As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  Montana started thumbing a message.

  Unhurried but forceful enough to let her know I was serious, I pinned her arm to the table and liberated my phone from her hand. ‘I don’t think so.’

  She held her arm where my hand had been and grinned. ‘So you want to play boss.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to play anything.’

  ‘Sure you do,’ said Jersey. ‘Or you wouldn’t still be here.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t have lied.’

  I sighed, put my hands in the air, and laced my fingers behind my head. ‘You got me.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  I heard the light slap of dropped sandals on the floor. They both edged forward on the bench and I felt their toes climb the inside of my legs.

  I reached under the table and grabbed their ankles. They both gasped a little and grinned.

  Montana, encouraging: ‘That’s it.’

  Jersey, submissive: ‘Tell us what to do, Victor.’

  They had me, the way two women like this would have any man.

  I let go and put my hands palms-down on the table. ‘What I want you to do is tell me what you know.’

  They looked at each other, then at me.

  ‘What do you mean, what we know?’

  ‘What we know about what?’

  ‘Me, for one. I want to know what you know about me. Or what you think you know. And I want to know everything you know about Silver Light. That’s the name of it, isn’t it. The ‘show’ as you call it. I want to know where you heard about it, how you became members, how much you pay, who you pay, when the show airs, where it airs, how I get on the list. Everything. I want to know everything.’ I drank and looked at them both.

  Looking at each other they shrugged.

  They took turns speaking. In effect, as they had been doing all along, they spoke as one.

  ‘Okay. Well. We know about your childhood.’

  ‘How perfect it was.’

  ‘How you had no brothers or sisters.’

  ‘And why.’

  ‘There’s an episode called Born to Run that shows you falling in love with running the way Rayn fell in love with ­paddling.’

  I winced when I heard Rayn’s name but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t stop them.

  ‘This all comes after, you know, the sex.’

  ‘But it’s the way she puts it all together.’

  ‘It’s so good.’

  ‘So good.’

  ‘Anyway, in Born to Run there are a string of home videos of you as a four-, six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-year-old in various running outfits charging down the main street and around dirt tracks and across fields to distant trees.’

  ‘You were so cute.’

  ‘Springsteen pounds out the title song in the background while the camera flips back and forth between you as a boy, running, and Rayn as a girl, paddling.’

  ‘It ends with you as a teenager on the track winning your first big race and Rayn on her fourteenth birthday winning the town’s annual river race and beating her dad—’

  ‘Stephen.’

  ‘—right, Stephen, who parades her around afterwards on his shoulders.’

  ‘Let’s see. What else?’

  ‘We know about your coach and how Rayn didn’t like him.’

  ‘We know about Dr. Carl and how you didn’t like him.’

  ‘We know about Max.’

  ‘We know the story of how he and Rayn met at the zoo.’

  ‘The way you tell it. It’s so good.’

  ‘She doesn’t change a word of what you say.’

  ‘It’s your voice the whole time.’

  ‘With pictures of Max and Rayn in the ads they did.’

  ‘And Max at the Olympics.’

  ‘It’s our favourite episode.’

  ‘Accidental Love.’

  ‘It starts out with shots of you and her.’

  ‘They all do.’

  ‘In this one she leads you by the hand upstairs.’

  ‘You slow dance by the bed.’

  ‘And start to kiss.’

  ‘She undresses you.’

  ‘And you her.’

  ‘The dance continues, naked.’

  ‘But not gross naked.’

  ‘Hot naked.’

  ‘So hot.’

  ‘Closeups of your hands exploring each other’s bodies.’

  ‘She puts a finger in your chest and gives a little push.’

  ‘You pull her down with you onto the bed.’

  ‘All those silver pillows and silver sheets.’

  ‘It’s like we can feel the silk on our skin as we watch.’

  ‘For a moment, before anything begins, she twists her hair into a ponytail with one hand and lifts it.’

  ‘And we see the tattoo.’

  ‘Her trademark title shot: Silver Light.’

  ‘The screen fades out. When it fades in you’re already in the middle of it.’

  ‘The angle switches and we see you looking up at her from the side.’

  ‘Your hands on her waist.’

  ‘The way you hold her.’

  ‘You fucking adore her.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘It can’t be acting.’

  ‘If it is don’t tell us.’

  ‘God no. We don’t want to know.’

  ‘Anyway, U2’s One begins to play and the duration of the scene is cut down to fit the length of the song.’

  ‘The way you look at her.’

  ‘So intense.’

  ‘Only when she comes do you close your eyes.’

  ‘You can see her getting close by the way she moves.’

  ‘And the look on your face.’

  ‘You can hear her behind the music.’

  ‘Calling on God.’

  ‘But we never hear you.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘It’s like it’s all about her.’

  ‘The whole act—start to finish—it’s like she’s creating a work of art or something.’

  ‘The first time we saw it we thought it was fake for sure.’

  ‘But the look on your face.’

  ‘And the way her whole body goes off.’

  ‘It’s real.’

  ‘Abso-fucking-lutely.’

  ‘And there’s not a single woman watching who wouldn’t do anything—anything—to feel what she feels.’

  ‘Then you kiss her as she comes down and the song ends and you touch her face.’

  ‘But we never see her face.’

  ‘Ever.’

  ‘You touch her and look at her the same way every single time.’

  ‘Which makes the whole thing even better.’

  ‘So intense.’

  ‘So perfect.’

  ‘And real.’

  ‘So fucking real.’

  ‘Then the screen goes black and she cuts to the story about Max and Rayn.’

  ‘Similar to the two-storylines in Born to Run, she balances the one of how you two met on the plane with the one you tell about Max and Rayn at the zoo.’

  ‘It ends with a cliffhanger.’

  ‘Like something bad’s going to happen.’

  ‘But don’t tell us.’

  ‘We don’t want to know.’

  ‘We want to see it.’

  ‘We want to hear you tell the story.’

  They stop, check with one another, and return their attention to me.

  ‘So that’s it.’

  ‘That’s what we know.’

  Jersey shook her head. ‘I can’t believe you’ve never seen your own episodes.’

  ‘We just assumed you were like a partner or something.’

  ‘You’re
so different from the others.’

  They waited.

  I sighed. ‘Well. I’m not. A partner that is. And I’m not so sure I’m so different.’

  ‘Trust us.’

  ‘You are.’

  I looked away, like I was hitting a reset button, then leaned forward on the table.

  ‘I have to know. When you say others how many do you mean?’

  Their eyes went to the ceiling.

  They whispered a number to each other and nodded.

  ‘Six.’

  ‘That we know of.’

  I nodded. Like I agreed or something.

  ‘Five in the first two years.’

  ‘Which isn’t a lot, really. When you think about it.’

  ‘And the other one she has in Montreal right now.’

  ‘She calls him Wolf.’

  ‘We hate him.’

  I leaned back and drew a hand down my face. ‘What do you mean now.’

  The unstoppable reel of Valerie Argent doing to some guy she called Wolf what she did to me came streaming into my head and I couldn’t get it out. His hands on her body, fingers tracing her tattoos. His mouth on her skin. Him, inside her. Her, calling on God.

  My eyes widened and I held them both by the wrist. ‘I have to see it.’

  Jersey shook her head. ‘You don’t want to see it, Victor.’

  Then Montana said exactly what I wanted to hear. ‘Maybe he needs to.’

  I nodded. Fuck Valerie Argent and her want. Fuck her.

  ‘I do. You’re exactly right. I need to see it.’ I finished my pint in one go and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. ‘Shall we?’

  I’d never asked that question in my life and saying it made me feel like someone else.

  They bit their bottom lips—my two surrogate Silvers—and escorted me from the table to the door.

  ‘Hey, Jesus.’

  I turned and looked.

  It was the bartender. He put a hand like a megaphone to the side of his mouth. Referring to the group of men sitting on the stools in front of him at the bar, he said, ‘You’ve made believers of us all.’

  I raised my right hand and pretended to bless the place. They all laughed and one of them said, ‘Come again,’ which made them laugh even more. I was playing a part. At least now I knew it.

  UNDER WATER & LOOKING UP, EYES WIDE OPEN

  From the Journal of Vector Sorn

  Despite the body and what it can do, were we without language and reason and the intellectual drive to go after answers to problems like why we do what we do and notions of truth and the thing we call the heart, how terrible and barren our time here on earth would be.

  After Rayn, Max lost all reason. He assumed a language of defeat. His heart—at one time as full of fire and light as any man’s—went cold and dark. And the truth haunted him, I’m sure, until the very end.

  It’s the only answer I have.

  CLIPPINGS (20)

  (taken from “Two-time Olympic Silver-medallist Found Dead,” quotidienquidnunc.com)

  “Ward of St. Joe’s Mental Health Ward for five years, Maxamillian [sic] Sorn, who swam for Canada and won her two silver medals at the Soul [sic] and Barcelona Summer Olympic Games, was found dead yesterday after his body washed up on the Toronto shores of Lake Ontario. He is survived by an estranged son, Victor [sic] Sorn, who is himself already being touted as a gold medal favourite for the next Olympic Games. Authorities maintain there was nothing suspicious about Sorn Sr.’s death. To note, no person, not even an Olympic-level swimmer like Sorn, could last more than, say, fifteen minutes in the frigid February waters of Lake Ontario in which he perished in [sic].”

  ~

  When I got to the hospital they told me he’d been doing much better. To the point where they thought he might actually be coming out of the walking stupor he was in. That’s not what they called it. ‘Walking stupor’ was my phrase. They had innocuous sounding medical descriptions like ‘altered mental state’ or ‘temporary transgressive cerebral confusion.’ Euphemisms for ‘out of his fucking head,’ if you ask me. But whatever. They’re the professionals. They’re the experts. They should know. They said things like, ‘He was on his way back to us,’ and ‘There was real progress being made,’ and ‘If only the life-purpose forming before him had been clearer that day.’ Who was ‘us,’ I wanted to know. And what was ‘progress’? And ‘life-purpose’? Please. As soon as they opened their mouths they reminded me of a band of Dr. Carls. It was all I could do to listen to them for the ten minutes I was there without telling them how explosively bursting with excrement I thought they all were. Instead I sighed a number of times on cue—which could have been interpreted any number of ways—shrugged, and said, ‘Well, we do what we do, don’t we.’

  They said they’d tried contacting me a number of times to keep me updated on his steps forward—‘forward,’ fuck them—but I was never home when they called. The woman they talked to ensured them she would pass the message on. But we never heard from you, they said. You never came. I told them I’d been out west since the end of August for school and there was really no way I could’ve come home with any kind of regularity. Knowing my story and the rumours around the amount of money I’d inherited when Rayn died, they looked at me and tried not to judge, but it was easy to see the disparagement in their eyes. A child who abandons his sick father and leaves him with no hope or connection to the outside world. What kind of son was I?

  Fuck them. What did they know.

  I folded my arms and asked how a man like my father was able to get out, how it was possible that a man in his condition, a man who had done what he had done, was allowed to roam the city streets in the middle of winter unattended.

  Like we said, they told me, he was showing signs of great improvement. On our recommendation, the courts allowed for one chaperoned day pass a week. He’d been doing very well. The first pass was a week before Christmas. He wanted to go to the University to watch the varsity swim team practice. We arranged it with the coach. They were excited to have ‘the’ Max Sorn, decorated Canadian Olympian, on deck. Your father continued to be very well respected you know. Despite the inglorious incident that put him with us, the swimming world still held him in high regard. The next week he wanted to go the Y. He bought a pair of goggles, a suit, and a string of tickets. He spent two hours in the pool, once a week. Then twice a week. By the eighth week he was in the pool every other day. Like we said, he was doing very well. He requested an unchaperoned day pass and based on what we’d seen there was no reason not to recommend to the courts he be given one. On February 18th, he struck out on his own with money in his pocket, a Michigan State sports bag, and a Go Canada Go toque on. We reminded him of his curfew when he left. He threw the bag over his shoulder and waved. He joked about picking up pizza for dinner on the way home. We were certain he was on the rehabilitative track to making an exit from controlled care.

  He was a convicted murderer, I said.

  Who had experienced a severe yet temporarily altered state which caused him to act as he did at the time of the incident, and so, as the courts decreed in trial, you might remember, was remanded to us for rehabilitative treatment.

  For life, if I’m not mistaken. With no possibility for whatever you people call parole. I do believe that was a fairly clear stipulation.

  Things change, Mr. Sorn. Like we said, we tried to contact you.

  Listen, do you really believe the kind of ‘altered state’ or whatever the fuck you want to call the thing my father suffered from was curable? You honestly think a man can recover from that sort of thing?

  Every mental condition is treatable and eventually manageable through careful observation, honest discussion, and, in some cases, the administering of appropriate and controlled medication. Your father had the best of all three. To note, according to the autopsy report, his meds were indeed in hi
s system when he passed away.

  He drowned. In the frigid waters of Lake Ontario. There was no passing (I used finger quotations around ‘passing’) involved. And though he may have been trying to get away, the waves pushed him back in. The water won. Let’s be precise and not euphemistic. He drowned. One of the most horrific deaths available to us as a species, I’m sure you would agree.

  Yes, Mr. Sorn.

  Thank you.

  To be clear on a point you made earlier, it is true that no one can ever truly ‘recover’ (they used finger quotations around ‘recover,’ mocking me no doubt), as you say, from the sort of loss your father experienced. I think you should know that. Unfortunately, loss is not curable.

  That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense to me at all.

  Again, Mr. Sorn, we are sorry.

  I signed the papers they set out in front of me and left.

  When I talked to the police they couldn’t tell me much more. His death would be filed under ‘accidental drowning.’ There was no evidence of suicide. No note. No stone tethered to an ankle. No narcotics or alcohol in his system. No drugs at all save the caffeine from what I can assume was his last coffee and the meds they had him on, the ones aiding him in his apparently imminent, erumpent recovery. When they found him washed up on shore he was blue. Out for an invigorating swim, it appeared, in the middle of February. Nothing peculiar here, I suppose, save the image of a half-naked goggled man in a Speedo backstroking through the roiling grey waves of a winter great lake, eyes wide open, looking up.

  #305 36 WATER STREET, TERMINUS BUILDING: VANCOUVER, BC

  I was looking away from her. ‘I know about Wolf.’

  ‘Really.’

  I nodded.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘A few months. Since Hayward Field.’

  ‘That long.’

  I nodded again.

  She folded her arms. ‘Why are you telling me now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why does a man ever tell the woman he’s sleeping with anything?’ I wanted to say the woman he loves.

  ‘Guilt. Fear. Hope. Because he wants something in return.’

  I stood and went to the living room window and looked down on the glazed street below. Cars splashed by. Bodies with umbrella-heads floated behind a filter of rain down the sidewalks. Like ghosts. Beyond the buildings of Gastown the sun, which was buried beneath the sky’s layers of grey, was giving in. The city was rain on rain quiet and moved like a dream.