt black like Hiroshima, goodbye. But we have the art. We have the Art! Now we can see how the rooms, like Venetian works of the fifteenth century, open up—as if there’s something past the surface, something beyond the walls, other than silhouettes framed, drowning in shadow.
“They’ll come for you. When there’s no more time, and the eyes are staring in circles, your feet above the ground… They’ll be there, through the town square, splitting the noose with an arrow, cracking the hangman’s head with a rifle butt …
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