“Joseph, this is Amelia, one of my roommates,” Caroline said. “Is it four-thirty already?” Caroline stood up and stretched the small of her back, placed her cello back into its case, propped it up in the corner. “I guess we should pack it in for today.” She washed out another mug from the sink, placed it in front of Amelia. “How was your shift?”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Suspenders Man came in and tried to return a DVD with a big thumbprint of a comeshot, right smack in the middle of the disc. Jacko totally almost popped a blood vessel in his head when he saw it. Banned the guy for three days. Sorry, Joseph. Daily debriefing.”
I nodded, unsure how to follow that.
“We’ll get to the bow next time, Joseph,” Caroline said. “You did great. You want to book the next lesson now?”
I stood up, carried my cello over to its case. “You busy next Sunday? I’m coming back to Calgary next weekend. I’d love to do this regular, like, before I forget everything I learned.”
“Same time then? I’ll photocopy some sheet music before then for you too, now that I know where you’re at. You like Deep Purple?”
I nodded.
“Just practice what I taught you today as much as you can until then. Until you can do it without looking at your left hand.”
“Can I borrow your washroom before I head out?”
“First door at the top of the stairs. The hall light is burnt out, so watch you don’t step on the cat.”
In the bathroom, there was a stack of Utne Readers and some incense matches on the tank lid. I pissed for what seemed like a long time, taking care not to backsplash and gently replacing the seat in the downright position. Lit an incense match, just to see what amber smelled like. Smelled kind of like the cello did.
I headed back downstairs and towards the kitchen, and heard the two of them talking.
“Kind of cute, in a truck-driver sort of way.”
“Not to mention his million-dollar cello, and a good ear. Picks stuff up right away.”
I rounded the corner into the kitchen, and they both stopped short.
“That was quick. I didn’t even hear you coming.” Caroline swallowed, and looked at Amelia.
I held up my wrists and shook them, naked except for my gold watch. “No bangles. Nice to meet you, Amelia.”
I picked up my cello and tucked my journal under my arm. Caroline followed me to the front door.
“That was fun. I learned a lot,” I said. I fumbled in my front pocket for my cash. “So two hours is sixty, right?”
“Right. And I’ll see you next week. You take good care of that baby, you hear me?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“The cello. Treat it like you would a baby.”
“The cello. Right.” I let out my breath. “I will.”
Then the door closed, and there was just the sound of her tall boots walking away.
The whole city of Calgary seemed wrapped up in a sordid affair with the strip mall. I found one with a liquor store in it on my way back to the Capri and pulled over to get a bottle of something for dinner. Then I thought about how maybe bringing Kelly a bottle of wine might remind her of how she had no wine goblets, just plastic glasses with Spider-Man 2 graphics and McDonald’s logos on the side. Plus I thought red might not go too well with pork chops and mushroom sauce, and white wine always made my lips go numb and my face break out in a weird speckled rash. I settled on a six-pack of beer, and four of those cranberry vodka coolers, so she’d have a selection.
The Capri’s parking lot was close to empty since it was Sunday night and the weekend traffic had moved on. Hector’s truck wasn’t there, and almost all the other rooms looked empty, curtains drawn against the dark. I stopped in my room for a minute to brush my teeth and re-apply some deodorant, and I grabbed the little gift I had bought for Raylene on my way out the door.
Kelly came to the door wearing an apron that said that’s no way to treat a lady in block letters, over a pair of jeans and a baby blue sweater. She had her hair pulled back into one of those weird hair things with the wire inside of them, the same colour as her sweater. Raylene was looking freshly scrubbed and content, colouring in her book on the bed closest to the door. I took my boots off, noticing a new pair of miniature red shoes with buckles lined up beside her pink rubber boots on the snow mat behind the door.
“You get yourself some new shoes, Raylene? They sure are pretty.”
“Gramma brought me them. Plus some new felt pens. They smell like their colour, too.”
She held up a fat blue marker in my direction. I leaned in to sniff. Sure enough, blueberry, sweet, like Kool-Aid.
“Neat.”
Raylene bent her arm back towards her own nose, nodding and bouncing a little on the bed. I noticed a blue streak under one nostril, and a matching orange one on her upper lip. She was in her little feety pajamas already. I sometimes secretly wish they made flannel pyjamas with feet sewn right in them, men’s size large.
This kid was starting to seriously grow on me. So not spoiled, unlike Sarah’s kids. Every toy under the sun, and still always lamenting how bored they were.
I passed Raylene the 7-Eleven bag. “I got you something, too. Just a little game of checkers. I thought maybe I could teach you how to play.”
I set the beer and coolers down on the TV table. Kelly’s work uniform was laid out on the only chair, her gold name tag with the Esso logo pinned on it and a box of tampons placed squarely on top.
Kelly fussed around a bit then, helping Raylene pry open the plastic package and remove the checkerboard, and putting a couple beers in the mini-fridge. “Say thank you to Joseph for the present, Bug,” Kelly said, then turned to me. “You don’t need to be buying us anything, Joseph, I’m supposed to be paying you back with this supper.” She played up being annoyed, but her face glowed a pleased colour of pink. “I need to go check on our dinner.”
Turned out Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade was Kelly’s all-time favourite, how did I know, and Raylene already knew how to play checkers, but had left her old set on the Greyhound, plus this new one had Snakes and Ladders if you flipped it over, which was her favourite game in the whole world next to Hungry Hungry Hippos, which her cousins had but she was probably going to get for Christmas anyways, right, Momma?
Kelly had put down a tablecloth and laid the table with three differently patterned plates. There was an empty juice bottle with two flowers made from pipe cleaners in it for a centrepiece. During dinner, she took sips of her vodka cooler, leaving lipstick marks on the rim of her plastic glass. She seemed kind of nervous. Raylene asked me if I could cut up her pork chop for her in such a bell-like little voice it tapped on my breastbone. At one point, Kelly made Raylene laugh until milk came out of her nose, and Raylene bolted into the bathroom for a Kleenex, her plastic pyjama footies whistling on the indoor/outdoor carpeting.
Dinner was perfect, right out of the can, just like my mom used to make on nights when I had a hockey game. Pork chops in mushroom sauce, a little cluster of cauliflower and broccoli and baby carrots, the frozen kind from a plastic bag, which Raylene pushed around her plate with the back of her fork.
Later, I was halfway through letting the kid beat me at Snakes and Ladders when she conked out, flat on her stomach with both hands folded under her chin. Looked like she was pondering her next move, except she was snoring.
Kelly picked her up and spun her end for end, then tucked her into bed, tugging the covers up around her daughter’s round little flushed face. Raylene stuck her feltpenned thumb into her mouth in her sleep. Kelly pulled it out, Raylene put it back. Kelly pulled it out again and tucked her little matchstick of an arm under the covers, right next to the stuffed moose.
We both watched her slip into sleep for a minute or so, her feet twitching under the covers. She shifted a bit, freeing one arm from the sheets. Her fingers found the satin trim on the motel blanket and she rubbed it between her thumb and first finger.
Kelly let out a long sigh.
“She’s been wired for sound all day. Tony’s mom gave her cream soda. That stuff is like crack for a six-year-old. Wanna step out for a cigarette?”
Kelly unfolded two camping chairs outside on the sidewalk, shifting the leg of one around to avoid the cracks in the concrete. “And Grandma got us another smoking chair, too, in case of company.”
“She went all out, huh?”
Kelly snorted and didn’t respond, waiting for me to light the twist of paper at the end of her machine-rolled smoke.
“I think I ate too much,” Kelly said, puffing out her cheeks. She tapped her ash into the palm of her hand, then tipped it onto the concrete between her slippers.
“Thanks a lot for the home-cooked meal, Kelly. I had a fun time with you and Raylene. I really dig her, she’s a sweet kid. You’re doing a great job, you know, all on your own and all.”
“I wish someone would tell her evil grandmother that. She showed up here today without even calling, like fucking Mother Theresa with a bad perm, made us go to Wal-Mart with her to buy us a bunch of crap, like cereal and juice and stuff we haven’t even run out of yet and making little hints that I can’t afford to feed my own kid or whatever.”
“Maybe that’s just her way of trying to be supportive.” “She looked at my hair and said if I couldn’t afford a haircut, I should just tell her and she’d pay for it. I spent the afternoon trying not to drill her in the head when she wasn’t looking. On account of she’s really the only family Raylene has. Her daddy could give two fucks about her. Haven’t heard from him since he left, not once, plus he probably won’t live to turn thirty, the rate he’s going.”
“The crystal meth,” I said, nodding down at the concrete.
“Hector blabbed to you about that? I told you that guy knows too much about everything. He drags it out of people.”
“He was only telling me how much he thought of you, all on your own with the two jobs and the kid and everything.”
“Yeah, like I’m some kind of novelty item. Like I’m the only single mom in town. Look around, I always tell him, we’re all over this neighbourhood. Only two of the kids in Raylene’s daycare have daddies that live in the same house as them.” Kelly took a long drag and squinted her eyes against the curl of smoke that blew back at her.
“Hector came around so much when we first got here I thought he was some kind of pervert, until I figured out he was gay, and just trying to be nice to everyone so he could write their life story into his book.”
“You ever talk to him about the gay thing at all?”
“He doesn’t call it gay. Hector says we all have a bit of gay in us, so it doesn’t need its own word, or some such thing. Lenny, on the other hand, says a cocksucker is a cocksucker is all a faggot to him.”
“What do you think?”
“I couldn’t give a flying fuck, to tell you the truth. I had sex with a girl one time, this chick that Tony and I picked up at his cousin’s wedding. I drank too much lemon gin and barely remember anything, but Tony said we had a great time, her and I and him. Whatever, no big deal. We had to drive her back to Edmonton in the morning because we slept in and she missed her ride back home. What the fuck do I know? She seemed cool about it all, real respectful, not acting like she owned him the next day or anything. That would have pissed me off. Hector ever try anything with you?”
“Nope. Never. Not even close.”
“Didn’t think he would. You don’t look like the type, anyways. Your fingers are too big.”
“How do you know that?”
“Not small, like, not short, but skinny. Skinny and long. Slender. Slim.” Kelly made a stretching motion, starting from the fingertips of her other hand.
“Is that a scientific fact? Did they do a study on it?”
“Just a theory I have, something I’ve noticed. Check out Hector’s next visitor. Long skinny fingers on him, I guaranfuckingtee you. See for yourself.”
“What about lesbians, what do their fingers look like?”
Kelly laughed out loud. “Well, with them you gotta consider the footwear. The warehouse at work is riddled with them. Workboots, or Dayton’s, or hikers. Nine times out of ten. And belt buckles. The butchier ones, that is. The more girlie types, sometimes you can’t even tell. I met some at our Christmas party, I would never have known without the workboot ones hanging around lighting their cigarettes and stuff.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about gay people.”
“I work in retail.” Kelly reached over and pinched my lighter from between my thumb and forefinger, lit another one of Hector’s cigarettes.
We sat there and smoked in the quiet, that city kind of quiet, a little bit of traffic in the background, like a radio, and the rise and fall of sirens, so often you don’t really hear them after a while. I was learning to like city quiet, since it did have its own version of still, its own nature sounds.
“Joseph?” She raised the end of my name in a question.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something I want to tell you, I been thinking about it all day, in the back of my mind, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, first off I want to tell you that I think you’re a totally super nice person, and Raylene, she just thinks you’re the cat’s ass, and we both like hanging out with you a lot, don’t get me wrong.”
Kelly paused, like she was nervous to say what was coming next.
“And I think you’re pretty cute and all, and I don’t even mind that you’re … quite a bit older than me. But I’ve been thinking it all over, and I just thought I should tell you that I’m not looking to get involved with anyone right now, I just think that I need to keep focused on work and school, and I’m not available for any kind of relationship.”
She flicked her ash again, and glanced at me sideways to see if I was still listening. I was.
“So I just thought I should let you know, you know, where I’m at with things, before you got your hopes up or anything, or spend your money on us for nothing. Raylene is going to be choked up about it. She wants us to get married, so she can carry the ring on a pillow. I don’t know where she gets that from. Off the TV, I guess. Tony never gave me a ring. Mostly he just laid around in his underwear screaming at us to keep the noise down. It’s no wonder she thinks you’re Prince Charming. She’s only ever seen you wearing pants. Kinda pathetic, if you think about it too much. Anyways, just thought I’d let you down easy, right at the beginning, like.”
“I appreciate you being so honest with me, Kelly.”
“I hope you won’t let this affect our friendship.”
“Course not. I’m really glad you cleared that up.” Kelly let out a long breath, put out her smoke, clapped her hands together to warm them up. “I should probably have a bath and get to bed. I’m opening tomorrow.”
“I thought you had Mondays off?”
“Overtime. Plus once I’ve got five hundred hours I get part of my medical and dental covered by work. Raylene needs a retainer from sucking on her thumb. Night, Joseph.”
At first it looked like she was going to move to hug me, and then she changed trajectory in mid-air and shook my hand, pressing it between both of her cold ones.
“You want the rest of your beers to take home with you? Or a cooler?”
I told her she should keep them in her little fridge, for the next time I came for a visit.
Hector’s truck was back, tucked into its usual spot, its engine knocking and clicking into the dark as it cooled down. I could hear jazz music thrumming faintly from his side of the wall as I let myself into my room. The message side of the wall as I let myself into my room. The message light on the telephone flashed in the dark.
I took off my boots, stashed my cello in the closet, and called Lenny.
“Message for room 119, where did I put it? Oh yeah. Please call Cecelia if you get back before eleven tonight.”
I thanked him and hung up. It was just after ten.<
br />
Cecelia picked up after four rings, just as I was rehearsing what I was going to say to her voice mail.
“Hello?”
Just that one word from her, and my stomach rolled over onto itself.
“Uh, hello, Joseph here. Joseph Cooper.”
She laughed, and the knot in my tongue started to come untied.
“Hi there, Joseph. I was hoping it was you.”
“I was hoping it was you, too. I mean, I was hoping you were home. I was going to call you earlier, but then I wasn’t sure how soon was too soon, and so then I didn’t, and then it got later, and I didn’t know how late was too late, so anyways, it’s good you called me. What I mean is, it’s good. I’m glad you called.” So much for being smooth, I thought.
“Joseph. Chill out. You’re going to hyperventilate. It’s just me.”
“Chill. Right. Okay.” She waited for me to say something that made more sense. I didn’t.
“Joseph? You still there?”
“Me? Yeah. Right here. Sorry. I’m just, well I’m not so good on the phone. Never have been. Especially when I’m nervous. I’m better in person. I think. At least, I hope I am.” My voice trailed off, and then another overripe silence hung between us for a bit.
Finally, Cecelia cleared her throat. “Then maybe you should just come over here.”
“I was hoping you would say that. I mean, not that I assumed that you would.…”
“Joseph. Shut up and put your boots on. I’ll see you in a minute.”
I was trying to think of something else to say, but then I heard a click, and the dial tone hummed into my ear.
I started up my truck exactly fourteen minutes later, my hair still wet. The stitches in my head were itching, and my T-shirt was stuck to my back because I hadn’t dried off enough before jumping into my last clean change of clothes.
The roads sparkled with frozen dew. Hardly any traffic all the way over, just me and the odd taxi, our exhaust pipes trailing fat clouds of white smoke into the night.
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