by Daryl Sneath
Part of me wanted to say, The only way to really understand what it feels like to win an Olympic gold medal and break the world record in the process is to go out and do it yourself.
But instead I said, ‘It feels great, Michael. It feels great. Like summiting Everest. Like battling and overcoming a storm at sea. Like having an Atlas-like burden lifted from my shoulders. Exaltation, ecstasy, euphoria. I’m on top of the world and the view is wondrous good.’
Although neither of us had ever scaled any height of rock or been bounced about on the tempestuous waters of the deep, although neither of us had ever had the world upon our shoulders, we nodded and smiled as though a clear understanding had passed between us. Which is exactly what people do.
I looked at the camera and did my best to achieve genuine sincerity in my tone when I thanked all those who had supported me over the years, a terribly vague statement which had the paradoxical effect of including everyone who believed I was talking to them.
When the red light came on to signal the end of our on-air time Michael Miller passed the microphone to the nearest person and shook one of my hands with both of his. He asked me to sign his Canadian flag which already had a number of signatures on it. He put an arm around my shoulders and gave the thumbs up to the five different cameras snapping shots of us. When he was finished he shook my hand again and thanked me a hundred times. I was there but not really, physically but not mentally. I felt outside the moment. I scanned the stands for Val as Michael Miller continued to talk. I thought she may have made her way down to see me, not to make some show of her affection or excitement but to stand there with her arms crossed, grinning.
I felt someone’s hands in the middle of my back. I started walking. The hand wasn’t moving me as much as it was guiding me. I looked at the man connected to the hand. A short black spiralled wire connected an earpiece to some sort of device in his shirt pocket. The shirt was white and collared and official-looking. The man’s head was shaved. He was muscularly large, taller than me and twice as broad, or so it felt as we moved away from the track. For a moment he reminded me of Danny Mann. Two others, clones of my usher, led the way. I felt like a rockstar or a criminal or both. I couldn’t decide. Behind me the cameras had refocussed their attention on the track. Michael Miller had his head down, finger-pressing the earbud and nodding. I was no longer the focal point. I started to regret not posing for a group photo the way we all had after the mile at the Pre Classic. (Even now I rank that as my greatest race. The feeling I get from remembering it surpasses all others. Even this one which was supposed to be the apex of all great things.) I remember shaking someone’s hand but I couldn’t remember who or what country he was from. I hadn’t traded singlets with anyone. I hadn’t raised my hands and closed my eyes as I crossed the line. That picture exists nowhere. I hadn’t kissed the track. I hadn’t fallen to my knees in euphoric relief or joy. I had done nothing, really, to distinguish the moment from all others.
As I left this particular ending I was beginning to feel flooded with a sense of imperfection. I was overcome and rather than feeling elated I felt depleted. Which makes no sense, I know. But it’s true, and not uncommon, I think. There it is: truth, for what it’s worth, so often contradicts sense.
CLIPPINGS (25)
(taken from personal texts)
—Tell us, Vector. How do you feel?
—Funny. I feel like the sun, going down.
—Uncontextualized metaphors are meaningless.
—Dickinson.
—Still.
—I’ll be literal then. I feel like I don’t know what comes next.
—What comes next is up to you. You’re the writer.
—I know. So what if I said I know what comes next but I don’t want it to?
—Too often what a man wants gets in the way of what he needs.
—I thought you’d say something like that.
—Technically I wrote it. Which is different. And if you knew why did you ask?
—Sometimes a man needs to be told what he knows.
—I’ll see you in a bit then.
—I feel like I should tell you where I’m going.
—Don’t.
—What am I going to say?
—You’ll know as soon as you begin.
—I’ve often thought about that first night when you asked me what I was willing to lose.
—And?
—I’ve never had an answer. Who would ever be willing to lose anything?
MAGNITUDE & DIRECTION
CLIPPINGS (26)
(taken from “Confrontation: the Inevitable End,”
thatlongshadowonthelawn.com)
“Later today, Canadian distance coach, Charlie Baron, will take an ill-fated walk with Olympic Champion, Vector Sorn. Sorn, one-time star of the subculturally successful, not to mention explicit, dramatic online series Silver Light, knew the moment he read his mother’s journal on-air during the closing scene of the final episode that he would exact vengeance on his ex-coach for what Sorn believed to be the root cause of his mother’s tragic death (and subsequently his father’s). Not only did Sorn know that he would one day taste the sweet elixir of retribution, he knew the very ingredients and delivery system of the tonic he would concoct and serve, author that he is of his own life’s story. Details to follow.”
~
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Apart from what was to come, one thing was for certain: I needed Baron to know that I knew what he did.
ATHLETES’ VILLAGE
After I was finished in the testing room I went to the athletes’ village. I knew I’d find him there. He’d been making the rounds since the team had arrived in Rio and now—after my win, which he would no doubt consider and advertise as partially his own—he would be in the mood to celebrate.
If SL were still up and running the athletes’ village would have been fertile ground for a storyline. Apples were being offered and eaten from every part of the globe. It was an international garden of flesh and nothing was forbidden. Nowhere is the air more sexually charged and Baron was taking every advantage.
The last time I saw him I was leaving for my semi-final. He was working on a Finnish high jumper: blonde, leggy, beautiful, typical of her event. She was smiling, nodding, running a hand through her hair. I watched him give her a card or something and she took it. He actually leaned in to whisper something in her ear and she let him. He made me sick.
After the testing I found him in one of the games areas. Usually the only athletes in here were the ones who were finished their events, celebrating or trying to forget poor performances.
As I approached his table Baron stood—hand in the air, overblown smile on his face—and met me a couple of strides away. ‘Hey. Look who it is.’
Like he’d been half expecting me, like we were good friends, like no time or tension had gone between us.
He put an arm around me and leaned in, spoke so only I could hear him. The looseness at the edge of his words told me he was already a few cups in. ‘Listen, Vec. I know you’re hooked up with that blonde—what’s her name, Val—and I mean, good for you, she’s something else, really—but these two Hungarian broads are in the mood for some fun and I don’t think I can handle’m both. What do you say? Truce? For old time’s sake?’
I raised my brow a little and shrugged, a vague enough gesture to express both indifference and potential interest. Baron slapped me on the back too hard. I stumbled forward and forced a grin.
He pulled out a chair for me and poured four generous rounds from the bottle on the table: vodka with a Russian label. Everything here had an international flavour. He raised his glass and tried a toast in what I guessed to be Hungarian, but was syllabically stilted and, I also guessed, unintelligible. Vintage Baron. ‘Eggeh shehgeh tekreh.’
The girls laughed and raised their glasses
in turn. I followed and we all drank. Baron sat and poured four more rounds. ‘Rebeka, Rózsa. This here’s Vector Sorn.’
They leaned into each other and whispered something I couldn’t understand.
They both looked at me, smirking. The one on the right—Rebeka, the blonde one—spoke. ‘We know you. You are Victor. The actor in Light Silver.’
I gave them a noncommittal nod, then—confusingly, I’m sure—I shook my head. ‘No, no. My name’s Vector. Not Victor. I’m a runner, not an actor.’
Baron broke in. ‘Runner. Heh. There’s the understatement of the century.’
I looked at him. ‘Not much of a claim, Charlie. The century’s barely begun.’
It felt strange, saying his name like that. I don’t think I’d ever called him Charlie. I could already feel the vodka and I was doing my best to be affable.
‘Don’t let him fool you, ladies. Vector here just became the fifteen-hundred metre Olympic champion and set a world record in the process.’ He stuck a finger in his chest. ‘And I coached him to it.’
He clapped me on the back twice and clutched my right shoulder, working the muscles like a masseur.
I looked at him, not threateningly, and he took his hand away.
‘Victor was runner too,’ Rebeka said. ‘I think you are him.’
I shook my head. ‘I think I am not.’
We all laughed but I’m not sure any of us knew why.
Rebeka persisted. ‘No, you are him. You look and sound the same. Exactly.’
I shook my head one more time and played with my phone on the table, watching it spin like a top. I spoke without looking at her. ‘Listen. You’re not the first person to confuse me with this Victor guy. He must be my Doppelgänger. But you need to know.’ I leaned forward and lowered my tone. Looking at Rebeka, trying to remain light and playful, I continued, shaking my head metronomically with each word. ‘I am not him.’
Rebeka and Rózsa looked at each other and grinned.
Baron was smiling but not because he understood. In fact he wasn’t even listening. I could tell by the way he looked that he was in his head, buzzing from the alcohol and the possibility at hand, the little daydream playing out before him.
Rebeka and Rózsa excused themselves. ‘We will return.’
Baron stood and mimicked their rhythm. ‘We will be waiting.’
I watched them go. Replicas of each other from the shoulders down. Lowcut white tanktops that revealed every detailed muscle in their backs. Lowriding, asshugging jean shorts they’d have to be cut out of. Calves that looked carved from stone, flexing into upside-down hearts with every bouncy, up-on-their-toes, flirty step. Flipflops that pornographically smacked the soles of their feet as they walked away. The only thing that distinguished them from behind was their hair. Rebeka was blonde. Rózsa, brunette. Flashes of Oregon went through my head like a movie I’d seen. The two girls turned and in unison blew us a Marilyn Monroe kiss. They winked at us and carried on.
He watched them go. ‘You believe this, Vec? Top of the world.’
I pictured him standing on a precariously teetering Seuss-styled diving board above a set of wispy clouds, an imagined wind licking the front of his cartoonish hair, six-fingered furry hands on his hips, a clunky stopwatch draped around his neck, exaggerated self-satisfied smile engulfing his face. In the fantasy I’m on the impossibly curvy, rung-twisted ladder below, climbing impishly and stealthily towards him, pure evil beaming from my red oversized eyes. Flip the page and I’m the one standing on the diving board, hands clasped in victory over my head, reveling in the sight of the Seussian Baron falling, face skyward in embellished disbelief, to his certain death.
I looked at him and tried to conceal my seething with humour. ‘Geographically, we’re closer to the bottom of the world, Charlie.’
He clapped me on the back again.
‘Ah, Vec. Always the wise guy. Too clever for your own good.’ He sighed and looked at me. ‘So—we okay?’
He held out a hand. Like it was that simple.
I shrugged, shook his hand, and told him sure, why not, we were okay. I needed him to believe I was there to reconcile our differences.
He cupped the back of my head, touched his forehead to mine like a quarterback to his wide receiver in the dying moments of the championship game, one last longshot play to win the silver ring. Like a father to his son on the brink of manhood, privately bestowing on him life’s greatest secret. Like the coach he believed himself to be to his star athlete moments before the big race. I was expecting him to give me a back-slapping man-hug, the exclamation point to this moment of moments, when Rebeka and Rózsa returned.
Rebeka displayed the bottle of champagne she had procured.
Baron started nodding and gave a little clap. ‘Nice. Now where’d you two lovely ladies manage to acquire such a fitting bottle of love?’
Rózsa sat beside Baron and touched his face. He leaned in to kiss her but she pulled away.
‘We have our way, Charlie.’
She pronounced his name Zharlie.
‘Oh, I bet you do. I bet you do, Rózsa.’
He exaggerated and held onto the zh sound in the middle of her name, leaned in again, and rubbed her nose with his. She let him and held his face with both hands.
There I am in my head, the image of me poised on the Seuss-drawn diving board above the clouds, proudlooking, satisfied, bent over a little so that he might see me watching, grinning Grinchily from above the clouds.
Rebeka sat, placed the bottle of champagne in front of me, and handed me a corkscrew. I took the bottle by the neck and started in on the cork. At the pop Rózsa put a hand to her mouth and giggled. Champagne bubbles spilled from the mouth and down the neck. Rebeka ran an index-finger up the length of the bottle to the tip, looked at me with one brow raised, and slid the champagne-wet finger past her pouty lips and out again, sucking the finger clean.
Around the O of the bottle’s mouth she circled the same finger and put it to my lips as if to shush me though I hadn’t said a word.
I pictured Val in the corner recording.
Slightly aroused, slightly disgusted, I grinned and said nothing. I poured the champagne and mimicked the toast Baron had uttered earlier.
‘Egeh sheh geh tekreh.’
‘You speak my tongue.’
I shook my head. ‘I heard Zharlie say it earlier.’
‘Fast talker.’
‘You mean quick learner.’
She nodded. I wasn’t sure she understood the difference.
She looked at me, took my face in her hands, and leaned in. I pulled away—not aggressively—stood, raised my glass, and repeated the Hungarian toast. I sat down again, moving my chair backwards a little as I did. Baron had his hands on Rózsa’s thighs. He kissed her arm from elbow to wrist, like a chicken pecking food.
I took Rebeka’s hand, innocent but suggestive enough to make her think I was interested, and spoke to Baron. ‘Hey—I know a place.’
He looked at Rózsa and spoke to me. ‘I know a place, too, Vec. And I’m close to fuck’n getting there.’
He ran his hands up Rózsa’s thighs, fingers splayed, and squeezed.
She giggled and squirmed, swatted at him playfully with both hands.
He buried his face in her neck and made little foraging noises. She held the back of his head with both hands and closed her eyes, which encouraged him.
Rebeka had left her chair. She was in my lap, nibbling on an ear, as practiced and delicate a skill as a tip at the net. I bit my bottom lip, enough for a shot of pain, struggling to let Rebeka continue, struggling not to throw her from me, grab Baron by the neck, and drive a knee right through his skull. Finally I managed to manoeuvre Rebeka so that I could slip her from my lap and stand without offense. She held one of my hands with both of hers as I grabbed Baron by the shoulder and
squeezed. He pulled away from Rózsa, a snorkeler breaching the surface for a few deep puffs of air, and looked at me, eyes partly shut.
‘You believe this, Vec?’
‘Top of the world, Zharlie. Top of the world.’
He laughed. ‘Top. Bottom. Fucked if I care.’ He took his glass and drank off the champagne in one long swallow. ‘Fucked is all I care right now.’ He leaned in, kissed Rózsa, and stood all in one motion. Throwing an arm around me, again he touched his forehead to mine. ‘What’s say we blow this pop stand?’
I nodded. ‘Like I said. I know a place.’
He looked around the room as he spoke and threw a hand out like a magician, almost hitting me. ‘He knows a place, ladies and gentlemen of the village. He knows a place.’
I caught his wrist and set his arm at his side. I could have sent him to the ground right then. I could have knelt into his chest and filled his face right there.
You fucking raped her.
Smack. Smack. Thump.
You fucking killed her. She’s gone because of you.
Smack. Thump. Smack.
How do you like me now, asshole?
Smack. Smack. Thump. Suh-mack.
I imagined Val saying ‘Cut,’ lowering the handheld camera, nodding approval. I let the imagined scene fade. I bit my lip again: deep, quick, searing pain to keep me in the moment. I could almost taste the blood.
When I spoke I tried to sound cheerful. ‘Up for a little adventure?’
He twirled and dipped Rózsa like a ballroom dancer. Touching his nose to hers he spoke in a low tone. ‘Ah, adventure. What more could a man who has everything ask for?’
Let him stand there, I thought, above the Seussian clouds with that stupid grin on his face, wind-licked hair, arms akimbo, oblivious. Let him stand there while I climbed, implacable as I was, the final few rungs, loading all the hate and fury I could summon into one last step up, one last push, one summative story-ending act. Let him stand there while the sound of the distant train grew, that long steel bullet curving into sight, blotting out the sun, chugging slowly in, bringing with it the sort of apocalyptic darkness and mythical vengeance worthy of the most sinister craftsmen of the underworld.