by Julie Paul
Rodger has more questions. “Where would you go, Claudia? Like, if I handed you a ticket and said, Come with me, where would your heart prefer?”
Her heart? Her heart feels like a bag of puppies. When she doesn’t answer because she has been rendered mute by this mere idea, he holds his hand open and looks straight into her eyes again.
“Got a coin?” he asks. “We’ll flip.”
He must be fooling. Flip a coin, choose a vacation spot? It’s like those multiple-ending books she hated as a kid. She wants a book to begin, continue, and end—no flexibility, no decisions to make. A book offers answers, not a bunch of options.
She hands Rodger a loonie from her top drawer. Her Glossette raisins money.
“No,” he says, hands up in protest. “You do the honours.”
She has never flipped a coin. What does this madman see when he looks at her? Now he must see her tomato face, her tremoring hands, her open mouth. Close your mouth, Claudia. Look alive!
“Heads is Cuba, Claudia, tails is Aruba,” he says. “Hey, that sounds like a song!”
She throws the coin into the air. It rises about two inches, then falls into her waiting hand.
“Oh, Claudia,” he says. “Give it more of a chance to make up its mind, girl.”
“Higher?” she asks.
“Higher! Make it work for you.” He winks at her; she reddens. Rodger says her name more often than anyone else she’s ever known. Some days he comes over to her desk and says it three times in a row: Claudia, Claudia, Claudia. He’s seen her crimson face, her sputtering shoulders as she gets pulled forward and back by fear, when all she wants to do is break into a sprint and lock herself in the bathrooms down by the kids’ books, even though she would have to run up the ramp—impossible to do without sounding like a stampeding gorilla. But still he says it, over and over.
She tosses the loonie higher. It flips several times, like a good coin should. When she catches it, it feels a little cooler than when she let it go. Her heart is racing, but what for? It’s not for her that she’s doing this. She’s simply catering to a whim of a co-worker, who’s so bored he’s come to hang around the likes of her for diversion.
“Heads,” she says and holds it out for Rodger to see.
“Cuba!” he cries, then grins as library patrons turn to stare. He lowers his voice. “Well, all right then. Cigar orders are being taken.”
His smile makes Claudia plunk back down into her office chair.
“You think you can get two weeks?” Rodger asks her.
Error! Error! Error! flashes before her eyes. Malfunction in the universe’s mainframe. He was serious when he asked her to go. No. It can’t be.
He was serious?
After her eventful work day, Claudia curls into her one big chair with a glass of Merlot and a sleeve of digestive cookies and opens her atlas to search for Rodger’s islands.
Cuba is easy, but she looks around for at least five minutes before she locates Aruba, near the phallic north end of Columbia. Won’t Rodger have a lovely time of it on either island, surrounded by all that warm water!
Oh, he’s such a big flirt! Does he know how that could really mess with a girl? Not her, but another, more gullible one, who’d consider taking a trip with a relative stranger. She remembers his face in the art gallery: comfortable with all those penises around him. Well, that’s to be expected, since he has one. Would she have been as calm in a room full of vulvas? Not a chance.
It’s not like she doesn’t think of them, penises. But when she does, it’s a meagre selection she can draw from. Her love life has been rather limited. You don’t say, Claudia! Three penises in total! She doesn’t think of the one she first allowed inside her, at university—a poli-sci student she’d been pushed into meeting by her roommate; it had happened in a walk-in closet and was over before she could feel anything but the pain. Clark’s doesn’t really come to mind, either, her one-and-only real boyfriend from three years ago, a relationship that lasted just half a year. It’s Runt’s she returns to as needed. Her first impression of the beast.
In high school she was shy, too, but in more of a normal sense than she is now, the way most awkward girls with no cleavage/dimples/money/slippery morals are. Her crushes had mostly involved the boys’ volleyball team—a generic love of sandy blond and tall and blue, the garden variety where she’d come from in the Okanagan. She wasn’t shooting for the genetic moon. But she never thought chances, never really picked one out and said, Him. It was like trying to pick the right golden Lab puppy. How could she choose?
One day, though, a miracle happened: a boy started looking her way. He was the runt of the litter, the boy on the bench at most games unless the flu had the others down. His glances turned from general to specific, from sporadic to regular, and Claudia stopped sleeping. She couldn’t eat; she wrote furiously in her poor pink diary; she forgot to do her homework, until one day after the game, they were in the hallway together, and he motioned for her to follow him into the supply room. Alone at last.
Runt took her hand and put it where he wanted it. She held on and the penis was like a living branch in her grip, as if she could feel the earth’s bubbling core directly through it. The skin was as soft as bunny ears, and she moved her hand lightly over it—a newborn animal. It wasn’t long before her delicate scalp was being pushed on the spot where adults liked to pat her on the head, only this hand had force behind it; this hand was on a mission. What did she know about anything below the belt other than to stay away? He pushed her head down and she was face to face for the first time with a cocky cock, wanting her, only her, and somehow she got her mouth involved and with no skill at all aside from not using teeth—she’d heard that once, somewhere—she was dealing with Runt’s burning juices, his half-babies dead in her throat. The sound he made was baby animal, too, and when she glanced up at him there was a passing cloud of love on his face. Then, a ten-second trip from bliss to watching his backside walk away from her, a mumbled thanks to Claudia in her praying position on the floor. She tried to stand. Her thighs had turned to sandbags, her feet to stone. All she wanted was a Halls mentholyptus and to magically fly home to bed. And perhaps, one day, to do that again.
Rodger must be messing with her. She’s not used to this kind of attention, standing out as anything more than the roundish library lady pointing people in the right direction, helping them find misshelved books and the bathrooms. God, he might be pulling a Carrie stunt, befriending the loser as a kind of goodwill joke like they did in that horrible Stephen King movie.
How can she even think of going on a holiday? She doesn’t even own a bathing suit!
At lunch on Tuesday Claudia pulls out her chicken sandwich, still feeling the love from the bird she cooked on the weekend.
“Looks good,” Helen says, but she may not mean it. She has sushi again. Claudia’s seen her eat teaspoons of wasabi, watched as her face blushed from the heat but nothing—not a peep!—came from her mouth. Helen is strong and supple. She is somebody’s yoga pet.
“Thanks,” Claudia says. “I finally got busy and did some cooking.”
Helen laughs her sharp laugh. “Looks like Rodger wants you to get a little busy, too.”
Face burns, throat shuts, stomach rises. Claudia looks down at her fine-looking sandwich and tries to say, No, don’t be ridiculous, who, me, you must be joking, but what comes out is this: “He asked me to go to Cuba with him.”
“Cuba!” Helen shrieks. “That’s wild, girl!”
Why are they both calling her girl lately? She’s younger than Rodger, but she’s no girl. Her neck feels rusted into place, her eyeballs stuck in the down position, but she forces herself to look at Helen. She’s got to check for a smirk. Complicity. But Helen’s just flashing her usual white gleam.
“Have you said yes?” she asks.
Claudia shakes her head. “I’ve got a cat.”
As if that’s the only reason she’s holding back. As if he actually meant it, girl!
Truth is, sun makes Claudia break out in a rash and wince because of her light blue eyes. Her kind of joy is the year’s first snowfall, when all the kids rush to the classroom windows. She can smell when snow is coming, and when it starts tumbling down so thick it’s impossible to see through, her elation feels holy. That kind of snow rarely happens in this coastal city, so it’s even more divine when it does. Why would she even want to go to Cuba?
It would be hot and sunny and she would puff up like a stung lip. If Rodger touched her, she would cry.
It is that possibility—the touching—that leads to her knocking lightly on the head librarian’s door after lunch on Wednesday. What have you asked for, ever? Nothing! And what have they given you? Nothing!
Her brain chants this protest song alongside the dualing taunts of Stu-pid, Stu-pid and Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Loser over, and yet somehow, after she asks for a couple of weeks off, she sees a nod and hears a yes and it’s done. Claudia’s sure her boss thinks she’s a complete dud, so of course she wants her to do something for once in her life. Years ago, a rumour circulated about her boss and Rodger having an affair, so Claudia doesn’t bring up his name. She doesn’t need to. Nothing is set—she’s just booked time off, no plans made. The snow will be decent in the BC interior then, if nothing else pans out. She’s good to go!
A few minutes later, sadness settles in. Why bother with a vacation? It’s senseless, really: the same shit waiting for you when you return, plus a whole whack of emails to slog through. Desire of any kind: is that sensible, either? Is it sensible to want anything, beyond what keeps the flesh alive and mobile? No. Where is the sense in taking a two-week holiday with a man she’s never even invited over for dinner? What’s going to come of it other than a bad burn?
Thursday morning. She and Ruffles sit by her patio door and watch the bird at the mirror again. It was Clark’s mirror, something he tried to hang where Claudia’s painting of mountains now hangs once more, but after only a week, it came crashing down, cracking all along the bottom. She can’t bear to throw it away: what else does that bird have to play with? The bird hops away or flies a few feet straight up, then returns to its reflection, as if it’s giving the mirror bird a chance to either escape or follow. It doesn’t work. Ignoring it doesn’t, either. Peck, peck. Kisses or combat? It’s impossible to tell.
She can’t remember what she and Clark did as a couple during their six-month relationship. He worked out or played soccer daily; she didn’t. He worked evenings at a pub; she worked days. On weekends they shopped for groceries and played along with Family Feud reruns on TV. Once they went hiking together at the lake, and a pit-bull puppy chased her. Sex had been regimented to not coincide with soccer matches or his sleep needs, which didn’t often match up with her desire or non-period days, so it was sporadic at best. When they did do it, he liked her to feel his ass, to hold on, as if he were waiting for compliments about its tone. He never asked her what she wanted. And what was that, Claudia? An orgasm would’ve been nice, if it wasn’t too much to ask for. And yet, it was. She never asked, it never happened, and one day, in a text, he told her he was moving to Alberta for oil sands work. It was the best place for him and his overdeveloped lats.
What Claudia has seen from Rodger is a hundred times better than any of this; he looks like the kind of guy who walks into a restaurant and secretly pays for everyone’s lunch. Magnaminous. Still, she is uncertain about taking a trip with the man. What sense does it all make?
Back to sense again. Many people would say that a cat is senseless and she has one of those—an especially senseless one that watches life from behind this patio window, a cat that ignores her more than not. And yet, she loves Ruffles. Claudia has read about how love can change a person, even on a cellular level. Besides the moony eyes, the mushy brain, a connection with another human can actually make you healthier. It can give you a longer life. She wonders if loving a cat can do the same.
She hasn’t even told Rodger she can go yet. Could he grant her the wish she’s had for years, to be able to set her head down on a man’s belly and have it be safe, a cuddle, a place to rest? Claudia, come on. Is that all you want? Along with climaxing, that is. Friendship and sex, both from the same person, right beside her. Would Rodger’s magnaminity offer her this, too?
Thursday afternoon. Claudia has been looking at the mouths of teenagers when they come into the library today. Gum is not her worry: she’s looking for a sign that they’ve done it, or would do it. She looks at colours of lip gloss, shininess, has read that there are codes for what’s going down—or who. Oral fixation begins at the nipple, of course, but are there girls out there who want a penis in their mouths? All those mouths once wiped by mothers, smooched by relatives who wanted a kiss before anyone could leave, those mouths eating birthday cake and sucking on licorice whips and Tootsie Pops and Mr. Freezies, one big practice for the real thing. All-day suckers. Icicles taken straight from the roof. Old-fashioned peppermint sticks. If she looks at it this way, girls practise their whole lives.
When Rodger makes his mid-afternoon rounds, checking in with his information desk girls, she dares to meet his gaze.
“Hola, señorita,” he says. He does a little dance with his hips. “You ready to rumba?”
It’s ridiculous, it’s mad, they only know each other in the coffee sense, that is, she likes lattes with extra sugar, he likes Africanos, and her face is burning again, but before she can stop herself, she says yes. “Si, señor.” Her vocal cords are doing double dutch with her terrible Spanish so it comes out as a gargle. Last chance to say something else. To pretend she was trying to say sorry, or so sad, to spare herself. Spit it out, woman! She tries again, in English. “Yes,” she says. “Let’s book it.”
He puts up his hand for a high-five. “Well, all righty then!” He’s smiling as though he’s actually going to go through with it. He wasn’t pulling her leg. He wants her to go.
She raises her hand. She lets him touch it. First touch. A sealed deal.
Before she leaves for home, she checks out a Lonely Planet Cuba and a book about strategies for flying without fear. Somehow she makes it onto the right bus and into her apartment, but it is not until she’s back in her armchair pushing Ruffles off her open atlas that she realizes what she’s done, where she’s going. She traces the route their flight will most likely take—a sideways swipe across the continent to Florida, then just a bit further to that long and curvy island about to enter the Gulf of Mexico.
She wants to see a cloud forest. Take photos of animals she can’t pronounce the names of. Drink something that might make her able to dance.
Then, after a week of eating lunch together in various cafés in town, getting to know each other better, looking in the guidebook for things to do and see, Rodger gives her some bad news: his elderly mother has passed away.
He takes a leave of absence from the library, is out of town for a month, including over Christmas, to tidy up the estate and to find, unsuccessfully, a new home for his ma’s big old tabby, who now belongs to him.
They have a rocking time of it, though, via email. Claudia is at her ultra-best on screen, flirty as the scent of waffle cones, intelligent and witty and deep. Rodger is still a charmer, but he comes off as less pushy via words, although she does miss the sight of his grey eyes, his quick grin. And, even better, now he has a cat!
It hurts when she has to log off to go to sleep or work. She misses the sound of his voice, saying her name. Red Rover, Red Rover, we call Claudia over!
During Rodger’s time away, she hears a woman tell her friend a story on the bus home from work one day. A boy was born, second son in the family, and given the name John. As soon as he could form sentences, he pointed to himself and said, Me Evan. No, his mother kept saying. You’re John. No, Evan. No, John. It went on and on, the mother completely beside herself because her father had died years before John was born, and his name had been Evan. When the boy got older he was able to explain it: yes, he was E
van, his grandfather, living again. The mother believed him; she had to. He was so much like her father in mood and temperament that she couldn’t doubt him. When he was able, he legally changed his name to Evan and has been Evan ever since.
Claudia feels like another person has entered her body. Who are you, girl? Has someone come back from the dead to inhabit you? She can’t come up with anyone; she is just Claudia, the woman who fled from a man and a room full of penises, yet somehow is at the start of a new relationship with the same man. Isn’t she the same woman? Or is there a new girl in residence within? Or is it just that a part of her, seemingly dead or missing, is being brought back to life, a little resurrection? There all the time, in fact: in her the whole time—she’s just needed some help in bringing her out. Whenever Rodger says her name, it feels like he’s pulling her out of the deep well of herself. Claudia. One more yank toward the top. Claudia. Even closer to the light.
When they see each other the first day they’re back at work together, her eyes are filled with needles of excitement, pointing only at Rodger. He leans over and whispers that the trip is booked, and her whole body turns to goosebumps. She turns her face to check his expression and his lips are there, below his dead-serious eyes. She swipes her own lips across them, and zap! They give each other an electric shock.
The universe’s mainframe has been reprogrammed.
She’s going to Cuba.
Their flight departs in a few days. She has bought herself a colourful beach towel, a tankini, and a floppy white hat; she has packed flouncy dresses and even a sheer nightgown, should the occasion arise to need one. They have worked out all the details: they each have a cat sitter, and their workmates will hold down the fort while they slip into the salty sea.