by Scott Carter
“Of course.”
“Can I come in?”
She nodded and stepped to the side so he could enter. “Did my brother pay you to come back?”
“No. I know I should have called, but I’ve got a surprise that demands face-to-face contact.”
She held up a phone that she gripped so tight, her knuckles were white. “Sorry, I’m dazed. My phone number is cursed, and I just got another weird call.”
“And how would you define a phone number as being cursed?”
“It’s been mistaken for a non-residential number.”
“That happens.”
“Three times a day for the last two months.”
“Are you sure they’re not prank calls?”
“I thought they were at first, but the people on the other end were as disappointed with me answering as I was with them calling. Do you still think I’m not unlucky?”
“Having your phone number mixed up doesn’t make you unlucky.”
“The first set of calls were from people trying to order double-headed dildos.”
“That’s weird, but not unlucky,” he said with a laugh he couldn’t contain.
“Then for a week I got calls from a lab trying to give me a patient’s biopsy results.”
“Look, that’s definitely strange, but…”
“Think about the odds of having your phone number posted on a website that specializes in dildos and mistakenly entered into a lab by an overworked receptionist in the same month. Things like this don’t happen to normal people.”
“True, it’s rare and darkly funny, if you ask me, but those calls don’t affect you, so you can’t say they make you unlucky.”
“I just got a call before you buzzed that mistook me for a teen suicide hotline.”
Dave took a moment to take in her expression. Both the strain in her eyes and worry on her face suggested she expected to get such bizarre calls.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I told her she had the wrong number and that I’d look up the right number for her, but she hung up.”
“That’s disturbing, and I’m sorry you had to take that call, but I have a surprise for you that might help take your mind off it.”
She set the phone down. “I didn’t think you’d call, let alone come over again.”
“Well, I did. Do you know the MC5 is coming to town?”
“Of course.”
“Are you going?”
“I can’t go to concerts. I’d get trampled.”
“This is your favourite band, right?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
Dave stepped closer to her and smiled. “I have VIP tickets, and I want to watch it with you.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to. Who else can give me the details you can?”
“I would love to go with you, and I can’t believe you’re asking me, but…”
The phone’s electronic buzz cut her off before she finished. Instinct told her to step back from the phone. “You have to get it,” she said, gesturing to Dave.
“Let it go to voicemail.”
“Your energy can save her.”
“Save who?”
“Please answer the phone.”
The buzz seemed louder to both of them now.
“You should answer your phone.”
“I’ll go to the concert if you get it.”
He looked at the panic in her eyes and felt compelled to do anything he could to change the expression. With a quick pivot, he answered the phone just after the fifth buzz. “Hello?”
“Aren’t you supposed to answer faster?”
The voice on the other end was smooth and the accent clearly Newfoundland. Dave placed the tone as late teens. “What number are you looking for?”
“The teen suicide hotline.”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t.
“What’s your name?” the voice asked.
Dave looked at Amy, who appeared reassured just by having him on the phone. “Dave.”
“Will you talk to me, Dave?”
“I’m not a counsellor. This is a private number.”
“You’re going to be the last person I talk to.”
Dave took a breath, put the phone in his other hand and wiped the sweat from the hand that just held the phone on his pants. He looked again at Amy and she mouthed, “Please.”
“Who am I talking with?” he asked the voice on the other end.
“Cole.”
“Okay, Cole. How old are you?”
“How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-five.”
“Seventeen.”
“And why did you call this number, Cole?”
“Because I’m tired of hating myself.”
“Can you guess what I’m going to ask next?”
“I’m gay.”
“And?”
“What do you mean ‘and’? I’m living a curse.”
For the first time, Cole was aggressive, so Dave matched the tone. “I mean it’s not a big deal to be gay, and it’s certainly not a curse.”
“Tell that to my parents.”
Reflex told him to tell the teen to tell his parents to go fuck themselves, but reason warned that the situation demanded a more measured response. “Your parents are hard on you?”
“My dad wants to take me to a strip club in Montreal for my birthday next week.”
“Tell him you’re not interested.”
“He wants to pay one of the strippers to have sex with me.”
“I’m sorry he told you that. But you’ll be eighteen then, right? Tell him that you’re an adult, it’s your choice now, and you’re not interested.”
“They love me, and they tell me it’s not my fault I’ve been cursed, but that I’m destined to go to hell, so I should do everything I can to make amends for who I am.”
“How can you possibly believe that your sexuality is a curse? Is it a curse that I have brown eyes?”
“They say ten per cent of the population is homosexual. The odds were overwhelmingly in favour of me being straight, yet here I am. My destiny is to disgrace my parents.”
“Your destiny? Is it the blind’s destiny not to see?”
“Of course.”
“You need to shift the lens. You get to choose what you believe in, and right now you believe in things that punish you for who you are. You can just as easily choose to believe in things that love you for who you are.”
Dave hoped for a positive response or a change in tone, but instead there was a silence that reinforced the conversation’s stakes. “Are you with me?”
“Yeah, but you don’t understand what it feels like.”
“Of course I don’t. But I know what it feels like to wonder if I believe.” He looked at Amy a moment before continuing. “Last week a truck crashed into the place where I work and killed everyone except me. I ask myself all the time why I lived, and what it boils down to is what I want to believe. Did I live for a reason, or did they die because it’s possible?”
“And?” Cole asked, now fully engaged.
“And I believe it happened because it’s theoretically possible for a truck to drive off the road and through a business’s front windows.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I’m sorry you hate yourself. You seem like a cool guy.”
A beat of silence felt like minutes, until Cole said, “I’m going to hang up, Dave.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, but thank you for sharing that story.”
“Take care, Cole.”
The teen hung up, and Dave put the phone on the table. Amy looked at him like he glowed.
“Do you believe you’re special now?”
“I almost threw up.”
“If I’d answered the phone, he would have hung himself.” “You need to change your number.”
They shared a tension-releasing laugh. It
felt good to exhale and even better to drop his shoulders.
“You owe me a concert.”
“I’ll be there.”
She smiled at the thought of spending more time with him, but just the word “concert” made her stomach swirl.
Fourteen
When Dave picked Amy up in a cab, her eyes had the liquid, thousand-yard stare of fear, so he squeezed her closest hand and put the concert tickets in her lap.
“Front row,” he said with pride.
“Amazing.” Her lips were so tight that the word fell more than flowed from her mouth. “Will you hold my wallet for me? I don’t want to lose it.”
Dave nodded, slipped the wallet into a pocket and pulled a flask from his breast pocket. He sipped until his gums burned and extended it to Amy, who to his surprise, filled her mouth.
“Easy,” he said. “We’ve got a long night.”
She let out a cough, nodded and returned the flask. “I get panic attacks.”
“Okay.” He rolled down the window. “Just breathe.”
“Ask me a question about music, it’ll relax me.”
“Alright. When did the MC5 last play in Toronto?”
“March 25,1970. Varsity Arena.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“More questions,” she said with a heavy swallow. Precedent told her the tightness in her throat meant she was losing control. She fought back a gag and motioned him to continue with a finger. “Harder questions.”
“Okay. Who opened for them that night?”
“Small Faces and Canned Heat.”
Another gag. “Harder.”
“Who was in Canned Heat?”
“Alan Wilson and Bob Hite.” She took a deep breath and inhaled as if smoking. “Harder.”
“Why were they called Canned Heat?”
“After the 1928 Tommy Johnson song ‘Canned Heat Blues’ about an alcoholic addicted to Steno, more commonly known as canned heat.”
Dave smiled. “You’re too cool to be panicked.”
“What?”
“With as much as you know about music, you could sit down with the Stones, and they’d pour you a drink.”
She smiled and looked out the window, surprised to see they had reached the venue. They stepped out of the cab and were walking toward the building when a homeless man shook a tin cup that jingled with coins.
“When you’re happy and you know it…spare some change.” He shook the cup twice to punctuate the rhythm, and Dave handed him five dollars.
The club smelled of draft beer, and the floors were already sticky with spillage. The place was packed, but the space was tight, so it was difficult to guess how many people were there.
Dave led the way through the crowd with the swagger of a man with front-row tickets. He took a swig from the flask and passed it to Amy.
“Thank you for coming. I know this isn’t easy for you.”
She took a sip and winced. “This is a great flask.”
“My dad used it for years.”
“Did he give it to you?”
“Not exactly.”
He thought of the week after his mother’s funeral. To be supportive, he had picked up some Chinese food after work and brought it to his dad’s place. As soon as he’d opened the front door, he’d heard his dad’s drunken moan. The moan was not panicked, but slow and deliberate like a child with a toothache.
“Oh my god it burns.”
Dave moved toward the sound as fast as possible. “Dad?”
“Oh my god it burns.”
Dave entered the living room to find his dad’s pleather easy-chair tipped over, and Jack’s legs dangling over the leg rest.
“Oh my god it burns.”
A nineteen-thirties movie played on the television. Dave turned it off and hovered over his dad, whose eyes swirled as he looked up at the ceiling with his arms splayed over his head. A flask lay beside him.
“What’s going on, Pop?”
“Oh my god it burns.”
Dave leaned down to take the flask away from him and noticed white foam spilling from his dad’s mouth. Thoughts of alcohol poisoning or a drug overdose flashed through his head until he saw a toothbrush a foot away.
After Dave’s mother had died, his dad had started brushing his teeth at the kitchen sink. He was drinking so much, it was simply easier to stumble to the kitchen then negotiate the stairs. That night he’d picked up his muscle relaxing cream instead of his toothpaste, and minutes later, he was lying on his back with a burning mouth.
Dave knew taking his dad’s flask wouldn’t stop the man from drinking, but making him think he’d lost his favourite flask was a punishment, and after finding him in such a pathetic state, he’d wanted to do something to ensure Jack would remember the night.
Amy returned the flask, and Dave snapped back into the moment. “Have you always been lucky?”
The question annoyed him, but a closer examination of her eyes revealed a belief he couldn’t say he had in anything, and it felt good to be the object of such hope.
“If you knew how average my life has been, you’d know why I’m smiling at that statement.”
She looked at him like there was a better chance of her believing he could fly and reached into her oversized bag. “I got you a present.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded, pulled out what was clearly a wrapped record and passed it to him. Dave looked at his reflection in the silver wrapping and wished he didn’t look so tired. He tore open the top right corner and pulled out the record to reveal a twelve-inch of Crowbar’s “Too True Mama”. Excitement ran through him, and despite the crowd of people around them, he looked at her like she was the only person on the planet.
“Thank you.”
“That’s the song your mother used to play, right? I was sure it was, then I panicked and thought it might be ‘Oh What a Feeling’.”
“This is the one,” he said, holding the record high.
“I’ll hold it in my bag for you, so you don’t have to carry it.” He passed her the record and gestured to the bar. “Are you up for a shot?”
She nodded, and he started through the crowd.
As soon as he turned, the comfort Amy enjoyed began to dissipate. She took a deep breath in an effort to stave off a gag and pivoted to open up the room, when she felt the hard stare of a man with close-cut brown hair. He’s not looking at you, she told herself. It’s in your head. She turned away and looked back to see him moving through the crowd in her direction. A thick moustache robbed his mouth of expression, and his eyes were solemn and over-intense in their focus. A quick glance at the bar for Dave could have relaxed her, but all she saw was a sea of bodies.
She moved along the front row, and the man moved with her. A gag forced her jaw to clench, and the man stepped in front of her. She started to scream when the man held up a police badge at eye level.
“Please come with me to the back room.”
He gestured to a red exit sign to the left of the stage, where a woman with dark hair and glasses stood looking stern:
“I don’t understand.”
She looked for Dave again but couldn’t see him.
“I’ll explain when we get to the back. Let’s not draw attention.”
He put a hand on her elbow and steered her toward the exit sign.
“I really don’t understand. I’m just here for a concert.”
“I’m sure you are.”
Dave gave a bartender with heavy blue eye make-up and a face like wax a five dollar tip and was heading back to the front row with two shots of tequila when he saw Amy being escorted out of the room. He handed the shots to the closest guy and bee-lined for Amy.
In the back, the detective with the moustache spoke first. “May I check your bag?”
“For what?”
“May I, or are we going to the station?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ve been watching you three months,
Crystal. We know everything.”
“Crystal? I’m not Crystal.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m not Crystal. My name is Amy Leonard.”
“Then show me a license and your health card, and you can enjoy the concert.”
Panic sent a wave of tension through her head that made her eyes hurt. “I don’t have my wallet. I’m afraid of losing it, so I gave it to my date.”
“Show me your bag.”
Amy passed her bag to the detective just as Dave entered the room.
“What’s going on?”
“You can’t be back here, sir,” the female detective said.
Dave gestured to Amy. “We’re on a date. I came here with her.”
The male detective looked at his partner, who dropped her head to a photo stuck to a clipboard. The woman’s eyes narrowed for a moment before she nodded.
“What’s her name?”
“Amy Leonard.”
“Do you have ID?”
“I have her ID.” Dave removed Amy’s wallet from his jacket and passed the male detective her license and health card. The detective showed his partner, whose eyes bugged.
“Incredible.” He passed Amy back her identification. “Please accept our apologies, but the resemblance is uncanny. We’ve been watching this woman for months. She’s one of the city’s biggest ecstasy dealers.”
He held up a photo of the woman they’d mistaken Amy for, and Dave stared at it in shock. The features were not just similar, the two women could have been twins. Both had slightly swollen upper lips, brows that gave them a perpetual look of worry and the purest blue eyes he had ever seen.
The crowd erupted, and within seconds, the guitar riff of “Kick Out the Jams” vibrated through the room.
“Once again, we apologize. I hope you understand. Please enjoy the show,” the detective said and extended an arm to the door.
They left the room, and Amy turned to Dave. “You see?”
“I’m sorry that happened. That was crazy.”
“If you weren’t here, I’d be on my way to the station.”
“I got mistaken for a guy who was breaking into cars when I was at university.”
“Did you look like him?”
“Enough to get stopped on the street.”
“Did you see how much I look like that woman?”
“They say everyone has a doppelganger.”