Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good

by John Gould

  “Um, hello?” says Kate.

  “I just … I feel like we’re not done yet,” says Matt.

  “Oh. Okay.” Not pleased, not pissed off. Open, alert to clues.

  This wasn’t the plan. Just minutes ago, back there in the Starlight Lounge, Matt arrived at some firm resolutions. First off he’d wrap up his little chat with Kate, bid her farewell. He’d retreat to his room, crash early, hit the road at dawn refreshed and fever-free. Dawn? Noon at the very latest. He’d get on with it, get refocused on his real agenda, this whole crazy business of talking sense into Zane. Saving the bastard’s life (messiah, much?), maybe saving his own while he’s at it.

  To this end he announced to Kate, with some little ceremony—as he drained his third and definitely final pint—that he was married. No mention of the separate bedrooms bit, that’d sort of weaken his point. Not that the revelation seemed to alarm her much anyway. Relieved, is that what she looked? She said, “And you weren’t married last night?”

  Hm. “Okay, so how about this—I can’t die without having pulled off at least one one-night stand.”

  Kate put on a skeptical frown. “Are you saying you’ve never?”

  Matt nodded, spun his coaster like a compass. “It’s just the way I am.”

  “Compulsively committed.”

  He shrugged.

  “Jeez. Even when you were young?”

  “Well, there was Hanna and Helena that time in Morocco, but that was three nights.”

  Further processing. “Hanna and …?”

  “Right, true. So times two, call it six nights. And every other woman I’ve slept with I’ve kept on sleeping with for at least a few years.”

  Kate made as if to glower at him. “Don’t you think you should maybe warn a person? If all you’re after is a long-term relationship?”

  Matt bobbed his head, sorry.

  Kate gave her cap of hair a contemplative scruffle. “Whereas I’m the other way around. I’m not a cheater, I don’t mean that, I just … Child of an alcoholic, that whole business? Sorry, save it for my support group, right? I’m oversharing.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Yes I am, I do. But it’s kind of crazy, thinking about it.” She gave her big eyes a big roll. “My dad was an addict and that … it changes you. The way I am with men, always overdoing it.” She put up her hands. “But not tonight. Tonight I’m good, tonight I behave. Tonight I toddle off and leave you to sort out your own troubles, no meddling. Good luck with Zane. Good luck with everything. And thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Thanks.” She gave his hand a parting squeeze. Then she got up and left.

  And he went after her. WWZD? Hard to say exactly what Zane would do, but there’s not a chance he’d sit around stewing all night.

  Matt’s doing a Moses thing here, holding off the elevator doors like the two halves of a parted sea. “I think we should do something,” he says. “Something fun.”

  “Like what?”

  Yeah, like what. If they were to go somewhere it’d be a date, and what do you do on one of those? Matt’s mind skitters through time, ends up all the way back in high school. Dancing? Skating? “Bowling,” he says.

  “Seriously, bowling?” says Kate.

  “I don’t dance. I doubt there’s any ice.”

  “I see.”

  Following the desk-jockey’s directions (“Did you say bowling, sir?”), it’s a ten-minute drive through the twilit hinterland, the streets filling up as the mall parking lots empty. Kate’s unexpectedly old-lady at the wheel of her rented Taurus, hunched forward, hands at ten and two. They must still be at the horse-and-buggy stage out there in Halifax.

  Big night at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl. A few lanes have been sectioned off for an official competition—folks in matching jerseys hollering and high-fiving—but other than that it’s all giddy teenagers and twenty-somethings, in love or wishing they were. The crack and rumble of the balls, the ice-cube rattle of the pins, time warp or what.

  “We used to do this for birthday parties,” says Matt. “Zane and I, if there weren’t any good movies. No, let me get that.” What a man, shelling out for the two-tone shoes.

  “I’ve got big feet,” observes Kate.

  Giant, more like. Whereas Mariko, you think there’s a little kid visiting when you see her shoes at the door. Matt says, “You know what they say about women with big feet, eh?”

  “No, what do they say?”

  Right, should have thought of a punchline first. He gives her a leer, leaves it at that.

  “So,” says Kate, lacing up, “I guess you’re nervous about seeing him.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Zane. Are you afraid?”

  “Oh, no. No, I want to see him. I’m afraid I’ll kill him.”

  “Oh come on, you won’t kill him.”

  “He has no immune system, Kate.”

  She grants him that with a wobble of her head. “Okay, so what about when you’re over this?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “That he won’t be the same anymore?”

  “Sure. But more, what if I screw up?”

  “What’s to screw up, Matt? Even if he ends up more determined than ever and maybe furious at you too, well … Hm. But you’ll have done what you thought was right, and that isn’t screwing up, is it?”

  “Sure it is.”

  What Matt had forgotten about bowling—it’s been maybe twenty-five years—is that he’s good at it. He’s ridiculously good at it. Weird, when he has so few physical skills. Every once in a while a bit of prowess inherited from his dad will poke through like this—pretty ears on the ugly daughter of a beautiful woman, kind of thing. It’s a useless talent, bowling, or so you’d think. It did help Matt make headway with Charlotte, though, way back when, and it seems to be doing him some good with Kate too. She gives him a playful little shove each time they switch places, a teenybopper too shy for any other touch.

  The “Rock” part of Rock ‘n’ Bowl consists primarily of an old B-52S tape. “Private Idaho,” great song, film school days. “Dance This Mess Around.” You can’t actually stop yourself moving to this stuff. There are a few coloured lights too, and a mirror ball over each lane. Matt’s got another beer going, though he has to trot up a few steps to the lounge whenever he wants to gulp from it.

  It’s fun to watch people. Each bowler has his or her own little moment of preparation, a marshalling of focus. Each ball is a personal trial, after all, a test of concentration and therefore of character. Kate’s ritual is to rock back and forth from her heels to her toes a few times, as though seeking her centre. Then she bends, bustles forward—and spins her ball into the gutter.

  “Crappola!” Her ritual curse.

  “No, that was good. Maybe if you just—”

  “I hate tips, Matt. Just to warn you.”

  “Yeah, me too. I hate tips too. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Matt selects a ball. What’s his ritual? Will it still work if he watches it? He tries to leave it alone, let his body do its own thing. He rushes the motion, gets all crossed up and wonky … and still throws a strike.

  “Jerk,” says Kate. She slaps him this time.

  “Yeah, sorry. This is kind of bizarre, eh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean this whole thing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  “Me?” She’s waiting for her favourite ball, blue marbled with pink. “I don’t know, does it matter?”

  “Not really. ‘Rock Lobster,’ remember this one?”

  She bops to a bar or two, then turns to Matt. “I’ve been lonely,” she says. “I’ve been … I did something dumb.” Her ball arrives and she hoists it.

  “Oh.”

  “I got pregnant. I mean that wasn’t the dumb part, we were being careful, that just … that just happened. But wrong guy, or anyway wrong time. I was wild about him but he was young, wa
y too young. He wasn’t ready. It was bad.”

  “Gotcha. So …”

  “So I freaked out. It didn’t feel right but, well … nothing felt right.” She stops, registers this observation. “Yes, exactly, nothing felt right.”

  Matt nods.

  “It was early and everything, but …”

  “But still, yeah.” He gives her a grimace, I hear ya. “And now you wish …?”

  “No. Yes, but it’s almost too big to regret? It’s one of those things, if you let yourself regret it you aren’t even the same person anymore. It wipes you out. I see that a lot.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And maybe I’m not the same person anymore.”

  “Maybe not. What about the guy?”

  “We stayed together for a bit, but then I kind of lost it. Again. I moved out a few weeks ago. It’s all so … real all of a sudden.” She shakes her head. “Okay, new plan.” She stalks up to the line, bends and bowls the little-kid way, between her legs. It takes roughly forever for the ball to make it to the far end, but it stays between the gutters and has enough force left to tip over two of the five pins.

  “Yes!” says Matt.

  “Yes!” says Kate. They hug this time. They hug hard. “What about you?” says Kate as they let go. “Have you and … what’s your wife’s name?”

  “Mariko.”

  “MAH-ree-koh, have you two ever thought about kids?”

  “Yeah. We came close too. It didn’t work out.”

  Mariko was about nine weeks when she miscarried, which apparently meant that the fetus was the size of Matt’s thumb. The picture showed it scrunching up its first fist, stretching open its mouth for the first time—Matt and Mariko looked it up online together, the only mourning ritual he could bear, though Mariko did some serious smudging (the house redolent of sage and sweetgrass for weeks) and had women over to chant with her in Sioux or Seminole or something.

  “Oh,” says Kate. “That must have been tough. Almost having a kid, and then …”

  “Sure.” Rai (trust), they were going to name it if it was a girl—Mariko was exploring her Japanese half at the time. Raidon (thunder god) if it was a boy.

  But an abortion, that’d be a whole different thing. The choice. None of Matt’s women has ever had to deal with that—unless he were to count his sister, and maybe he should. Matt went along to the doctor’s office that day, playing boyfriend. The actual father—the odious Mr. Skinner, Erin’s swim coach (Matt had him for chemistry)—couldn’t possibly leave school for the afternoon, or let on to his wife that he’d been poking one of his proteges, though he was zealous about pulling strings and getting Erin the appointment. Matt wanted to tell their mum, but then she’d have told their dad and he’d have been furious and aggrieved and that would have been the end of Erin right there, so Matt kept it to himself. It’s maybe the most mature thing he’s ever done, carrying that secret around inside him. He turned out to be kind of useful on the big day too, asking questions, making notes on the post-procedure dos and don’ts. He held Erin before, when she cried, and he held her after, when she didn’t. In between he sat in the waiting room and made notes for his Coleridge presentation (“Pleasure Domes: ‘Kubla Khan’ and Disney”) and wondered how such a decision could be made, how you’d survive if life and death ever became your business.

  In comparison to Matt’s, Kate’s room is positively austere. The bed’s a scrunchy little queen, and you can count up the cushions without resorting to your toes. And in the biffy? No bidet! This girl’s slumming it.

  “What if I really am a different person?” says Kate. She wriggles out of her jacket, kicks off her shoes. Sheesh, they sure are big. “Think of all the people who’ve stayed in this hotel room. How come I only get to be one of them?”

  “Not my idea,” says Matt. He’s just eased himself into the armchair remotest from the bed (he’s achy from the lingering fever, and maybe from the bowling too), and is endeavouring not to notice all the little personalizations Kate has already inflicted upon the place. On the bedside table there’s a water glass, swags of glossy plum around its lip. Also a black elasticized sleep mask, a little white obelisk of floss, a splayed paperback—a murder mystery by the look of it, with a cheesy photo of a cadaver on the front—and a little plastic device of some kind, something womanly no doubt. The arm of a nightie protrudes from under a pillow, a foot of pantyhose dangles from a drawer. If Matt were the detective in that novel, what might he deduce from all this? Not much.

  “A woman collapsed right here where I’m standing, I bet,” says Kate.

  “Yeah?” Through the room’s heavy, nobody-home scent there peeps a little something, earthy and sweet. Matt got the odd waft of it last night too. Sandalwood?

  “She had to crawl to that phone to dial 911. Stroke, maybe? Heart attack?” Kate staggers a little, as though she herself might go down in a pile, then plunks herself on the edge of the bed. “Another woman’s water broke here.” She pops up again, pads into the bathroom, swings the door almost shut. Sound of water running, a kit being rummaged through. “A young girl masturbated for the very first time in this tub.” More rummaging and crinkling. Diaphragm? After the trauma of that last time she must have a dozen methods going. “A woman with six children looked into this mirror and thought, ‘I don’t deserve to live.’” She wanders back into the room, stands looking down at the bedspread, its crazy Pollockings of gold and taupe and black and brown. She says, “Who am I?”

  Matt shakes his head, holds his peace on that one. Another waft. Sandalwood, that’s India, isn’t it? Mariko burns it as incense. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac, and at the same time a calmer-downer for meditation. Could you do both at once, get in and get out? Sex and satori, could they go together?

  “Hey, Matt?”

  “Kate?”

  “I think maybe you should get out of here. I’m being good tonight, remember?”

  “Yep, will do.” He gets up and starts for the door but then he stops behind her, he freeze-frames. “The thing is though, I wouldn’t mind kissing you. Just to kind of take it back to the beginning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Before the start.”

  “Hm.”

  “But I don’t want to get you sick.”

  “So you could kiss something other than my mouth, couldn’t you?”

  Nape, nice word. Clavicle. Kate’s yummy, that sandalwood mixed with just a suspicion of salty sweat. He lowers her to the bed, peels back bits of her outfit as he progresses.

  So this is an affair, this is a fling. Fair enough. He’s supposed to be here about death, but sex will do for the moment, will it not? He’s taken action. The wrong action, sure, but give a guy a break.

  Kiss, lick, nibble, bite. How else to possess a person, to become one again, than to consume them? Kate’s laughing, and then she isn’t. By the time Matt works his way to the centre of her she’s going off like a fire alarm. It’s exhilarating in the way of a dare or a dream. He’s gorging on her, and he’s watching himself gorge, and the gorging and the watching feed each other like flame and gasoline—if, okay, gasoline could feed on flame. And then suddenly he’s on his back, and she’s squatting over him, and there’s no way in the world to stop this.

  Twice he’s had sex with this woman and he has yet to get out of his pants or into a condom. What’s with that?

  Matt’s going to regret this. Matt’s going to regret something about this, some part of this experience, but which one? Is there any way to figure it out now and avoid that part? Or what if this is the part he’s going to regret, the part where he lies here wondering which part of this he’s going to regret?

  “Phewph.” Kate peels herself away, flops over onto her back. “I guess that was me being good.” She’s got a stocking balled up on one foot but is otherwise bereft of cover. She isn’t super-fit but she’s super-unfazed, it would seem, by her body’s history, its intricate topography. She kicks her stocking up into the air, tries to catch it as it drifts bac
k down. “Look,” she says, “let’s get you out of those.”

  He lets her undress him, roll him under the covers. He’s a sleepy kid who got to stay up for the end of the show.

  “Hey,” he says, “you’re a woman.”

  Kate tucks herself under his arm, shoulder to armpit, facing out. The way Mariko does it is she rests her cheek on his chest, drools on him as she drifts off.

  “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask a woman. If a woman leaves a man, right?”

  “Right.” Kate reaches out, clicks off the bedside lamp.

  “Which is better, if she leaves him for a man or if she leaves him for a woman?”

  “Better for who?” Kate’s in burrowing mode, butting him into shape with hip and shoulder. “Better for the woman, do you mean?”

  “Better for the man,” says Matt. “If a woman leaves a man for a woman maybe he should be flattered. Maybe she’s saying, ‘You’re the best man in the world, and since I can’t make it work with you I’m giving up on all men.’ Or maybe he should be offended. Maybe it’s more like, ‘You’re such a complete pig you’ve turned me off your whole effing gender.’ Sort of thing.”

  “And you’re asking me this why?”

  “I have a friend.”

  It gets worse. Mariko isn’t just leaving Matt for a woman but for a Younger Woman. Sophie’s mid-twenties, late twenties at the outside. She’s at that perfect age, her skin finally clear, her eyes not yet clouding over. She works at the café down the road, an old haunt of Matt’s, and lives in a basement suite on Sechelt band land right across the street from the Pacific. It’s to this bunker that she and Mariko repair when they wish to be alone. Afterwards, if they stand on tiptoe (Matt pictures their two tushes tightened with the effort), they can probably get a robin’s-eye view across the front lawn and out to sea, where various duck-like birds navigate the chop, and barges load up with gravel at the pit. Gorgeous.

  Physically (why is Matt letting himself see all this just now?) Sophie’s everything Mariko isn’t. She’s the un-Mariko, the anti-Mariko. A touch pudgy, very pale. Blonde—dirty blonde, and just plain dirty. Matt’s never quite screwed up the courage to ask her how those dreadlocks work, how you get honky hair to do that. Meanwhile Jessie, the Jamaican woman who takes the other shift on the espresso machine, has straightened her hair and dyed it red. Go figure. Jessie’s almost frighteningly friendly, so Matt learned long ago to time his order at the café such that Sophie would take it. Those terse exchanges, studded with faux-Rasta locutions (he may once have called her mawn) have given him grist for some truly tangy fantasies.