Don't I Know You?

by Marni Jackson

  I do like my new sheets, though. Navy flannel. Part of my positive embrace of winter. What is flannel, anyway? Is it shorn from some flannel beast, a sheep specially bred by IKEA? And I don’t mind the way the gray light enters my room at this time of year in such a diplomatic way, easing me into the day. Especially when I do not get up until ten. Leanna doesn’t care when I get up as long as I deliver by four thirty. That woman has an easy job.

  So that’s how my day begins, normally. But, and I want to get this down before it fades, this morning was different.

  I rose at 9:20, and drew the curtains. More than a foot of snow had fallen. The cars parked across the street looked like desserts, white îles flotantes of meringue. Only Barry next door had already shoveled his way to the sidewalk, and was throwing down seedlets of blue chemicals to melt whatever was left. Affable Barry has had heart surgery and smokes, a lot, standing under his porch light. I do worry about the morning when he doesn’t step out of his house to light up another cigarette, because he is often the first person I see when I leave the house—if, indeed, I leave the house—and the last person who sees me when I come home alone at night. I would miss Barry.

  What was that song that Ryan wrote in high school, about our previous neighbor, a Portuguese man who insisted on pouring concrete over his yard even in the most lethal heat waves? “I Fear That My Neighbor Has Died.” Good song. I miss him, and Ceri too. Why did I encourage them to live in other countries?

  I was about to step into the shower when I heard the doorbell ring. My Victorian house has a wonderful arrangement—a brass ring on the outside that you pull. Through a series of Rube Goldberg mechanisms linked by a cable, this causes a coiled metal strip to spring open and strike a brass bell that then rings loudly in my hall. Everyone, even the jaded postal person, admires the bell. It probably goes back to the year the house was built, 1896. In the nineteenth century, our midtown enclave of cottages and brick houses became the living quarters for the working men who built the rest of the city—a neighborhood where cabbage soup was a staple. Hence the name, Cabbagetown. Now, of course, the houses go for a million, even semidetached.

  When you’re young, living in a vintage house confers character. You buy some history for yourself. But as you get older, the parallels between your aging house and your own decline can become oppressive. Your life becomes a list of repairs and maintenance. Replace back stoop. Change furnace filter. Book physio.

  I wrapped my Chinese silk robe around me and answered the door. A tall broad-shouldered young man with an impressive nose and a joli-laid face stood there, dressed like a crossing guard, holding a large snow shovel.

  “Cool bell,” he began.

  “Yes. It’s very old.”

  “Clear your walk?”

  “I don’t know. How much?”

  “Twenty bucks, including the side lane and access to your bins.”

  “Why do you look so familiar?”

  He shrugged. “I’m on TV sometimes.” Being recognized seemed to pain him. His eyes were a little too close together but the overall effect was handsome somehow. Then it clicked.

  “You’re Adam Driver!”

  He pulled off his tuque. Unruly dark hair, a couple Cindy Crawford moles. Large head.

  “Bingo.”

  “While We’re Young! Loved you in that.”

  At this Adam Driver looked relieved, because I didn’t go straight to Girls. I had just seen him in the movie Inside Llewyn Davis, a slightly softheaded film about a singer/songwriter trying to make it in New York, who fails. He plays a more successful musician who is willing to do whatever sells, including a ridiculous song called “Please Mr. Kennedy.” A small part, but he stood out, as usual. Any scene he’s in gets big fast.

  “And I love Justin Timberlake,” I said, a little too enthusiastically. “But you were great. It’s like you have your own dialect when you act. The way you kind of subvert the normal rhythm of a sentence.”

  This too-detailed, show-offy feedback nevertheless made him smile. His eyes warmed. Then we both realized that I was in a robe, it was very cold, and snow was sifting into the front hall as we spoke, building a tiny dune inside the threshold.

  “Okay, shovel away, Adam. Just ring when you’re finished.”

  “Cool.”

  I closed the door. Have a shower, I thought, but don’t wash the hair. There was an unopened round of Brie in the fridge, and half a loaf of decent bread left. I took the cheese out of the fridge to come to room temperature. Adam would be hungry after all that shoveling.

  From the upstairs bedroom, I peered through the slats of the blinds. Barry was out smoking next door, watching this young stranger work. Adam hurled the snow methodically, first left onto the front yard, then right, off the curb. Left, right, always moving west. He had unzipped his big parka. He wore those heavy cuffed garbage-man gloves. I guess this is how he keeps in shape, I thought.

  I got into the shower, with its brand-new generous multi-stream Flo-Q head. Standing under the torrent of hot water, I couldn’t help coming up with more copy. “Shower Yourself with Love,” or perhaps just “Get Wetter.” But Leanne did not like innuendo.

  Afterward, wrapped in a towel, I went to check on Adam again from my office window. He was already halfway to the green organic bin in the lane. Neat margins. God, it’s great to watch a young man use his body. His parka was off now and his yellow snow pants were held up by crossed suspenders over a thick sweater. Snow pants can be sexy.

  I put on my second-best jeans and a little black tank top under a blue striped men’s shirt. Mutton dressed as lamb? What the hell.

  Then I went down, sliced the bread, cracked the packaging on some biscuits, and arranged them around the Brie with the cheese knife. I went to the door just as Adam was ringing the bell.

  “Look at you,” I said idiotically when I opened the door. I pretended to assess the bare sidewalks. “Great job!”

  “It’s still fresh,” he said. “Not too heavy.”

  “Come on in and have a bite, Adam,” I said. “You must be starved.”

  “I could eat,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “By the way. That scene in What If, where you play Daniel Radcliffe’s horndog roommate? Fantastic.”

  “The nachos scene?”

  “Yes! You sit down across from Daniel with this huge plateful of food and you say—”

  At this Adam got into character. “‘I’ve just had sex…’”

  “‘And now I’m going to eat some…’”

  And here we both shouted the word.

  “‘Nachos!’”

  “Which could have been such a throwaway moment.”

  “Well, I can thank the writer for that one.”

  He unlaced his boots and put his parka on the newel post of the banister, then followed me into the kitchen.

  “Hmm, Brie,” he said, already paving a cracker with it.

  “Not nachos, but close.” I chuckled. “I suppose we could reverse the order.”

  What was I saying? Was I suggesting to Adam Driver that he eat my cheese, and then we have sex? Wasn’t it enough that he had shoveled my walk for a very reasonable price? But when stars are involved, even minor ones, desire always escalates. It’s like a street drug.

  “Ha-ha,” Adam said. Perfectly at ease, letting it go by gracefully.

  He looked out into my yard, where I had neglected to take in the patio furniture. Like a 3-D printer, the round wrought-iron table had duplicated itself in a lacy layer of standing snow. It was very pretty and somehow French. Adam ate and gazed at the snowscape. He had a wide brow and his face was dominated by that nose, but changeable. There was a latent fury in his expression, even when he smiled. I poured him a tall glass of coconut water and he drank it down in one go.

  “Gotta stay hydrated,” he said. He tilted his chair back. “So, I’m going to work this side of the street, then do Sackville, then knock off for the day.”

  “Sackville’s got deep front yards,” I sa
id helpfully.

  “You’re right. Maybe I’ll only do one side.”

  I felt relaxed with him. Fatal. I tapped the back of his hand on the table.

  “I know everyone must ask you this but … what’s going to happen with you and Lena Dunham in the next season?”

  I could see that I had now disappointed him. This was probably why he was shoveling walks in Toronto. To be not Adam Driver.

  “Sorry, can’t say. Embargoed. But I’m in four of the episodes. That I can tell you.”

  “And Lena…?”

  He made a voilà gesture with one hand. “Just as you would imagine. Creative. Open.” He laughed. “Super open.”

  “She’s handled her success pretty well, I think. For someone so…”

  He looked at me mock-lasciviously. “Young?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, young is just one factor, like being born in Ohio or … having a minister for a father,” he said. “But it’s not all-defining.”

  “I guess. Sort of.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. I had to break his gaze.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Hello, Rose.”

  The doorbell rang again. I could tell by the shape through the pebbled glass that it was Barry, from next door. Reluctantly, I went to answer it. His shy bulk filled the doorframe. It was snowing again.

  “Hi, Rose.”

  “Hello, Barry.” We enjoyed our little formalities.

  “I noticed that a young man came by to shovel your walk. Would he … be interested in doing ours?”

  Barry, who was in his forties, lived with his mother, Ruth, a spry eighty-two-year-old who was always the first one out the door in the morning, to walk her little dog.

  Adam Driver heard all this and came down the hall.

  “Your walk looks pretty clean,” Adam pointed out. Barry had cleared it earlier, so that Ruth could make her way.

  “Snow’s falling fast though,” said Barry, “and I don’t want to take any chances.” He smiled and tapped his chest. “Somebody in Mississauga already died this morning from shoveling. It’s the sudden intense demand on the heart muscle.”

  “He’s just having a bite to eat,” I offered, waving my hand toward the kitchen.

  Adam stepped out the door to consider the job ahead of him. The snow was coming down thick and wet, already filling in the dark blanks of the pavement. When he came back inside there were flakes in his hair, perfectly formed crystals.

  “Okay. But let’s give it an hour,” he said. He unwound his scarf.

  “I’ll light a fire,” I said brightly.

  “Sounds good,” said Barry, retreating. “You’ll have more to work with then.”

  I pulled out my phone and texted Leanna: DOWN WITH A BUG, COPY IN TOMORROW OK?

  Adam Driver closed the door gently behind him, so the bell didn’t ring, and brushed the snow out of his hair.

  “I don’t think we need a fire,” he said.

  Some time later, Barry knocked, waited, and rang the bell. Then we heard him below us in the laneway with the shovel, scraping cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  The Reading

  Rose felt a cold sore coming on. In the mirror she could see her bottom lip puffing up at the corner like a tiny Yorkshire pudding. It must be all the heat, she thought: the eucalyptus steam room, the Finnish sauna, the sulfur baths. She was almost homesick for the March streets of Toronto with their blackened pyramids of curbside ice.

  This was her third day at Rancho Agua Caliente, just across the Mexican border—a reward she had given herself for finishing the novel, even though the book didn’t have a publisher yet. Which could be tricky, after the dismal sales of her previous one, The Bludgeoning.

  “Let me pay half,” her ex had insisted. Having just learned that Judy was pregnant with twins, Eric was feeling both expansive and guilty. Rose accepted.

  In her thick white robe Rose trudged down the hall to a reflexology session, already looking forward to the single glass of white wine she would allow herself for dinner at the raw-food buffet. She’d have to go early, to avoid sitting with Fanny the Manhattan broker. That woman was wound up.

  There were three other white-robed women in the waiting room—the friendly inseparable sisters from Ottawa, who always did the pre-breakfast hike up the mountain, and an attractive older blond woman with luminous skin wearing horn-rim glasses. She was deeply immersed in a hardcover book. Rose squinted to read the title: something-something, by Ann Patchett.

  At one point the woman snorted with laughter, pushed the bridge of her glasses up, and gave an audible sigh of pleasure as she turned the page. She had a long, thin nose. Even reading, her face was expressive, alive.

  Then Rose realized that the woman with the book was Meryl Streep. For sure—that emotional skin. Her pale blond hair was caught up messily in a tortoiseshell barrette and she wore no makeup. On her feet were the too-big pink paper slippers that came in the spa welcome kit.

  A smocked employee opened a door, releasing a cloud of aromatic mist, and summoned the two sisters inside. Rose was left sitting opposite the actress, who pulled a tissue out of her robe pocket and rubbed it under her red nose.

  “Every time I go to a place like this I come down with something,” she said to Rose with an apologetic smile. “Maybe being pampered is bad for your health.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Rose. “All this pressure to relax has given me a cold sore.” She pushed out her lower lip.

  Meryl laughed. “I think I love stress, actually.” She closed her book and crossed her hands over it. “You know? And I hate massage music.”

  “I brought my own playlist. Lots of Prince.”

  “Some klezmer would be good too. Very soothing.” The actress extended her hand, her eyes dancing.

  “I’m Meryl, by the way.”

  “Yes, I know, I mean, I recognized you, of course. I’m Rose.”

  “And what are you here recovering from?”

  “I just finished writing a book. A novel.”

  “Oh, good for you! That’s huge.”

  “But I’m having trouble getting rid of the voices,” Rose said, pointing to her head. “I mean, of my characters.”

  The actress rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. I’ve found ways to banish them, though.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Well, I play tennis, really vicious tennis.” She laughed. “I kind of murder the voices with my racket. And I sing in a choir, which helps.” She unclasped her barrette and gathered up her hair again, closing her eyes dreamily. Her eyelids fluttered. “It reminds me that in real life I am not Adele.”

  Rose laughed.

  “But you’re so lucky,” Meryl said. “You get to make your characters up. I have to take what they offer me.”

  “Don’t you have your pick?”

  “It’s been better lately,” she said, knocking on the table between them, “but it’s still a boys’ club, Hollywood, trust me.” She poked her feet deeper into the pink slippers. “So what’s your book about?”

  Rose tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice. Her doubt always clouded it.

  “It’s a thriller, sort of. About a woman, a writer doing research on some environmental activists who have this scheme to save the Great Barrier Reef. She’s on a ship with them when they get hijacked by Somali pirates.”

  Well, that sounds ridiculous, Rose thought.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Havoc.”

  “Do you have a copy with you? I’d love to read it.” She wagged the Ann Patchett. “This one’s almost done.”

  “It’s not quite published yet,” Rose said, studying Meryl. She was maybe a touch too old to play Renata, her main character, she thought. But it wasn’t out of the question.

  “Well, what about a PDF? I don’t mind reading on a screen.”

  The actress took a pen out of her robe pocket and wrote h
er email on the back of the reflexologist’s card.

  “You sound Canadian, Rose,” said Meryl. “The way you say ‘about.’”

  “I’m from Toronto, actually.”

  Meryl clapped. “Toronto! I was up there for the film festival last year. I loved it. Don and I have fantasies of moving up there sometime.”

  “But the weather’s not great. Even the summers.”

  “Oh, the weather’s crap everywhere now,” said Meryl, waving her hand like someone talking to a smoker.

  A door opened and a pretty Asian woman with silver eyelids emerged.

  “Rose? Hi, I’m Kumiko. Come on in.”

  As she went by Meryl, the actress gave her arm a pat.

  “See you at dinner, Rose. Or maybe we could sneak into town, get some fish tacos. I’d love a cold beer.”

  “Sure. Me too. I’m in Room 344.”

  “Have a good session.” She stuck out one leg with a delicate purple starburst on the calf. “I’m getting my spider veins done too. Zip-zap!”

  Rose stepped into a small dark chamber and climbed onto the padded table.

  “She’s sooo nice.” Kumiko sighed. “I wish everyone was like her.”

  “She does seem nice,” Rose said, trying to be warmer and more vivacious than usual.

  “We get lots of celebrities here, and some of them…” Kumiko bundled warm sheets around Rose, leaving her feet bare. She began pressing a point on the arch of her left foot and Rose felt a deep, gratifying ache.

  “It’s a bit tender there.”

  “That’s your transverse colon. Don’t overdo the brown rice here. People think you can’t go wrong with brown rice, but it’s extremely acidic.”

  She gave herself over to Kumiko’s skillful prodding, and her spa-oppressed spirits began to lift. Soon she would be eating fish tacos with Meryl Streep.

  * * *

  Rose pulled her roller bag out of the taxi. It was March but freakishly warm. The front yard was pooled with meltwater, and the flotsam hidden under the snow all winter long had surfaced: ash-white dog shit, a stiff mitten, broken branches from the January ice storm.

  She could hear her landline ringing as she unlocked the door. A dash-dot-dot long-distance ring. She put on her cold telemarketer answering voice and picked it up.