by KT Morrison
Geoff got closer to the windshield, looked up at all the tall trees as Nia parked the car.
Nia said, “What do you think, Geoff? You and me one day...”
“Get a cottage?”
“Yeah,” she said, beaming. She looked back to Odie for support. Geoff looked back too.
Odie spotted the bouncy castle floating out on the lake, down past the side of the house, a long rocky walkway between incredibly tall white pines. Her face went wide. “Dad...” she gasped.
He looked back at the cottage—beautiful home, really—said, “It’s a lot of responsibility.”
“We’re responsible,” Nia said.
“Yeah, but the money...”
“We don’t get one like this...” she said, gesturing out the window. “Something built for three, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess...” he said, looking out and up again.
“Two incomes,” she said quietly to him. He nodded.
She pulled to the side in between two pickup trucks, one brand new GMC, MARIA 1 on the license plate. Rocco’s ridiculous jacked up truck wasn’t there. He’d probably brought the family up in Maria’s fancy truck. There were around ten cars in his lot and as they got out and stretched he heard loud music coming up from the water and yelling voices. He hoped he knew at least someone else down there.
NIA
The meeting at the door was uncomfortable. Rocco wasn’t in the house, he was down at the lake with some of the guys. His wife Maria answered the door.
Geoff was behind her and he held Odele’s hand. Nia stood on the stone-paved stoop with her gift basket. Maria had a look of recognition on her face although the two of them had never met. Kids ran around behind Maria. Boisterous young black-haired boys. She saw Dino’s wife Stacy in the house talking to another woman and eating a stick of celery.
Maria was a big girl. She was tall, taller than Nia by an inch or two, and she took up space. Not a fat woman, but large, goodly. Dark-haired like Nia and a very pretty face. She remembered her from parties back when they were in high school. Maria had been a fucking bombshell. She drove the guys crazy. Big hips, big round butt, double Ds. A plump mouth on a very sexy face. Cock-sucking lips most girls would have killed for as long as you didn’t call them cock-sucking lips. That was when she was sixteen. She was what now? Twenty-eight, twenty-nine? She’d bore Rocco four sons. She was substantial. Still beautiful in the face, still a great looking set under that tank top, but her legs had got very big, even her feet, and her arms shook and jiggled with her movements. There was a certain easy meanness to her face that made Nia a little unnerved. It broke suddenly with a manufactured friendliness.
“Are you Nia?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I remember you, Maria. It’s been so long...”
“Come on in,” she said friendly enough.
In the kitchen Nia introduced Geoff and Odie, and presented her with a hostess gift. Following her hangover theme from the bachelorette she went down to their bakery on Roncesvalles and she had them put together a bunch of items for a gift basket for her and Rocco and the kids. A sort of easy-morning theme. The morning-after, as it were. Breakfast items for the Sunday morning in anticipation of a late night up celebrating, even though Geoff and Nia wouldn’t be staying over. Just a funny gift that might make Maria’s Sunday morning easier. Fresh bagels, assorted cream cheeses, freshly ground coffee. She already knew his boys ate a ton of Froot Loops so she bought mini-boxes of those and a few bottles of organic milk. There were jars of local preserves, strawberry jams, blueberry. When she got it all home and she added a few more things and wrapped it all in cellophane she looked it over, quite satisfied. Then suddenly burst out laughing. Hands down the whitest thing she’d ever done. Geoff rubbing off on her. This was a basket that Geoff’s mom Connie would have put together. It was the thought that counted anyway—but she was sure she was going to be made fun of when she went back to work on Tuesday.
Nia, that’s some mangia-cake shit...
Geoff brought some good beers he’d picked out. Some craft brews that he enjoyed, and she had gone and grabbed a few bottles of nice Italian red too. Maybe tempering that whiteness down a fraction with some fine products from their home shores.
Maria showed off the boys that Rocco had given her. She held Peter in her arms as she walked around the kitchen, he was under a year old. There was a Marco, a Paolo, and the oldest, of course, a mean-looking blocky five-year-old called Rocco Junior. She met them all, suffered their capricious stares.
The kitchen was a wide open space with a high ceiling and bright A-shaped windows. Every surface was littered with bowls and food and chopped tomatoes. Pots were on the stove, the oven was on. She had help; Stacy had her dirtied apron, working in the kitchen and entertaining a dining room full of younger kids, all at the table, working on crafts. She wouldn’t say Hi.
Geoff was polite and gracious, always made a good impression, but that coffee did its magic and he sheepishly asked Maria where the bathroom was and he left her alone with these women. Odie stayed close, hugging herself close to her mom, not used to such a chaotic home.
Then Dino was there, coming in from the outside through open double French doors, holding a beer bottle in a coozie with a Canadian flag. He was looking good in a T-shirt with no sleeves and a pair of cargo shorts. Tall, handsome, and muscular. Stacy got between them, accidentally or on purpose she didn’t know, but it was probably for the best. She shuffled herself sideways in the kitchen, got a partition wall between them before he saw her and before Stacy saw him see her. For Stacy’s sake—she would hate to run into an ex-girlfriend of Geoff’s especially if she’d heard wild rumours about their passion.
“Who was that?” Odie said, clinging to her as Nia made her way around the other side of the busy kitchen, weaving through kids and holding her daughter close, heading down a flight of stairs that looked like they opened on to the patio out back.
“Who, sweetie?”
“That tall man.”
“No one, baby. My boss’s brother.”
GEOFF
When Geoff got out of the bathroom he heard two women in the kitchen. Two female voices, the sounds of children underneath. Rocco Jr. laughing and yelling, things being banged, a baby crying, something else...wrestling maybe...but over top of that two women speaking in hushed voice, trying not to be heard and thusly making him strain to hear them because now they had his curiosity. He stopped in the hall, ten feet from where it would deposit him back into the kitchen. It was Stacy and Maria. They were aggravated, their harsh whispers rising at certain moments to emphasize a point.
His heart sank hearing snippets like: See her?…the fuckin makeup…I didn’t invite her…she think she is, eh?…he better not think…fuckin had it… Maybe, just maybe, could have been his awful imagination, but it sounded like Maria whispered Whore.
What he wanted to say? Fuck you, she’s my wife, you cunts...she’s got the sweetest soul on earth...she’s a wonderful person...so she’s thirty-three and looks twenty-three…yeah, she’s lucky, she eats what she wants...but she works out...she does her yoga...you blame her for genetics?...fuck you. And maybe before he left the kitchen, paused, hand on doorknob (shit, place was open concept, no doors), he’d turn and say, Your husband wants to fuck her and she’s going to let him...another pause as he turns to leave, then, looking back at them, he’d say, It’ll be the fuck of his life. Then he’d close the door loudly behind him, not slam it, but just a bang like a well-placed exclamation mark.
What he did instead was wait at the edge of the hall until he heard their voices fainter, then dart across the corner of the kitchen to the top of the stairs that led down to the family room. Maria and Stacy were in the dining room, engaged with the kids, Maria opening a can of Coke and Rocco Jr. at her hips with his impatient outstretched hands and surly face. He saw them for a brief second and they didn’t see him.
Then he was quick-stepping down the wide wooden stairs to a bright big-screen family room with
panoramic windows, the sparkling lake beyond. There were more than twenty people out there. Families with running kids and some rougher looking types too, but everyone was having fun and it was a beautiful day.
Enter stage right, two men walking with purpose heading into the house, the man in lead was a giant with jet black hair and jet black eyes, tattoos scrawled up his thick arms. He was intently listening to what the second man was telling him, a step behind. Rocco looked up, nodded to Geoff with recognition. He stopped in the centre of the family room, six feet from Geoff and let the guy finish, one hand held up to Geoff, a finger pointing, like he was telling him to stay.
The other man finished his explanation and Rocco nodded, turned said, “Ay, Geoff, right?”
Geoff said, “Hi, Rocco.”
Rocco turned to his friend, a forty-something, heavy and worn, weather-beaten with a very friendly face but the hands of a construction worker, said, “This is Nia’s husband.” Eyebrows went up.
Geoff felt strangely proud. He put his hand out and they shook, the guy said, “I’m Doug. I’m the foreman.”
They did their small talk, the nice-to-meet-yous, the weather, the drive. Rocco asked him if he needed a beer and Geoff said, “I was just looking for Nia.”
“Huh, yeah, she’s out at the lake. Come on see this, guy shit, she wouldn’t be interested anyway,” he said, turning and waving him to follow with a big hand.
Doug walked ahead of him and they were lead down a dim hall to a metal door. It led to a basement garage that would open out to the lakeside. He probably stored the boat here in winter, the jet skis and stuff. Now the central area was empty except for two brand new looking ATVs with big knobby tires and winches. They were both outfitted in matte black and camouflage print, each with a hard plastic rifle case built into the side, sticking up at a forty degree angle. Straight ahead, above angle iron shelving with motor oil and helmets and jugs of transmission fluid were a dozen sets of deer antlers of various sizes.
Rocco looked over his shoulder and down at Geoff, said, “Ay, you need a beer, don’t ya?”
“Yeah, thanks, that’d be great,” Geoff said.
There was a fridge to the right, a huge one in white, like twenty-five cubic feet. He yanked the door open, the whole fridge jostled, and it clinked with bottles. The entire inventory of the fridge was beer. Rocco reached in, then tossed Geoff a bottle and he fucking, thank Christ, caught it. There was a real good chance that would have bounced out of his hand and smashed on the concrete.
“You good, Doug?” Rocco said inside the fridge.
Doug looked at his bottle, said, “Yup.”
Rocco stood up again, kicked the fridge closed loudly with his heel and opened his twist bottle.
Geoff opened his. A Molson Canadian. Shit, he thought—got a mental image of that nice six-pack he’d brought, a Toronto micro-brew, a citrusy, clove-forward wheat ale...sitting on the marble counter in the kitchen, guarded now by those two wandering minotaurs up there. He sipped his Canadian.
Rocco was over at another fridge, this one older, a robin’s egg blue, rounded top. A retro fridge from the 1950s. It looked out of place amongst all his guy things.
“Oh yeah,” Doug said admiringly like he’d heard about this old fridge before.
“What year is it?” Geoff said.
Rocco said, “Huh?”
“The fridge, how old—”
“Oh,” he shrugged, “I don’t know,” then to Doug, “Go on, open it.”
Doug grabbed the chromed handle, yanked it up, and the old mechanisms released and he opened the fridge.
The inside had been converted. It wasn’t a fridge anymore, of course. A gun locker. Lined up inside were three hunting rifles, fitted in a steel rack, butts down barrels up.
Rocco put his beer down on the top of the fridge, grabbed a rifle from the rack, twisted it out of its rest and shouldered it.
“Shit,” Doug said.
“Yeah,” Rocco said looking through the scope, gun in his shoulder, sighting towards the closed garage door. Geoff worried about all the people on the other side of the door. Fucking thing wasn’t loaded though, right?
Rocco stood in a shooting stance. He was wearing shorts and a loose T-shirt. The sleeves were tight on him, and it stretched across the bulk of his chest and traps. His hands dwarfed the rifle. He had large well-formed hands, masculine, big knuckles and thick veins.
Rocco said, “Browning X-bolt. Three-hundred Win mag. It’s fuckin awesome. Took it out last fall, got a buck at a hundred-forty yards.” He lowered the rifle, held it with one hand and then pointed it up at an antler rack above on the wall. A small set. “He was young, not the biggest, I just couldn’t believe the fuckin distance.”
He held the rifle out in both hands looking it over, said, “I got it for this fall coming. Me and Dino’ll go up north Alberta do some elk. You hunt, Geoff?”
“Me? No,” he said. He looked up at the antlers on the wall, pictured the young boy deer’s body before its heart was obliterated by a three-hundred Win mag. “What do you do after you shoot it?”
He shrugged, “Skin it.”
“You do that?”
“Yeah,” he said, “come on,” he nudged his chin to the garage door as he locked the rifle back up in the fridge. He walked them to the garage door, hit a button on the side wall and it opened up onto the lake view and a gravel runway that led down a steep hill to the water, taking a separate route than the picturesque walk down to the dock. There were a dozen people out there on his property and about a dozen kids too, running and playing, wearing their swim trunks and trailing beach towels around behind them, one boy with his tied around his neck like a cape. Nia was there, he saw her walking Odie, holding her hand and leading her down to the dock.
“Right there, Geoff,” Rocco’s deep voice behind him.
He turned and he saw Rocco pointing to a thick branch that arced out over the gravel drive from a maple with a huge trunk planted in the grass to the side.
“What?”
“We hang the deer there. Hang it by a rope around its neck.”
Doug was looking up too, beer in hand. He looked like he already knew what Rocco was talking about.
“Yeah,” Rocco said, “we cut it here,” and he ran a thick finger down Geoff’s front and said, “and around its neck, all the way around. We yank the skin, here,” he reached around behind Geoff and jabbed him between the shoulder blades, “tuck a tennis ball in there, loop around the skin with cable, you know, around the ball, then,” he pointed at the ATV with the winch, “we back the ATV up and the skin...just peels right off...turns the fucker inside out.”
“Wow,” Geoff said. Really fucking gross. “Who butchers it?”
“I send it away for that.”
Doug raised his beer, pointed with a middle finger down to the water, “You get muskies?”
“Huh, yeah. Mostly bass, though. Dino’s got a bass boat. He brings it up once a summer, we go out.”
Geoff turned and looked down at the water, the kids out playing on the bouncy castle, climbing up and then squeaking their wet bodies across it, trying to stand up. Boys climbing the turrets so they could jump down into the water. It was a beautiful day out there. Too beautiful to talk about death and killing and skinning. It was hot and sunny and the yard smelled like hot dogs and hamburgers. He had a beer in his hand and while it was no microbrew it was still beer. Maybe he and Nia would get a cottage. It wasn’t crazy. A cabin on the water. Take Odie up on the weekends and go swimming and canoeing. Odie needed some nature in her life.
Nia waved up to him from the dock. Standing there next to Odie, her long arm in an exaggerated hello over her head. He shielded the sun from his eyes with his hand and he waved down to them. She smiled broadly under her aviator sunglasses.
Odie pinched her nose and she jumped into the lake. She disappeared under a white splash and came up again six feet out, a wet grin plastered across her squinted face. No more water wings for little O. She’
d graduated the Aquatic Academy this past fall, got her Level Seven Tadpole badge and everything. Nia sewed it by hand to her swimsuit for her, and Nia was terrible at sewing but they were both so proud of her. She was an excellent swimmer.
Odie was treading water, doing her jittery dog paddle and encouraging her mom to come in with her. Nia kicked off her flip flops, taking Odie up on her offer, and Geoff chortled to himself, thought Uh-oh, knowing what was about to happen.
Nia was wearing a pair of slim khaki shorts with a rolled up cuff, a very light faded denim shirt tied above her belly button, the sleeves rolled up from her wrist. Under that was a thin shirt with horizontal red and white stripes. Her thick raven hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her stunning face was on full display. She untied the shirt and dropped it to the dock, tucked her long tan hands under the hem of the T-shirt and peeled it up and over, shaking her long black ponytail out of it before dropping it over her flips flops. She stood on the dock and unbuttoned her shorts, her long toned arms working and flexing. Her perfect breasts jostled under her turquoise bikini top. It was skimpy and the colour was stunning against her sun-bronzed skin. Then the shorts dropped and she stood in front of all these regular people like a supermodel in a skimpy two-piece bikini. Like she had no idea how she looked. Waving to O, bending and asking how cold the water was, crouching, her tits pressing together, her perfect round ass thrust out. Rocco and Doug had stopped talking about fishing and he was aware of them in his periphery, standing and swigging their beer and watching Nia just like he was.
He smiled to himself and nodded to Doug and Rocco, put a hand in his pocket and strolled down the grass with his beer to join his wife and daughter. Stacy and Maria were mad a minute ago—they were going to shit their bathing suits when they saw this.
NIA
The water was cold at first but once you were in it felt pretty great. If you kept your arms close to your body too long when you lifted them up again you got a bit of a frigid shock in your armpits. But the water was deep enough that Nia spent most of the time paddling and treading water and that kept her nice and warm.