by Cary Fagan
“You play guitar?” the bartender asks, spotting the pick while she taps a beer.
“Just started really.”
“We got an open mic night on Mondays. We could use a fresh face. What’s your name?”
She is already taking a clipboard down from a nail beside the shelf holding the hard stuff. I say, “Mitch.”
“What’s that, a nickname?”
“It’s short for Mitchell.”
“Okay, Mitch, you’re on for next Monday. Eighth slot. We start at seven-thirty. You get a free beer.”
“All right,” I say.
“You want another?”
“I’ve got to get up early for work.” I take out my wallet and put down a bill and some change. Outside the door, the night air caresses my face, the black star-filled sky sprawls above me. Going down the cement steps I hear grunts, and coming round the building see a couple of bikers beating up some guy, each taking a punch at him in turn, hauling him up for another. I realize that the guy is the lead singer in the band. They let him drop in the dirt and walk past me as they go back into Bob’s Place. The singer is up on one knee, spitting blood. I head back down the highway.
ON FRIDAY, THE PRODUCT REPS have a conference at the airport Delta. The star reps are all men in their fifties who never wanted desk jobs. The crowning moment of the day occurs in the conference theatre where a sleek video advertisement showing sunsets and mountain vistas and waterfalls is projected on the huge screen. And then the name Sopora, our new sleeping pill. The Canadian vice-president of marketing walks out to a standing ovation, our fists punching the air.
I GET BACK TO THE motel about eight, pulling onto the gravel lot. It isn’t as dark as it was a week ago; spring is moving into summer. I drop my crap, throw off my jacket and tie, and pick up the guitar from its case. It was while listening to the vice-president’s speech that I suddenly decided what song I wanted to perform at the open mic: Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire.” I’d loved the song when I was sixteen — it was so melancholy and cool, and it implied that the singer had experienced a lot of sex and that there would be more in his weary future, but that he would always be moving on. Plus, I still remember the words.
It takes me a full hour to figure out the key and the chord changes. Hearing the A, D, and E chords aren’t too hard; it’s the B minor that takes me so long, but when I get it the melody falls into place. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to create something so yearning, so egotistical, so perfect. I sing and play it over and over, trying to keep in time, make the changes cleaner. When I finally go to bed the tune goes round and round in my head.
SATURDAY MORNING AND I AM standing on the steps of the townhouse, wearing a jacket and tie with my jeans and running shoes. It is a stunning day, the sun bright and buds opening on the spindly trees that have been planted and those still with their roots bundled in burlap. Two blocks down I can see a moving van backed up and two men hefting out a box-spring mattress. The truth is, I wanted to stand here holding a bouquet of flowers, something modest like daisies, but didn’t have the nerve. Empty-handed, I watch as Shanti Bhaskar, the real estate agent, pulls up in her Ford Escort and waves to me as she gets out. To my surprise, she isn’t wearing her real estate agent’s outfit, but jeans and Converse runners, and she looks really great. “Hi, Mitch,” she says, like we’re friends, “I’m really glad you called. This whole section is selling out much faster than we anticipated. I know there’s another agent in my office showing this one today. Shall we go in?”
“Sure,” I say as she comes up. “Of course, I’m not quite ready to decide.”
“I understand,” she says, touching my arm. “It’s a problem. You see something you like, you want to take some time over it, but if you do you’ll lose it. You need to accelerate the whole internal process.”
Well, I couldn’t decelerate any more than I already have. She opens the door and ushers me in. “So,” I say, “Any chance you’re thinking of buying one around here for yourself?”
“I already bought last year,” she laughs. “In the subdivision just south. I wasn’t sure that I was ready either but my husband really pushed it. A good thing too, they’re already reselling at ten percent higher.”
Only now do I see the ring on her hand. Stupidly, I hadn’t looked. Inside the house, the toilet is gone from the dining room and the plastic has been removed from the rails. Shanti turns and smiles gently as she looks at me with her brown eyes, as if she knows my disappointment, as if my own skin is as transparent as Saran Wrap.
“I have tried to be free in my way,” I say quietly.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s from a Leonard Cohen song.”
“Oh, right. ‘Bird on the Wire.’ Great song.”
MONDAY. OPEN MIC TONIGHT. I pull into my gravel spot, throw myself out of the car, fumble with the key to open the motel room, yank the guitar out of its case, and start to practise. I fuck up totally. Calm down, calm down. I put the guitar onto the spongy armchair, take off my suit, and step into the shower. I decide not to shave again and dress in jeans, untucked lumberjack shirt, sneakers. I heat up a can of Campbell’s chunky beef soup and, taking the pot, perch on the bed and look out the window to the townhouses across the way. The streetlights are working now, casting overlapping circles on the street and the little front lawns. I eat a few spoonfuls before putting down the pot and taking up the guitar again. And now the time is already gone and I put the guitar in its case, wondering why I don’t chicken out. But I go out the door and walk along the highway holding my guitar case, like the figure on the cover of some pathetic folk record.
The parking lot of Bob’s Place has half the usual number of motorcycles parked out front, Monday not being the most popular night of the week. Inside, I have to let my eyes adjust to see three young guys already setting up their Fenders and a small drum kit. I make my way to the bar where the bartender is filling ketchup bottles.
“Hey there,” she says. “Number eight on the list, right?”
“I think so.”
“You want a Blue?”
“Thanks.”
“I remember what everybody drinks. It’s just a memory thing I have. Even if you don’t come in for three months, I remember. Not that it’s going to do me any good, with the place shutting down.”
“What do you mean?”
She slides the beer in front of me, a line of foam slipping down the cold glass. “Going to be a Valu-Mart here. Groceries and shit. For the new subdivision. And a halfmile down the road there’s going to be a mall with six movie screens. Hey!” she shouts to the band. “Why don’t you stop messing around with the damn mics and start playing?”
But the band takes another few minutes. The lead singer does this weird snake motion while he sings and then their three songs are over and two women in suede vests are already coming up. One has a regular guitar, the other a Dobro, and they sing two Loretta Lynn songs and sound all right, like they’ve been playing in crummy Nashville honkytonks for years. Louder applause from the bikers. The bartender slides over to me.
“You’re on next, honey.”
“But I’m number eight.”
“Well, number three has pussied out and number four is in the washroom so I’m slipping you in. You go and rock this place, tiger.”
It takes a total refutation of all my instincts to get myself to pick up the guitar case and carry it across the room. It knocks against the arm of a biker who shoves me back hard. By the time I reach the stage I am shaking like a man pulled out of an icy river. I pull the macramé strap over my head, take the pick from my pocket, and perch on the stool. The glare from the small spotlight turns the audience dark and menacing, which they actually are.
“Get the fuck on with it.”
MY CELLPHONE IS CHIMING on the night table by the motel bed as I unlock the door. I take my time putting down my case, dropping the keys, walking over to pick up the phone. The numbers pulsing on the little screen are Candice’s. I st
are at them as if I’m looking at the winning numbers of a lottery ticket that I’ve already thrown away.
“Hello?” I say tentatively.
“Mitch. I’ve been phoning all night.” I can hear the shakiness in her voice but also the annoyance. “I need to talk to you. Come over.”
“It’s midnight. I’m a forty-five minute drive away.”
“It’s kind of important, Mitch.”
“It’s over then, the new thing?”
“I was an idiot. No, not an idiot. I mean I understand myself better now, what I had to put myself through.”
“Us. Put us through.”
“Yes, us. I need you, Mitch.”
“I just played a song,” I say.
“What?”
“In a bar. A biker bar, if you can believe it. I got up with a guitar and sang ‘Bird on the Wire.’ When I got down again the bartender, this older woman, she had tears in her eyes. She said to me, ‘Bob used to sing me that song.’”
“Mitch, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A TULIP BULB LOOKS LIKE a little onion, like you could bite into it. I put one into each of the small holes I’ve dug with a spoon and pat down the earth. It’s too late for them to bloom this year, but they’ll come up next spring.
On the next lawn two young boys are tussling over a soccer ball. Their names are Daya and Rajif. Some older kids have made a ramp out of a sheet of plywood and some blocks left by the construction company and are taking turns jumping on their skateboards. It is an absolutely beautiful morning, like the sun has risen for the first time over the world.
I hear my name and look up to see Mrs. Kankipati crossing the street with a plate in her hands. She is a handsome woman with greying hair and large brown eyes whose husband is an importer who flies to Kashmir every six weeks. Mrs. Kankipati says, “Mitch, I just made some pakoras. I think you will like them.”
“Oh, I love pakoras.”
“But in the restaurant it isn’t the same. You try one of these.”
She holds up the plate and I take one. It is almost too hot to hold and leaves oil on my fingers. It is savoury and delicious.
“Amazing, Mrs. K.”
“You need a wife to cook for you. Maybe a nice Indian girl, what do you think?”
“I need to learn how to cook. Then I’ll bring you over something.”
We both laugh and she puts the plate down on the grass and retreats back to her own house. I return to my gardening, knees pressing into the still-new grass, the smell of the earth in my nostrils. The cries of seagulls and the steady hum of traffic from the highway remind me of the ocean.
I Find I Am Not Alone on the Island
IN THE SUMMER OF 1989, Chloe Tillman was working in a diner while dithering about going to graduate school. She had been accepted at Princeton and offered a scholarship, but had so far failed to convince herself that the intense study of difficult texts was a worthwhile or even defensible pursuit. It was one of those rare periods when she was without a boyfriend, having dumped Tim Veldhuisen in April. Tim had started to say “I love you” and give hints that he was working up the nerve to ask her to move in with him. The thought of waking up every day beside him had filled her with dread. The truth was she hadn’t been in love with any of her boyfriends, a nagging secret that she had kept from even her closest girlfriends. She did miss Tim for a couple of weeks, but she took the measure of her happiness and decided that she had made the right decision.
The diner was at Yonge and Wellesley, before that part of town had begun to change. The customers were tourists walking down to the Eaton Centre, strippers on their way to work in the nearby clubs, provincial government office workers, and those who Liana, the owner’s daughter, lumped under the category of “freaks.” Chloe always gave large portions to the strippers, who called her “dear” or “honey.” Her favourite customer, a pleasant, balding man with round black glasses who always left a twenty percent tip or better, liked to sit under the framed print of the Parthenon by the kitchen door. He was friendly without trying to flirt, and he was funny but didn’t try to make her linger at his table. His order was a western sandwich, a Greek salad, or occasionally a tuna melt, which he blamed for his “middle-aged swell.” Every so often he would joke about his daughter, his son, or his wife, but always in an affectionate way (she despised male customers who made cracks about their wives). He claimed that one day he would quit his government job, buy a sailboat, and take them all to the Caribbean — this despite his never having gone sailing in his life and being, he said, afraid of large bodies of water. He’d been working for the province for seventeen years but claimed not to know what his actual responsibilities were other than to furrow his brow and tap his pencil on those rare occasions when the minister came in.
He always carried a book and read over lunch — one of the classics of western literature: Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment, Middlemarch. She asked him about his reading and he told her that he’d only developed a taste for fiction in the last few years and was now trying to catch up. “But I’m hoping to die of old age before I get to James Joyce.” He’d heard a little about her, too — where she came from, what she studied, her dilemma over graduate school. “Well, I’m impressed by Princeton. If I were you, I’d go just to make other people feel stupid. I mean, you’re making me feel stupid right now and you haven’t even accepted.”
And then he stopped coming. He had occasionally missed a day, and so it was half a week before she registered his absence and another couple of days before she began to really wonder. Perhaps he was on vacation with his wife and kids, or was sick. Perhaps he’d dropped dead or been hit by a car, although she didn’t consider those possibilities. She was disappointed to think that he was taking his meals elsewhere.
The last time Chloe saw him he’d been reading Robinson Crusoe. While she wiped down the table next to his, he told her what a great adventure story it was. “I feel like I’m twelve years old again.” He joked that he might try to survive on an island using the book as a guide and she reminded him that he was going to buy that sailboat. “You’re right,” he had said. “I almost forgot. There’s this really great line in the book. I underlined it, which is a bit nerdy of me, I know. Want to see?”
He’d held the book up and she had read the underlined words. I find I am not alone on the island. She had agreed that it was a great line although privately she had thought it a little awkward and then she had gone into the kitchen. When she came out again, he was gone, leaving some bills and change on the table.
Picking up a lunch order, she said to Liana, “Have you seen that middle-aged guy with the black glasses lately? The one who always sits at number seven?”
“I need a little more information here. How does he take his coffee?”
“Cream, not milk. Sometimes he orders the apple pie.”
“Oh sure. Good tipper. But you usually serve him. I can’t really picture his face.”
“He hasn’t been in for a couple of weeks.”
“He hit on you or something?”
“No, he’s not creepy. I was just wondering.”
“You ever notice how you can tell people are on blind dates? The way they say the person’s name as if it’s a question. Melanie? Simon? I always want to say, ‘Go home, both of you, before it’s too late.’”
IN THE NEXT WEEK, TIM left two messages on her answering machine. She started running in the early evenings. Her friend Natalie called from Paris, where she had gone to study art history. She didn’t know anybody yet and was lonely; why didn’t Chloe come and stay with her for a week or ten days at the end of August? She might be able to pick up a cheap last-minute ticket. But Chloe dithered on that, too.
And then on Friday she was setting a table when she saw the man’s photograph, a small black-and-white shot on the front page of some government newsletter left on a chair. The photograph looked five or ten years old; the man still had all his hair.
Economics Development Officer
Fondly Remembered.
So, she thought, he really was dead after all. His name was Gerry Lembeck. He had been a “vital” part of the negotiating team that had kept two automotive plants in Ontario. He had died “suddenly” — that was all it said, except that for years he had bravely struggled with an unspecified illness. He left behind his wife, Rita, head of personnel for a chain of pharmacies, his son Joe and two-year-old daughter Naomi. A memorial had already been held for ministry employees.
She showed the article to Liana. “You know what ‘suddenly’ means, don’t you?” Liana said. “It’s code for suicide. I’m guessing the illness was depression. Did he seem depressed to you?”
“No,” Chloe said. “I mean, yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” She meant to take the article but somehow it wasn’t in her bag when she got home. At ten o’clock her friends came to get her and they cabbed it to a club on King Street to see a band called the Stuffed Triggers. In the crowd they met up with more friends, including a guy named Daniel, a theatre major at George Brown. She had a rule against going out with actors, since in her experience they were all revoltingly needy narcissists, but Daniel was funny and good-looking and tall (which always attracted her), and he never once talked about his acting ambitions. In the early morning hours he walked her all the way home, telling her about his family’s disappointment that he didn’t want to go into the building trades. He made her laugh, so she took him upstairs. He was quite beautiful in the pre-dawn dark, his sleek back, his chest, his face. It didn’t feel like a first time. Afterwards, she easily fell asleep.