The address on the napkin had almost worn offby the time I thought I was in the right neighbourhood. I remembered that she’d said it was off Main Street, in another up-and-coming neighbourhood that hoped to be the next Yaletown, but by the looks of it was years away from evicting the vagrant element that lurked in the shadows of rundown buildings whose former purpose and history peeled away with placards. I walked up and down the same city block, trying not to look lost, before I found the gallery. It was on the second floor of a brick building that, according to the sign, had once been a bank. The narrow stairwell was filled with people who were smoking with one hand and drinking with the other, moving and swaying as I shimmied by them.
It was Kal who saw me lingering in the doorway and invited me over. His longish hair was slicked back and he was wearing an untucked plaid cowboy shirt. It was trendy in a second-hand, I-don’t-care-about-fashion way, and when I looked at Irmila in her vintage lace blouse, flowing skirt and hiking boots, I knew she must have bought it for him. He rarely wore anything but a white T-shirt and jeans. He was naturally simple and easy, often unshaved, and here he was complicated by her. He smiled and took my coat. “Did you find it okay?” he shouted.
I nodded encouragingly. Speaking against the music and background noise was pointless. The studio had brick walls and reclaimed wooden floors. Cocktail waitresses circulated and guests looked thoughtfully at the photographs that were hanging on the walls. Humanscapes—that’s what Kal had told me the photographer said they were. Close-up portraits that were meant to evoke an interpretation of each life by following the shadows and lines of the face, the imprint of smiles, the furrows of worry, the sorrow in eyes. Occasionally Irmila saw me and raised her glass, but she never actually came and said hello. She was in her element, talking with a group of highly intellectual-looking people in corduroy blazers who I presumed had a string of useless degrees and could talk about philosophy and economics with an equal amount of ease. She leaned into conversations, and she touched men’s knees and held women’s hands when she spoke. Everything about her was a flirtation and proposition. Her friends were all one note, loud and passionate, their opinions clear-cutting paths of righteousness. “The U.S. funded the Taliban during the Soviet–Afghan War… they wanted to get the Soviets out because it’s all about the oil. It’s all about who controls the oil man.” Everyone nodded, adding in obscure footnotes and intellectual asides; some touted conspiracy theories, suggesting 9/11 had been engineered. “War is good for economies: the rich get richer and the poor keep dying.” The woman who’d said that looked my way and stared me up and down as my high heels punctuated the floor. Kal introduced me. She nodded, still staring at me as though I didn’t belong. I looked away and spent the evening on the outskirts of various conversations. I nodded and smiled, sometimes in no general direction, almost embarrassed by my ridiculously expensive shoes and postal code, ashamed that I knew more about designers and celebrities than I did about polit-icians and foreign policy. Eventually I walked around the room and in and out of conversations without contributing a word, content to linger in the lines of the photographs, to absorb myself in someone else’s view of the world… until I saw him.
He was standing in the corner of the room talking to a woman with an asymmetrical haircut. He still talked as if he were conducting an orchestra rather than a conversation: his hands opened and sliced the air with both passion and indifference. His blue eyes, framed in wrinkles, bracketed an easy smile that had softened with age and yet to me he seemed wholly unchanged. I stared at him so intently that I felt everything else disappear. Sound felt like heavy furniture and walls melted away. Kal saw me staring and leaned over my shoulder, whispering, “That’s Liam.” I nodded and took a sip of my drink, whispering his name in the rim just so I could feel it reverberate on my lips. “He’s the photographer.”
I looked away, trying not to look interested, trying instead to radiate the detachment that everyone else at the gallery seemed to show. “How does Irmila know him?”
“She met him in London. I think he was freelancing for some magazine that she worked for at the time.”
“Do you want me to introduce you?”
I grabbed his hand as he got up. “No. No. That’s not necessary.”
“Later then,” he said, wandering offto join Irmila, who was beckon-ing him like a child. I stood against the wall, staring at Liam through the shifting crowds of clinking glasses and cliquey conversation until he turned towards me with such purpose that I thought perhaps his name had es-caped my lips. He stared through me in the type of look that can elongate moments and rooms. I looked away, and when I looked back he was gone. I scanned the room. He was talking to Irmila. She whispered something in his ear. He laughed and looked at me as though I were in on the joke. I was horrified and humiliated in ways that I had forgotten, and blindly turned around and ran down the stairs, pushing past the cigarette smokers, who were now hard-packed against one another. I rushed down the street and in a few minutes I heard his footsteps behind me, his voice call out. I didn’t look back, and eventually his footsteps stopped.
3.4
T he next day when I arrived home, Liam was standing on the sidewalk in front of my building. I recognized him from a distance—his casual stance, hands in his pockets like a sheepish adolescent—waiting for me the same way he always used to.
“Irmila told me where you lived.” I stood motionless but for the jingle of keys in my hand. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her anything.”
“What’s there to tell?”
“Why did you run away last night?”
“Liam, why are you here?” I asked.
“To talk.”
“About?”
He rubbed his hand across the nape of his neck, dishevelling his already unkempt hair. “You’re not making this easy.”
“Am I supposed to?” I asked, brushing by him towards the door.
“Do you want me to go?”
I pressed my code into the security panel, opened the door and stood holding it. “No… don’t go.”
He followed me into the building, both of us quieted by the small space, the awkward formality of an elevator, which forced us to look up and watch the small-screen news bites—scenes of 9/11 and political debates on the promised war on terror. I tried not to watch it. When I did all I could think of were the jumpers, who’d looked like black birds falling from the sky.
“Where were you, when it happened?” I asked.
“London… The whole city just stopped, you know? Everyone watching the news, no one talking, people crying. For a few days it felt like life had changed, but then things don’t ever really change, do they?”
I didn’t answer.
“How about you? Where were you?”
“Here, of course. Always here.”
The doors slid open. With Liam walking behind me, the short distance to the loft seemed longer, yet neither of us tried to fill the silence. I unlocked the door and he followed me into the entryway, staring up at the vaulted ceilings, the wooden beams and steel rafters. He threw his jacket over the edge of the sofa and wandered around looking at everything from a distance as if he were in a museum. Arms folded behind his back, he stared out at the million-dollar view. He said nothing, occasionally pointing or gesturing at some place where we had once been, careful not to touch the glass.
“So, this is your husband?” he asked, picking up a picture of Sunny on a nearby table. “Irmila told me you were married.”
“And you? Are you married?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” He laughed, and shook his head as if he were trying to come up with a good idea. “I guess I’m just not the marrying kind.”
His answer collided with the recollection of Irmila not being the marrying kind. I wondered at the coincidence. I wondered if they’d been lovers. She was just the type of woman he would have loved. Her accent and ec-centricities were reason enough. I imagined t
hem drinking bottles of wine, talking of nothingness like it was nothing, making love on a velvet divan or a Moroccan rug after doing exotic drugs and drinking elixirs. I suddenly hated her.
“Do you want a drink or something?” I asked, trying to be casual, to be grown-up about seeing him.
“Yeah, sure. Your husband won’t mind my being here, will he?”
“He would. But he’s out of town.” I went into the dining area and opened the liquor cabinet while Liam circled the apartment. I leaned over the sideboard and exhaled, realizing that I had been holding my breath, rationing it since I’d seen him outside the building. “Is red wine okay?” The words came out fast, almost flustered.
“Sure, whatever… This place is amazing. Looks like you’ve done really well for yourself.”
“We do all right. Sunny’s a lawyer and real estate developer.”
“And you? Are you a famous or soon-to-be famous writer?”
I looked up. “Neither. I gave it up.”
“Why?
I uncorked the wine and reached for two glasses. “Just didn’t think I could make a go of it.”
“Did you try?”
“Sometimes you don’t need to try to figure out that you’ll fail.”
Liam was rifling through the pile of cds on the table next to him. “Hip hop? r&b? Since when?”
“They’re Sunny’s,” I said, handing him a glass.
“So is everything in your life sunny?”
“Ha. Very funny,” I said, trying not to look at him even though I knew he was looking at me, pulling me back in. I was flushed with just the thought of him.
“Do you love him?” he asked, looking at his picture again.
I tightened my face. “He’s my husband.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s my answer.”
“Did you ever love him?” He watched my expression for the answer that was buried in my long pause, and I hated that he could still do that, that he could see me without even having to try.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because it does.”
“Does it? Still?” I sat down, staring out the window as I explained the details of my marriage, surprising myself with the honesty and clarity with which I replied to his question, with which I told him everything. He was quiet, and I wasn’t sure if he was sad or disappointed in me. “And what about your love life?” I asked.
He sat down, his body turned to mine as if he were settling into a long conversation. “It’s not as interesting as yours.”
“Try me.”
“I had a girlfriend for a few years and well, it just didn’t work out.” “
Why?”
“We just grew apart, wanted different things.”
“Like?”
“Like… I don’t know… Do I have to know?”
“Well, yes. Don’t you want closure?”
“No such thing.” He took a sip of his wine. “You and I are proof of that.” I paused, surprised and frightened by his honesty. “So, if you’re not here for closure, what are you here for?”
“I don’t know.” He stared at me until I looked away. “When it comes to you, I never knew.”
“Did you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“I don’t know.” I sat up, as if my posture could straighten our talk and keep us in line. “Your photographs,” I said, changing the subject. “They’re great. I always knew you’d make it.”
“Well, I’ve hardly made it. Half the time I have to tend bar to pay my bills.”
“Is that what you did after high school, bartend?”
“Yeah, among other things.” He was playing with the remote control and accidentally turned on the cd player.
He turned the music up. “I still can’t believe that the new wave, post-punk, alternative girl I remember married a guy who listens to PuffDaddy.”
I reached for the remote. “I guess that’s because I wasn’t the same girl you remembered.”
He held the remote away from me. “And are you now?” He asked it like a dare, turning the music off when I didn’t answer, when I wouldn’t be affected.
I shrugged and got up. “I don’t know; I’ll let you decide… That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I guess I just always wondered what happened to you.”
“Well, you left and my life moved on.”
“I only left because I couldn’t stay.”
“And I only stayed because I couldn’t leave.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Both… I did try. I went looking for you the next week, but you were gone already.”
“Would you have really gone with me?” When I told him that I would have, we both fell silent until I let what might have been fall away from us. “Is that why you ran away last night?”
I nodded. “You said you’d wait.”
Liam stood up and knotted his fingers into the belt loops of my jeans, pulling me closer with just a look and a slight tug. I felt his breath on my neck and watched his thoughts grow in the slow up-and-down movement of his larynx. Only small words could escape him.
“Can I stay?”
I saw him every night for the following two weeks, and each night resembled the night before. We made feverish love. Quiet and violent. Sometimes on the floor, other times up against a wall, or on a table, pants around our ankles, shirt buttons undone, arrested arms and legs, knocking paintings sideways and oriental vases from their decorative stead. We never talked after. We straightened the couch cushions, put on our clothes, not quite able to look at each other as though we were surprised by what we had done, surprised by what we could do to each other. At other times—usually early in the morning, when we were only partly ourselves, surrendering to the consciousness of waking dreams—we made love slowly, deliberately, fingertips tracing the shadowed portions of our bodies. His collarbone, the curve of my hips, the slope of his back, every bit to be memorized and remembered—until the phone rang, alarming us and reminding of us of our reality. Neither of us moved; we both knew it was Sunny. Liam rolled onto his back, turning away from me, his silhouette outlined in darkness. “When will he be back?”
“Soon,” I answered.
3.5
L iam was staying in a converted-factory studio above a string of barred-windowed shops that never seemed to open. In the day the cobblestone alleys were full of sleeping homeless men, and at night the space filled with the sounds of cheap, high-heeled prostitutes and drunken men speeding away in cars. “You get used to the noise,” he said one night, after police sirens and flashing lights had startled me awake. I lay back down, listening to his breath overlap mine, following the flashing lights that flickered over his face and crawled across the dingy walls dotted with dirt-squared outlines where pictures had once hung. I wondered if they had been his pictures or someone else’s. Aside from the row of boxes stacked by the wall, very little in the apartment was actually his. Even his couch was a hand-me-down from the landlord. When I’d first come over, I was unnerved by his barren living style and his half-packed life, and I opened and closed cupboard doors looking for some permanence—only to find his locked suitcase in an empty closet. I hadn’t asked him about it but I hadn’t stopped wondering why he lived as if he were on his way somewhere.
I slipped out of bed and opened up one of the boxes, sifting through his books and photographs. There were postcards of blue-water beaches, some postmarked and others not, some written on and others not. There were photos of him with long hair in Montreal, pictures of him with a shaved head in who-knows-where, pictures of people I didn’t know, women I didn’t know, pictures of him acne-faced in junior high school and even pictures of me then and now, all of them piled together in loose stacks of memories and moments that had no sequence, chronology or currency. The previous day, after Liam had developed some of his pictures, he’d handed me one that he’d taken on one of our morning-afters. I was wearing a black slip, sitting with my kne
es pulled up to my chest, my head against the window as if I were looking for someone, longing for someone. “This is how I’ll remember you,” he said. I smiled, even though for him I was already becoming a memory.
Now as I leafed through his belongings, letting each picture fall care-lessly into the box, I wondered how long it would be before that picture of me was placed on top of the pile, something to be remembered and forgotten, something to be boxed and collected and carted around from city to city. “Meena, come back to bed.” Liam threw his leg across the blanket where he expected my body to be.
“In a minute.” I stared out the window, thinking backwards and looking down at the street, which was lit only by a flashing vacancy sign. I wondered if Harj still lived in the area. I hadn’t received a card from her in years and though I had no reason to think harm had come to her, every time a woman was reported missing in the Downtown Eastside, or an unidentified body washed up on the shores of the Fraser River, I worried helplessly that it was her. Even now I wondered if I’d recognize her if I passed her on the street. Perhaps I’d walked by her dozens of times with nothing but a vague sense of familiarity. I rested my head against the cold window, my fingers running along the crack in the glass, listening to the wind that whistled through it until I couldn’t distinguish the sound from Liam’s breath. An hour later, Liam lumbered out of bed and turned on the coffee maker, going through his usual production of yawning and stretching as he went. “Did you even sleep?” he asked, sitting down across from me and looking, like me, at the sliver of opaque moon that was woven behind the lightening sky.
“No, not much.”
“What’s wrong? What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
I sat up, sighing and stretching, weary-boned, as if I my skin had been wearing me and no longer fitted. “I was just thinking about Harj, wondering where she is.”
He was quiet for a minute. “Have you ever tried to find her?”
I shook my head and curved my back like a cat before slumping back into myself.
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