by Byron Rempel
Anna nodded with enforced seriousness. She rolled her head, waited for a crack of the neck bones. Sometimes it took forever. At her mother’s she could roll for hours. This time her neck clicked almost immediately.
“Today she kept repeating, ‘Never date a man in Special Operations,’” her mother said. “Oh, she tells wonderful stories. Spies, fairies, the Gravity Machine.”
“Sorry?”
“Your auntie. Wonderful histories. An unpredictable past.”
Anna was reminded of where she’d inherited her historian’s skepticism.
“But she’s lonely. Doesn’t have a man. Never did as far as we know. I told her you’d be there for her eighty-seventh birthday. Next Saturday.”
“Halloween?” Anna said. “I’m invited somewhere already.” But she had nothing that weekend. Only an idea about dressing up in costume again, knocking on Christophe’s door, and confronting him about the Paris conference. The nun thing had worked the first time. Almost.
Her mother poured coffee. Added her splash of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and watched Anna silently plot. “You could maybe learn something from your spinster aunt,” she said. “Who is sad
and alone.”
From the end of a dark hallway Otto the pug waddled into view. He headed for Anna.
“Otto’s well,” Anna said.
Dotty sprayed the lemon polish toward the dog as it shuffled by. “At least he smells better. Counters the glands.”
[
Halloween and till this moment she’d completely forgotten about walking the aunt. And her nun’s habit still stained with wine and brie. The more the day went on the stupider the idea of showing up at Christophe’s door in costume seemed, until by evening, after the few neighbour children struggled by in costumes hidden by parkas and snow boots, and the college girls shivered down sidewalks in their sexy anything costumes, she abandoned the idea. Instead Anna pulled on flannel pyjama top and bottom and wool socks, and with a sigh planted herself in front of her vanity to remove her mask of make-up.
Of course, he could show up at the door. She’d left a note on his office door, cryptic yet unequivocal: “We have to talk about Paris. – AH.” He could ring the bell—she’d replaced the buzzer with a more ecclesiastical tone recently—and she would say what a surprise it was, and what the cat dragged in, and wasn’t it so.
And then he would kiss her, authentically.
And she would take that as an apology, a confession, hell, she’d take it as a prayer.
But she would shake her head. She had to go push her wheelchair-bound aunt. Nobody else took care of the poor thing and she needed air, cold and restorative. She would unsheathe her double-edge sword: sexy and altruistic, but she didn’t drop everything for the first man who kissed her.
And then her bell chimed.
Kids could be at her door this unholy night, but none had rung yet, and it was late for children. She thought she heard chants downstairs.
But the bell: he had come!
Except now she was in pyjamas and her make-up incomplete. She opened a window and from the draperies called “J’arrive.”
She splashed more water on her eyes and made a quick pass with the remover, and a new stroke of the liner on her eyebrows and a lipstick…but she couldn’t find the good colour now, the one that Audrey liked on her, just pink enough for healthy but not slutty. She undid her hair from a bun and slipped on a bandana that let her red hair bounce as she walked, and tried one jewel on her neck, probably not, not with pyjamas…there it was the lipstick, the Mac one, she painted it on with a touch of red overlay. The pyjamas were flirty enough, but she pulled off the wool socks as she started to pad down the cold steps, threw them up to the kitchen, took short breaths, which made her dizzy and she reached for the railing, luckily the toes painted yesterday for god knows what reason, and near the bottom slowed to creak down each step to make sure whoever waited on the other side of the door could hear her arrive with care and assurance and savoir-faire. She grabbed a scarf that hung on the door knob and the small metal bowl of candy she’d left there just in case.
She would not let him kiss her. How the French women did it. She swung the door open.
No one was there. A small brown-paper package. She bent to pick it up, and halfway down thought better of it. A Halloween trick.
“Arrgh!”
The man was behind the door. He did not usually set out to frighten women who lived alone, as he found the target too broad and the reception, ever since he’d been shot at that time in New Orleans, too risky. But he wasn’t there to scare the professor so much as to surprise and delight her. Maybe he’d hid too well, or his Arrgh was too authentic. All the same, he was the one delighted when she stood up and launched a bowl of Lindt chocolates into his hands.
He was on fire, which may also have accounted for her alarm. Also, he sang snatches of rum soaked songs, and fake dreadlocks sprang from his pirate’s hat, and from his unkempt beard birthday cake sparklers threw golden stars.
“Arrgh! Thank you for the classy chocolates. Take a while to find the door, don’t you?”
It was Jackson Zaporzan. Anna patted down her pyjama top as the sparklers continued to attack. Zap had wondered if she might be in costume, and was about to guess who she was supposed to be, with her flannel clothes and the kind of messy ghoul kohl around her eyes, but before he could say anything there was a small explosion and she jumped back again. The rest of the chocolates spilled down the outside stairs. Zap caught a few more, but then more explosions followed—the sparks had ignited the string of firecrackers tied to his beard.
“Arrgh,” he claimed. “I’m Bluebeard, and here to kidnap you aboard my ship.”
But the firecrackers and sparklers were too close to his face and he covered his eyes, and soon the beard glowed a little too much, and on one side a small flame appeared, and in seconds his chin was alight. Anna unfurled her scarf and smothered his face. Smoke curled around them.
He bent to pick up the package and took the scarf, rubbed his beard thoroughly. “That is a disappointment. I don’t know how Bluebeard did this.”
Showing up at her door in costume had sounded like a wiser idea the more he thought about it, and after some research he was positive that Anna’s interest in dragons and romances would naturally attract her to pirates.
Zap stood still as the professor took back her ruined scarf from his hands. Although his dreadlocks were hardened and his beard almost all gone, and although the smell of singed hair settled between them, he thought he’d made a lasting impression. She hadn’t run away, or aimed a pistol at him, so that was a start. She wrinkled her tiny nose. Maybe she smelled the sea salt spray on the pirate’s ship, brought by the trade winds that wrapped her dress around her legs. Battles at sea were full of danger. A woman like her needed a man, unafraid and free, more than these modern, effete pirates. He reached out his hand to her, felt at her temples to search for the singed ends of her own red hair. He brought it to his nose, then rubbed the remains down the front of his blackened shirt, then looked closer at her skin, felt for blisters, found none, dipped his fingers in the condensation on the door window and tried to wipe clean her face.
“Bluebeard wasn’t a pirate,” Anna said. “You mean Blackbeard.” She pulled back from him.
But his hands continued to hold her face, until he was convinced she was unhurt, until Anna’s eyes focused again and came back from the sea.
“You’re in love,” he said.
Anna buttoned the top of her pyjamas around her neck.
“With this house. With your turret.”
I am not that obvious, Anna thought. I am not desperate.
“It is a charming house. Like mine. But you have to get out. Now. The whole thing is about to crumble. Look at this.” He unwrapped part of the package and showed her a broken square of roof slate. “You’re not safe here.�
��
“That’s obvious. I’ll call the fire department. Or the police.” Anna started to close the door.
“Whoa, whoa. Police don’t repair roofs. You need emergency intervention renovation. Are those pyjamas?”
“Yes they’re pyjamas.”
“They are so you. Good costume. Brings out the red in your hair.”
Anna realized she was freezing out here.
“Got a present for you too. Halloween present. It’s a book on castle building.” He pulled it out of the package. “You’re welcome. But there’s something else bothering you.”
“The self-immolation on my doorstep?”
“I want to help.”
“I don’t need that kind of help.” She looked at the book. Ages nine and up. Lavishly illustrated. She looked at the ceiling, and one side of her lips smiled.
“Stop that,” Zap said. “You kill me with that look.”
He took a step and the wood floor protested. Anna backed up.
“But these timbers creak. Installed in the industrial revolution. Your door doesn’t close right. A few things to repair, you come back when it’s done, but you should get out now. I mean, you don’t know the kooks in this neighbourhood.”
She wasn’t aware she had a Look.
“I can do a quick fix on the roof before more snow.”
“Alone in my house.”
“If you like. But I wouldn’t be alone. I’ll bring a crew.”
“It’s cold. With the door open.”
“You see? Twisted frame. Your hydro bills will strangle you.” He took another step. “So, roof, a few nails in the stairs, tweak the outside door. Do it in a weekend.”
“So why would I leave?”
“A noisy job. You can take it like a holiday. Look at what bothers you. When the reno’s finished you can be logical again.” Zap bounced on the step, made it sing an ode to its homeland forest. “I do need some repairs,” she said.
He brought out a crumpled business card. “This is the only one I’ve got, so if you could give it back when you’re done.”
“I know where you live.”
Zap nodded.
“But I’ll do it at my own pace.”
“Sure you will.”
“So I’ll knock on the wall…Mister…is this your name? Zap Reno? Or your business? Mr. Zaporzan. When I’m ready. Here’s the deal though. You have to recognize my personal space.”
“Oh yeah, I recognize it.”
Anna held her pyjamas at the neck. What Look?
“Impossible to miss. You got a galaxy of space here.”
6. You Have Pomegranate Juice
on Your Chin There
Now the opera arrived on the wings of snow sirens from the arctic. They sang for her, the tow trucks and plows under the street lamps at dawn. Chorus with tuques low and scarves high, Nordic burqas. The arias of spinning tires on ice, the crescendo of cars rocking forward, backward, searching for traction. They invaded her dreams until she woke to find her scenery frozen, its corners rounded and its colours erased by monotone white.
Anna wore a white blouse. In her university office hung spare white shirts. She arrived damp with the effort of negotiating uncleared sidewalks and put on a fresh one. Down the university’s marble hallway she wove, with starts and stops, spun when she heard echoing voices. She used to walk down this hallway with purpose, move from point A (her office) to point B (the classroom) without interruption, with full concentration on her next class. But now the students’ whispers screamed like seagulls. Doors opened—she glanced—not the right people—doors closed. She stopped in front of faded photos of Deans in the 1930s, became wistful and melancholic beside marble columns. Every other day she could navigate the way to her classroom. To the end, turn left. But today’s hallway stretched out further with every step, as if Anna she still lived in the fluid architecture of dreams, or suffered the hallucinations of a sleep-deprived prisoner in solitary. Though that she could do. Six months without interruptions, without neighbours or aunts or cats. A guardian to slide up a tiny door and push her a bowl of broth for sustenance. That’s all she needed: a vacation. And she would write. She would concoct the most baroque Romance a woman would ever need, with love and tenderness and uncountable shades of sex.
Anna’s boot heels tapped a beat, and she straightened her trajectory to the classroom. She was flamenco and fire and grace, she brought warmth to the marble, melted the ice sheets outside.
Her romance heroine would not leave her. She would give up on Christophe. She would write the Romance and, despite the odds, the heroine would be a Medieval Spanish nun. Anna already felt herself a better person. The nun’s influence.
“Anna.”
She spun, her hair bobbed in slow motion around her. The students’ cries turned to choirs of praise. But it was only Dmitri.
“My God, professor. You cannot walk alone like this. You will soon trail the parade of broken hearts. I will protect you.”
His rotund charm slowed her pace. Her own heart felt elastic, stretched at the sound of her name, snapped back when it was not the man she had sought since Paris.
“Mit’ka.”
They stopped while Dmitri shook his head, then studied the marble floor. “With buckwheat,” he said finally. “And topped with chopped smoked salmon, little onion, chopped eggs, sour cream.” He looked up at Anna, his eyes moist, unfocused on a distant past. He had a young woman’s lips and an old woman’s moles.
“At the end of my day in school, mother would wrap this up, wrap me up. In the evenings, father would let me sneak sips from his bottle. After the walk home, the cold brisk and clean, like today. Do you not love it?”
Anna made an expression that she hoped look broad and eager. But it was fortified with irony.
“My parents they hated nature. Pined for Moscow. I could only play in secret outside in winter. Taught myself to ski on scraps of vodka barrel.”
Anna lost her concentration again. Dr. Zhivago danced in her head, although she tried everything to send him away. She looked straight at Dmitri, who looked straight at the floor, but all she could see was Omar Sharif cradling Julie Christie in his arms, both of them befurred and befuddled on a sleigh to nowhere. Could she give up Christophe like that, after wolves howled around their ice palace, after forces larger than they tore them apart?
Dmitri brushed a trail of black breadcrumbs from one side of his sweater. Word was his ex-wife had left him shortly after the collapse of the Soviet.
“Of course, we must touch on the business with your TA,” he began.
“Oh right.”
“But in the meantime, next week, there will be outing.”
Anna pictured Omar Sharif coaxed out of a closet.
“A little Nordic ski trip. Frolic in the snow. Delight in nature. Like that. In the Laurentians. I invite you.”
Dmitri reached out to caress her shoulder, thought better of it, and instead waved at a student. His hand accidentally brushed against Anna’s curls anyway, and for a second he held his fingers under his nose in contemplation.
“I don’t know how to ski.”
His eyes widened. They made his already round face into a kindly blowfish.
Anna bit her lip to stop a smile. Dr. Zhivago had left long ago on his sleigh.
“When can I expect to have Audrey back, Mit’ka?”
“Everybody skis. You are from Quebec. Après-ski. I know how you like to have a good time.” He said this to her shoes.
She looked at the ceiling. Between her and Dmitri they saw everything.
“We will get you out of gym,” Dmitri said. “Sometimes you have to get off your treadmill and into wildlife.”
Was he flirting with her? It didn’t matter. Anna shook her head. “There’s no way…”
“The French man comes as well.”
&
nbsp; “There’s no way I’d miss it.”
7. There Will Be Love
“Christophe?”
The snow comes at her sideways, from above, from below, finds every gap in her clothes, mocks her attempts to shield her face. The woolen scarf over her nose is an ice fort.
“Dmitri?”
The truth is she hates to ski.
“Thorbert?”
She isn’t so enamored of nature right now either.
Anna ponders a river frozen in its bed. No ski tracks are on it except for her hatched attempt. And those disappear fast. Like the sketched skiers in front of her, now erased into a blank page.
She still can’t figure out how it happened. Sure, she was slower than the others in the woods. And she realized she had stared at the furrows beneath her feet the whole time, hypnotized by the scrape of the skis, only occasionally registering the others’ commentary about animal tracks. The only thing worth a look was Christophe’s form, which she could learn from and incorporate into her own technique. But he was always over a hillock or past a bend, lustful in his pursuit of the New World, eager to eclipse the Norwegian. Between debates about the provenance of
snow-dusted animal scat, she missed the discussion about a planned route.
And yes she’d wobbled more than necessary, and fell three times before she arrived at an actual trail. The equipment bought thirteen years ago to impress some rocky Scandinavian who’d asked if she enjoyed Nordic pursuits. He’d snagged her with the capitalized word, led her imagination down the path of solid men with blonde hair on extravagant polar bear rugs.
She’d never used the skis. Not once. She couldn’t get them into her car, never mind onto her feet.
So her one snare to lure Christophe was dysfunctional. The preparation was rushed, and her ski style was not to her advantage. If she were an athlete, Anna believed, she would help someone who wasn’t au courant. An arm held for balance, for example, got you over that initial curve. A hand to guide the calf in the proper push. The brush of fingers over a bare shoulder. That would be for the après. But she’d lost the French man before they’d left the parking lot.