by Ian Williams
x = a - 15
x + 15 = a
x = (x + 15) - 15
x = x + 15 - 15
x = x
Felicia Shaw was x years old when she had Army.
Ding, ding, ding. Correct.
145. HE KNEW THE TYPE WELL
Oliver
Felicia had had sex with a boy in her high school. The boy was one of those scrawny, visibly virginal types in Grade 11 who grew two inches in height over the summer and became the plain girl’s kryptonite. As a recent virgin, he was a fervent and mechanical lover. Like a busy signal. Felicia was his flat-chested lab partner who felt pretty and useful when he fondled her on his twin bed in the attic.
146. TOUCHED FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
Oliver
When she told him she was pregnant, he kneed her in the stomach.
She doubled over, for although the boy was no longer a virgin he still had virgin dust in his hair and she did not expect such unvirginlike violence from him.
She was away from school the next day. And the next. He went to see if she was okay. She would not speak to him.
She did not return to school until he graduated. By then Army was weaned and she could leave him with her dead mother. That is, until her dead mother died and she left him with Christian Lady Army told Heather about. She took a typing course. Then she got a few temp jobs until Brownstone opened up, which meant x = 31ish.
147. THE RICH FATHER
Oliver
Right. There was that story from Army via Heather. His father was a count, a Rothschild, gold incarnate. Oliver snorted. That’s why they were renting his basement. He had tried to talk to Felicia about it once when they were out for a walk but she put on her legal voice and he retreated. She was so secretive.
148. KNIGHT
Oliver
In a sense he had saved her from all the men who kneed her and her son. He set them up in relative luxury.
Last summer, after they moved in and he heard the gentle clatter of their lives downstairs he would find himself walking heavily in the clouds above them—he didn’t know why he was doing this—or calling for his children and expressing irritation when inwardly he was bursting with happiness.
It was the happiest he had been in a long time, having his children without his wife. Even now, he’d prefer to have Heather close to him and pregnant than far away and menstruating.
149. UPDATE
Felicia
The next time Felicia came out to update Oliver and Army, Army was chattering in a sleep-deprived way and making a series of worrying connections.
I was a preemie too.
You were.
Tell him, Mom.
Thirty-two weeks.
Is that so? Oliver said.
Like Heather, Army said. I came out and they were like 50-50, blah-blah, and I was like, Watch me. And I was in the hospital, for, what eight weeks.
Until term.
Until term. And Mom slept in the hospital for eight weeks, pretty much, until I was like, We need to bust up outta this joint, pretty lady. You didn’t even have baby stuff. You probably thought I was going to die.
I didn’t.
Then Dad came and bought you everything.
That’s enough, Army.
She took me home in her mother’s handbag, I was so small.
Felicia stood up. She should get back to Heather.
She’s all right, though? Oliver asked.
Heather’s fine, for now. It’s the baby they don’t know about.
Tell Heather to hold it in until tomorrow.
She can’t just hold it in, Oliver said.
Felicia left as they were bickering.
Just until midnight. We’re almost there.
The baby’s not a fart.
150. TOMORROW, TOMORROW
Army
Because tomorrow would be March 14, exactly six months away from Army’s birthday, and Army believed that the fourteenth was the Valentine’s Day, the sweet centre, of every month.
151. BLAME
Army
When Felicia left, Army slouched and closed his eyes. The waiting was tiring. He was not a waiter, he was a doer. He should be in there asking for surgical instruments and saying stat.
Heather’s body was the first image that appeared when he closed his eyes. This occasionally happened. In a decade, he’d recognize this chain of events—close eyes, hot girl—as a kind of personal screensaver. A decade ago, he’d have ripped her month out of a calendar and pinned it to the wall in front of his bed. Note to alert self: Make a calendar of hot high-school girls from the neighbourhood. Sell. Omit Heather.
Last summer, he had taken money from other boys but he had never taken any from Skinnyboy. Okay, he took money for the guitar but not for Heather. Therefore he was not to blame for what happened to her.
But he intended to, didn’t he? For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. For the love of money is the root of all evil. For where your heart is, there will your treasure be also. That one’s backward. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
What if there was no heart in the baby? Literally. Army opened his eyes. He looked at the side of Oliver’s face. The sides of his goatee looked like marionette lines.
Anybody ever tell you that you look like Chucky from the side? Army said. Aren’t you scared the baby’s gonna come out looking like Chucky?
Hendrix put you up to that? Oliver crossed his thick arms over his thick body.
I act alone, Mr. O.
152. MARKET VALUE
Army
How much would Heather cost? the boys in church wanted to know. A few of them happened to be congregating at the bathroom sink when he went down to relieve himself. It was just supposed to be bathroom talk.
Depends on what you want her to do, Army had said. She’ll flash you but no touching.
How much for touching?
The guy just said no touching.
No touching right now. Maybe later. A handful’s going to cost.
How much for a pinch?
You’re so desperate.
Army had collected a downpayment, their offering money, but the following week they complained that they only received a partial view of Heather’s breasts so Army issued them a partial refund.
153. WHICH WHILE SOME COVETED AFTER, THEY HAVE ERRED FROM THE FAITH, AND PIERCED THEMSELVES THROUGH WITH MANY SORROWS.
Army
Army closed his eyes again.
He was over her (except for the screensaver issue) but couldn’t Heather see that he was the beginning of a good story? Basement to penthouse. BMX to BMW. In five years, after he made his first million, they would walk around Manhattan wearing enormous sunglasses, coffee in one hand, schnauzer leashes in the other.
Did you have sex with him? Army had asked her when she returned that day.
She paused a very long time.
So you did, Army said.
I didn’t want to, Heather said.
Then she told him a story about rape. He believed her. But she didn’t cry or get choked up, which made him wonder—God forgive him for sounding like Oliver—if there was another explanation.
Maybe, no, Heather wanted to go, maybe she voluntarily, no way, hooked up voluntarily with those guys, no, voluntarily, despite knowing how much he Romeoed her.
He understood where his loins were because of her.
154. SHABBA!
Army
Army wouldn’t have said no to some Pringles at the moment. Something crunchy. He should have brought his Walkman.
When Heather came back in January, he wasn’t supposed to offer grins and folate pills and long talks into the night. He had moved on. He was supposed to be like, Heather who? See him sitting with a cigar, surrounded by a traila load of video girls, gyrating around him like hummingbirds.
The word twerking had not yet been invented.
155. SLAVE MARKET
Army
In the barbershop, he had negotiate
d another trade deal for Heather that fell through.
That ain’t right. You’d be the African that sells his own tribe.
First I’m only half African. I’m, like, Rican, know what I’m sayin’. Second, she ain’t from my tribe; this is karma for what her people did to my brethren them. Fourth, third—I’m not selling anybody. The fee is for my services, not hers.
How much?
Well, what is she worth to you? She’s leaving in a week, man. You’re not leaving me a lot of time to make something happen.
I know, I know.
Then very quickly: Cash preferred, trades accepted. I guarantee results or your money slash trade back. Fine print: I can’t guarantee how far you’ll get.
Man, it’s not even about that.
Because I can’t control if you screw things up.
So what am I paying you for exactly?
For Heather’s attention.
I can get her attention.
Army cocked his head.
Sometimes.
And for me to talk you up to her so she might see you. Right now, you’re invisible to her.
So she’ll go out with me.
Is that a question?
It’s like a confirmation I need.
He had to return that punk’s money too.
156. BUSINESS EXPANSION
Army
But what does it mean? Does she, like, like me?
I don’t traffic in meaning. I traffic in results. You want meaning, talk to—Here Army pointed upward.
157. SILVER
Army
4 Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
5 And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.
6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
158. WORD CHOICE: PIMP
Army
The word pimp was never used. In the mid-2000s, when Pimp My Ride blew up, Army would always hear the verb inflected by the memory of the summer of Heather.
159. WORD CHOICE: PROSTITUTE
Army
The word prostitute was not used either. Neither was hooker, whore, or whore of Babylon, even to himself in the days after—could he say it?—she cheated on him and he wanted to set her on fire. That wasn’t his thought. Where did that come from?
160. BULK
Army
A traila load a, a traila load a, a traila load a traila load a traila load a girls, girls, every day. From London, Canada, and USA.
161. THE UNHOLY SPIRIT
Army
Yes, but how much was Heather’s body worth? That wasn’t Army’s thought. But it entered his head.
He slapped himself across the face. Too hard.
What’s the matter with you? Oliver said.
Demons, Army said. He opened his eyes.
Right, it was an unholy spirit trying to make him think that he actually thought that thought. But he would never reduce Heather to flesh. That wasn’t him.
He closed his eyes. Heather again.
162. SURFACE TENSION
Army
The first time she opened the black door, she lifted her breasts over her bra and he could see the puddle of jiggly giggly flesh spilling over the top. Sometimes when he filled a glass to the very brim, the memory returned to him, and he would bend to the counter and sip. She runneth over.
163. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU?
Army
Unpardonable. His every imagination was evil, like the people in Noah’s time.
Army resolved to stay awake. He debated asking Oliver the magnum question: Mr. O, how’d the missus leave you? But that would turn into a bedtime story, complete with a witch, a casa and a prince. Plus he already knew multiple versions from Heather, Hendrix and Oliver himself.
Think good thoughts.
Army would get Oliver a Michael Bolton CD for Christmas. Good one. See, that was the Holy Spirit just now. He hadn’t grieved it yet.
164. NOW THAT I’VE BEEN LOVING YOU SO LONG
Army
Would God bless his business? He should pray more. He should wear a crucifix. He should hang one in the garage. He could ask his mother to buy him one. No, then God would think that he didn’t want to spend his own money on Godstuff.
165. TELL ME, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU?
Army
He got baptized in the fall after his cast came off. It was so easy. He didn’t have to memorize anything. He didn’t have to carry kindling up Mount Moriah.
166. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CARRY ON
Army
Abraham was willing to cut his son’s neck. Isaac was obedient unto death. Pink tongue sucking a lollipop that had gone purple with the colour. Army bet his father, Paperplane, would do likewise, would cut his throat.
Army would let him. He would lie on the twigs and joke all the way until his father cut his voice.
167. WHEN ALL THAT I’VE BEEN LIVING FOR IS GONE
Army
After all, his father was cutthroat in business. Shooting lasers out of his finger in the boardroom, dumping his lukewarm coffee over an intern’s head.
168. MAKING A KILLING
Army
Before the final end, his father stopped calling so much and got busy (with women? Black women? Asian? German? Puerto Rican?) but he probably loved him. His father. Probably he loved him too. Probably he loved him as much as he loved him. Probably one of them loved the other.
169. A NICOTINELY CHALLENGED MAN
Edgar
To make his son—his son?—his son a mixtape he bought a new double-cassette stereo and a portable tape recorder. To record from records he held the portable recorder close to the record player and kept really, really quiet.
But he was smoking really, really quietly in the background.
He also made a mixtape for his secretary’s daughter, who never mentioned it. His secretary said she said thank you, but Edgar knew she, the secretary, was just being polite. The look she gave him suggested that he’d be better advised to spend his evenings handling sundry legal matters than making mixtapes for teenagers.
How difficult it was to get the attention of women. That is, until they love you. Then they never lift their attention from you. Even after you try to pull off their antennae, flip them on their backs and pluck out their legs.
Was there more wine?
If he had raised Armistice, the child would know his way around a good wine by now. He would have been tasting some at dinner.
He would never encourage a child to take up smoking though. Filthy, filthy habit. For a child.
170. SMOKING
Army
He tried smoking, after playing ball by the Catholic school, and when he came home Felicia was like a canine on him. She smelled it in his hair, on his clothes, although he couldn’t smell anything, and she banned him from playing ball for a month and talked herself to sleep, scolding him about his lungs and this and that, and what kind of cancer, and what next, snorting cocaine in her house, and if he thought she was the kind of mother who, even when she stopped talking he heard it.
171. JUST A PUFF
Army
But he and Heather smoked sometimes nevertheless. They passed a cigarette between them but he had more of it because she was pregnant and he was a gentleman like that.
WHEN WERE THEY GOING TO PULL THE BABY OUT OF HER COOCH?
172. DRIVING MISS DAISY
Army
Maybe his father had a driver. He imagined his father rolling up Newcourt in a black Cadillac, rolling down the rear window just enough to let out a white-gloved hand. Then he’d roll up the window again and be gone. He’d continue to be, but gone.
173. FOR EXAMPLE, MOSES
Army
Moses asked to see the face of God and only saw his back.
174. RIDDLE
Edgar
Last summer, the last story that Felicia tangentially inserted into conversation, with the chilling calm of someone both unmoved and fascinated by horror, was of a man being sued for child support.
They’re suing him, she said.
They who?
The woman. She saying he’s the father. He saying he is only a sperm donor. And when they investigate further into this woman’s past, she had a number of hospitalizations for hysterical pregnancies. She claim she get pregnant by this and by that—by a man on TV, by milk, by a dog bite.
Where’s this happening, Felicia?
Back home. And she was a virgin the whole time. Very devout. So when she actually get pregnant, everybody was surprised because she was still claiming to be a virgin. And she was. Anyway, she had the child and like her senses kick in and now she suing the man.
As usual, Felicia’s story ended prematurely with unspoken, parable-like accusation.
Is he the father? Edgar asked.
She say yes but her own testimony say she never had sex with the man. He say he’s a sperm—
You already said that.
We go find out in the courts up above.
175. OF DARKNESS
Edgar
Of course he could but could he really end up with a black woman? Like, really. Could he take her anywhere? When his present sister-in-law cooed about the piazza outside the Uffizi Gallery, what would Felicia have to say? He would always have to rescue her.
She couldn’t even conjugate an English verb properly when he found her. Error after error out of her mouth. Yet she wrote perfect grammatical cathedrals. How could she both know and not know the same language?
176. HEART
Edgar
And yet she presented all sorts of opportunities that appealed to him. He would get to sit all day in the rumshops when she took him to wherever she was from. He could talk the code to the dread who made sandwiches in the lobby. If his brother came up with some withering witticism and called him, say, a negrophiliac, Edgar would get to call him a mayo-faced, Saltine, Kartoffel, Kraut Bosche, blue-eyed devil. He’d have to work on the syntax.