The Delusionist

by Grant Buday

  “In all its magnificence?”

  “Its heights and depths. Its dreams and despairs. While you sat, I voyaged.”

  “I’m jealous.” She leaned against him and in spite of everything Cyril was suddenly happy walking along Granville with her, even if he was also a little indignant that she hadn’t cashed in her ticket. After all there would have still been time to catch The Apartment. They got on the bus and sat at the back. Connie unbuttoned her high-necked dress and reached inside her brassiere and pulled out an orange.

  “I’m starved.” She pulled out the other one and offered it.

  Cyril felt the bus pitch like a small boat in a steep sea. She set the warm fruit in his cold hand: its heat penetrated his palm. No ball of gold, no meteor, no bauble from an ancient treasure hoard was more valuable. As the bus wheezed and jolted up Granville they peeled and ate their oranges—the sweetest orange he’d ever experienced. At Forty-First Avenue they transferred and headed east then got off and walked, the lines in the sidewalk ticking past beneath their feet as if they were walking railroad racks. Cyril’s mind raced ahead. Kiss her? Ask her out again? When they reached her gate she took care of all questions by hanging her arms over his shoulders and kissing him, not a peck but a real kiss, long and lingering; sighing she moved closer.

  “I loved your drawings,” she whispered. “I could taste the metal, like blood in my mouth.”

  He was alarmed, and yet apparently she liked that. “I’m glad.”

  “It was real,” she said, her tone implying she was starved for something real.

  Cyril had two drawings in the year-end show. One was of his dad’s hammer and pliers and welding mask. The other was of a small anvil with an egg balanced on top. Both drawings were done in pencil that shone like dully gleaming lead, and both were big, two-by-three feet, and filled the paper to the edges. He’d worked for weeks on them down in the basement at his dad’s old workbench.

  Cyril and Connie kissed some more and all the way home he tasted citrus.

  The next afternoon he and Gilbert tossed the football in the alley. Gilbert dropped back and launched a bomb. “Kapp!” he shouted. Cyril sprinted. “Willie the Wisp!” Gilbert’s throw sailed over the hedge and into the cemetery and struck a gravestone and went wobbling off across the grass. Shoving his way through the laurel hedge Cyril retrieved it. Gilbert’s every second throw bounced off carport roofs, flattened flowers, or shattered graveyard vases. But he hurled the ball with a gusto Joe Kapp would have envied.

  Later, they headed for their booth in the Aristocratic, where Gilbert set his elbows on the table and leaned forward demanding details.

  Cyril knew a kiss wouldn’t count for Gilbert nor would an orange, no matter where it had been, so he shrugged and tried to appear offhand.

  “Not even a feel?”

  Cyril tasted citrus again, but how could he mention that?

  “Figures.” Gilbert sat back, relieved that Cyril hadn’t jumped ahead in the race to losing their virginity. “What did you see?”

  “Psycho.”

  “Sure, and I got two cocks.

  Cyril said nothing, merely gazed off out the window at the traffic. Silence was the only weapon that worked with Gilbert; you had to wait him out.

  “No shit?”

  “You don’t really see anything,” he said, hoping Connie would cover for him.

  Gilbert yawned as if it didn’t matter anyway. He had a dismissive manner, as if he’d heard everything before. He had long teeth, dark blue eyes, and hair as thick and black as a slab of fresh tar. His jaw was big but his nose small, as if his features had been mismatched.

  “I’m thinking of killing myself,” said Gilbert. They’d known each other since the first grade, long enough for Cyril to indulge such posturing. Gilbert had no intention of croaking before he made his million. He was obsessed with schemes that ranged from forgery—using Cyril’s draughting skills—to robbing Shaughnessy mansions, to stealing whisky from Seagrams where his old man drove a forklift. Not a huge money-maker, that last one, but it would give him ‘operating capital.’

  Cyril indulged him. “You down?”

  “Bored.”

  “Who isn’t?” Cyril watched the cars waiting at the intersection. When the light changed they began moving forward in an obedient fashion, as if they were all hypnotized, obeying some voice from above. Was that the future? Was that adulthood? Cyril worried about the future, but he wasn’t the least bit bored, not now, not since his date with Connie.

  “How you going to do it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Poison?”

  Gilbert grimaced. “I wanna die, not suffer.”

  “Carbon monoxide?”

  “The old man won’t even let me start the car.”

  “Booze and pills?”

  “Blow it and they put you in Riverview and you end up wearing pyjamas the rest of your life.”

  “Shoot yourself.”

  “Kind of requires a gun.”

  “Drown?”

  Now Gilbert sat forward. “That might be good. Lemme borrow your weight shoes.”

  His weight shoes were new: cast iron, Joe Weider, and had cost him eight bucks. “Buy your own.”

  “You’ll get them back when they drag the bottom.”

  “Put rocks in your pockets.”

  “It’s my last request.”

  “What if they don’t find you?”

  “I’ll leave a note and a map.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  The next Saturday Cyril and Connie saw The Apartment, and they held hands and afterward walked across the bridge then angled their way home, eventually reaching the corner of the cemetery. Connie said she envied him living across from a graveyard. Cyril went into a Bela Lugosi accent. “Ze smell of ze cemetery is good. It remind me of Transylwania.”

  “The veeping and moaningk is music to my pointed ears,” she said, right on cue.

  They wandered around reading headstones by starlight. Many graves had photos set right into the markers. Connie bent to read something scratched into a slab: “Bastard. I’m glad you’re dead.” She gave a thumbs up. “Nice.”

  It was a warm night and they heard cars beating their way up Fraser Street. Sharing a piece of Black Cat gum, they stood face-to-face and blew bubbles that touched and popped over each other’s mouths and then chewed them from each other’s lips. He hooked his forefinger into the front pocket of her jeans and she did the same to his and they stood there, both leaning away and holding each other’s weight in a game of trust, then they pulled toward each other and kissed again.

  “We taste good,” she said.

  He embraced her and slid one hand down to her rear. She removed the hand but held on to it and they resumed walking through the trees. Connie patted the trunk of a maple as though it was the haunch of a horse.

  This was his favourite tree in all the graveyard. He’d spent a lot of time in that tree, contemplating life and death, the past and the future, the North Shore Mountains, and the crows that migrated east each evening. How appropriate—how right—that it was the one Connie chose to pat.

  Connie reached for the lowest branch but it was too high, so Cyril made a stirrup of his hands and hoisted her up. She caught the limb and hung there a moment, feet pedaling the air before hauling herself into a sitting position against the trunk.

  “Okay, see you,” chirped Cyril.

  “Fine. I’ll become a tree spirit. Every autumn when my leaves fall you’ll hear my lament in the wind.” She put the back of her wrist to her brow.

  He leapt and pulled himself up beside her. The world smelled of grass and sap and bark and Black Cat gum. The next branch was within easy reach. They moved methodically from limb to limb and the higher they went the farther away school, the city, the world receded.

  “Think we’d die if we fell?” she asked.

  “Only if we landed on our heads.” He thought he should suggest this to Gilbert.

  “What if w
e only got brain damage and drooled all the time?”

  “Here.” Four branches fanned from one side of the trunk forming a platform. Cyril lay on his back with his hands behind his head. Through the leaves he saw stars.

  Connie positioned herself beside him and they lay a long time without speaking, the only sounds the far-off traffic and the applause of the leaves stirring in the warm wind.

  TWO

  AS THEY SLID into a booth at the Aristocratic, Connie found a copy of the Sun and began paging through it. Her eyes goggled. “Cyril  . . .”

  By the stricken look on her face he thought someone must have died. “What?”

  “They shut down Lenny Bruce last night at Isy’s!” She threw herself back and seemed to have trouble breathing. Staring past the booth’s juke box, she nodded with slow deliberation as if at one more piece of evidence and stated, “This is why I gotta get out of here.”

  Cyril had seen Lenny Bruce on the Steve Allen Show. Dirty comic. Sick comic. Drug addict. But he was funny. “Get out of here—when?” he asked as casually as possible.

  “I don’t know.” She sat forward, elbows on the table, and as she reread the article she rubbed her temples as if in pain. “Soon.”

  It was the first he’d heard of this plan.

  She folded the paper and slid it aside. “What a two-bit back woods town.”

  Cyril felt naive for never having had such a sophisticated thought. He was seated with his back to the door but he heard it open and saw Connie’s eyes shift.

  She leaned closer and said in a low voice, “Look at them.”

  Cyril turned and saw his brother with a girl a full head taller than him. When Paul spotted Cyril he winced as if at a sour smell and steered the girl to the farthest booth.

  Connie asked, “What’s with him?”

  Cyril said, “He kind of hates me because I didn’t have to eat leaves.”

  “So your family used to be cows?”

  “In the war. They had to eat dandelions. Or shoes. Or both. I don’t know. They boiled nails and drank the water for the iron. He thinks I pulled a fast one by not being born until after.”

  “Is that why he’s a runt?”

  Paul was five-foot-three, with bad teeth, brittle bones, and a pinched chin. “Maybe.”

  “My dad says in China they eat grasshoppers.”

  “Raw?”

  She was indignant. “Baked. Or barbecued. With sauce.”

  “Does he tell you a lot about China?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about China except what he reads in Reader’s Digest.”

  The discussion of Paul, China, and eating grasshoppers buried Connie’s declaration about leaving Vancouver. Cyril hoped it was a performance, like Gilbert’s suicide talk.

  That evening at supper Paul said, “So who’s the chow mein Lily you were all kissy-kissy with?”

  “Who was that guy you were holding hands with?”

  Paul lunged across the table but Cyril was too fast.

  “Interracial marriage is illegal in some places, you know. You could be put in jail.”

  “So is homosexuality,” said Cyril. “But at least you’d be with guys.”

  Paul sneered.

  Cyril almost felt bad. It was awkward being bigger than his older brother. But Paul was always provoking him. So far there’d been no racial remarks at school, which was a relief because if there were Cyril knew he’d have to fight. But what a noble cause! Not that he and Connie made a big performance of kissing in the hallways or holding hands like some couples who liked turning their relationships into theatre. He went to the kitchen sink and began doing the dishes. He liked the hot water on his hands.

  “Yeah, that’s about your level. Get used to it. You’ll be washing dishes the rest of your life.”

  Cyril tried to sound charmed, as if Paul had complimented him. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Yet he worried that Paul might be right. Art and Phys. Ed. were the only subjects he excelled in and Paul never let him forget it. “Dishwashing’s a fine art,” said Cyril. “You gotta have brains to be a dishwasher.”

  “Is that a fact?” Paul went downstairs to his bedroom and returned with a book. “Okay, genius. Let’s find out how smart you are.” He slapped a book down on the counter. Test Your Own IQ.

  “I know how smart I am.”

  “Yeah, how smart? This smart?” Paul indicated an inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Or this smart?” Paul stretched his thumb and forefinger as wide as they’d go. Paul was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black jeans and perfectly shaped sideburns. He was twenty-four and finishing up the cga program at ubc. Seven years younger, Cyril was five inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. “Everyone wants to know how smart they are.” Paul became soothing. “You’re right. You’re smart enough to be a dishwasher. You could probably be head dishwasher—if you worked hard,” he added. He held the book out. Cyril considered punching Paul—not in the face but in the chest—just hard enough to drop him on his ass and maybe knock the wind out of him. Paul however beat him to the action by whacking him across the chest with the book. “Go on. It’ll be fun.”

  “My hands are wet,” said Cyril.

  “I guess you haven’t learned about tea towels yet,” said Paul sympathetically. “That’ll come next semester. See.” He took one from the drawer and showed it to Cyril.

  Cyril dried his hands.

  “Go on,” said Paul in the fond and encouraging tone of a mentor. He set the book in Cyril’s hand. Cyril looked at it: light, small, seemingly innocent. He tossed the book into the soapy water, which splashed up onto the window and drooled down like saliva.

  “Your honour,” said Paul in his best Perry Mason, “I rest my case.”

  Cyril and Connie spent the summer at the movies, at the beach, and in the cemetery. It was hot and dry and the cemetery grass grew pale and crisp and the rare breeze coursing through made the leaves shimmer.

  One afternoon on the way to her house they discussed The Hawaiian Eye. Cyril said Nancy Kwan would be better as Cricket than Connie Stevens. “But you’d be better than either of them,” he added. “You’ve got presence.”

  “Presence?” She sounded sceptical yet attentive.

  “Star quality.”

  That was too much. “Oh fuck off you bullshitter you.” But she couldn’t contain her delight. How open and innocent and vulnerable her face looked.

  “I’m serious.” He gazed frankly into her eyes.

  She turned away. It was not often that Connie couldn’t meet his gaze. She seemed to be studying something in the distance, something she wanted, her eyes hopeful, her mouth slightly open. After a few moments she turned back to him and said, “Want to see my sword collection?”

  It was the first time he’d been in her house. Would it be like a pagoda, with dragons and black lacquer furniture? From the outside it looked standard, an older place with wooden steps leading up to a deep porch with squared pillars and stained glass windows flanking the panelled door.

  As soon as they entered the house they saw an elderly woman standing in the living room as though waiting for them. She looked nothing like the balding crones scuffing up and down the Chinatown sidewalks in baggy pants and matching coats lugging bags bulging with tumorous vegetables. She was slim and elegant and stood with her hands primly folded before her.

  “Grandma, this is Cyril Androidchunk,” said Connie.

  “Enchantee.” She held out a lily-like hand, pinky poised. It took Cyril a full half minute before he understood that he was supposed to kiss it. He did. It smelled of jasmine.

  The living room had a Danish modern couch with matching chairs and coffee table, on the mantel ceramic black panthers and above it a gold landscape: gold lake, gold tree, a gold man and a gold woman in a gold pagoda. And Connie’s grandmother, her hands folded once again like a society hostess at a soirée.

  “Bon après midi,” she said.

  “Bon après midi
,” replied Cyril. He put his hand on the newel post carved like a pineapple and went up the stairs after Connie.

  “Thinks she’s France Nuyen.” Connie took a key ring from her pocket and gave it a jingle. “I like keys,” she said. “And locks. Something about them.”

  “An answer and a question,” said Cyril without thinking, and it occurred to him to draw locks and keys, that you could do a whole series of locks and keys.

  This arrested her attention. She extended the key toward his chest and making a single click with her tongue gave the key a twist as if opening him up.

  Connie entered her room. Cyril hesitated: he’d fantasized about her room: the look, the smell, the very air, convinced it must be a dimension beyond his most erotic visions, a boudoir of silks and oils and incense. The first thing he saw was himself in a full length mirror, the second thing was a sword at his neck.

  “En garde, English pig dog.” Connie’s left hand gripped the sword and her right perched on her hip. Her chin was high, her left knee bent. “Cool, eh.” She lowered the blade and leaned on it like a cane.

  Cyril felt his neck for blood. “Where’d you get that?”

  “It’s an épée.” She sliced the air making the blade sing.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Elle est très dangerous,” she corrected him.

  On the wall half a dozen swords lay in a rack. Broad blade, narrow blade, curved blade, scimitar.

  Connie stood before the mirror making faces at herself. Left eyebrow up, left eyebrow down. Right eyebrow up, right eyebrow down. Sad face. Happy face. She screamed silently, then let her head fall back and laughed silently. Finally she gave her cheeks a vigorous rub between her palms then clapped her hands together. “Come on.” She slid the window up and climbed onto the roof. Cyril leaned on the sill and looked out and discovered that it was a long way down, with the jutting pickets of a fence waiting like fangs.

  “Hey.” She was straddling the ridge above him, wiggling her toes. Letting her head fall back she emitted a yowl like a newly escaped soul.