“It’s refreshing to be in a bar that has escaped the reclaimed-wood-and-filament-bulb aesthetic that represents inoffensive good taste these days,” Vivi says, admiring the carousel horse suspended behind her.
“Coen loves a merry-go-round,” Decker says with a mischievous smirk. “N’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“There’s a story here,” Raina says, tapping her palms on the tabletop. “Tell me!”
“It’s stupid,” I say. “It’s just something dumb that happened long, long ago.”
“Coen’s just embarrassed,” Vivi says, poking my arm with a teasing red-tipped finger.
“So here’s what happened,” Decker begins. “As how all the best stories start, we were being a nuisance in the south of France. Coen is right. This did happen a long, long time ago. The three of us were spending the summer backpacking through Europe, you see. We met these two Danish guys while strolling along the boardwalk, and we all proceeded to get fabulously and glamorously intoxicated, as one does whilst in the French Riviera. That is, everyone but me, since I’m an angel.”
“Decker was so innocent and pure back then,” Vivi pipes in. “I suppose he still is. Let’s not forget to mention that Coen was hopelessly enamoured with one of the Danes, who had this Prince Charming thing going on: blond locks, baby-blue eyes, European chivalry, the whole package.”
“He sounds dreamy!” Raina squeals.
“Oh, he was,” Decker confirms.
“Stop it!” I plead.
“He was an undeniable dreamboat,” Decker goes on. “He was also wearing the deepest V-neck imaginable, which gave us all a good eyeful of his bronzed, hairless chest. So there we were, having a ball drinking everything in sight when Coen had the best idea. He wanted to break into the carousel in the park. It was closed, so there was a net wrapped around the entire thing. It was very uncharacteristic of Coen to make such a reckless suggestion, but I think being in the presence of Prince Charming might have emboldened him, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Raina says with a wink.
“Being the only sober one of the lot, I tried to talk them out of what was surely a hare-brained idea, but of course I got vetoed,” Decker continues. “The five of us raced each other to the carousel and climbed the net. The break-in was a success. We rode the horses. We took photos. Prince Charming was so enchanted by how daring our friend Coen was. Then things went horribly wrong. Two flashlight beams appeared out of nowhere, and we could hear someone shouting in French. La police! Of course, we panicked. We scaled the net as quickly as we could, then started sprinting across the park away from the flashlights, only to realize there were only four of us. Coen was missing in action!”
I almost forgot about Decker’s masterful skill as a storyteller. His hands dart around himself for emphasis, and I can imagine the scene like it were yesterday. Raina is on the edge of her seat in anticipation for the story’s pièce de résistance, which I know is coming.
“Being the loyal friends that we were, we couldn’t leave him behind. Once we got back to the carousel, this is what we saw: poor Coen hanging from the net, upside down, wearing nothing but a shirt and his underwear. His foot had gotten tangled in the net as he made his escape. His pants were so tight that they split right down the seam. We had to help the policemen untangle him while he was half-naked. The cops found it so funny that they let us off with a warning.”
My face goes flush with embarrassment, but I laugh along. The rest of them are howling. “Those were my favourite pants,” I say.
“If it weren’t for Coen’s tight undies, it could have been a long and interesting night in a French jail cell,” Vivi says. “He saved the day. At least, his undies did.”
“Was Prince Charming even more enchanted to find that you were as clumsy and flawed as the rest of us mortals?” Raina asks.
“I doubt he was ever enchanted by me. It probably didn’t help that I was so visibly terrified by the cops.”
“You did look like you were going to start crying at any moment,” Vivi confirms.
“Who needs Prince Charming and his deep V-neck, anyway?” Raina asks.
“We have all the charm we can handle right here,” Decker says, hooking his muscular arm around my neck.
“I’ll drink to that,” I say, clinking my glass with theirs.
“Let’s dance,” Decker says excitedly. “I need to move.”
“I think I’m okay right here,” I say. “You go and move that body of yours.”
He takes Vivi by the hand and the two of them saunter over to the dance floor, shaking their hips along the way. Raina and I watch them move like clownish ballroom dancers. The expressions on their faces are deadly serious as he twirls her, then she dips him, then he lifts her off her feet and spins around.
“Your friends are a riot,” Raina says. “I can tell how much they care about you.”
“They are pretty awesome,” I agree. “Sometimes I take them for granted, and I hate myself for doing that. In times like this when I really need them, they’ve never let me down. I’m lucky.”
“Good people are not easy to come by. Hang on to them.”
Vivi and Decker are now doing some sort of interpretive waltz while everyone around them grinds together in a uniform mass of shaking and sliding.
Raina turns to face me. “Let’s dance.”
“I’ll pass,” I say. “You go.”
“Coen Caraway, you are here in this twisted carousel bar with your two closest friends and a strange Englishwoman you’ve just met. You are going to shake that skinny butt of yours, and you are going to like it.” She stands and extends her hand. I don’t have a choice in the matter.
I look at her, then at the dance floor, then back at her. With a sigh of surrender, I take her hand. She smiles triumphantly.
Vivi and Decker pounce on us as we join them beneath the spinning mirror ball, wrapping their arms around us, screaming. Then we dance. We jump up and down. We spin one another around. We dip. We shake. Everyone else looks at us with mocking amusement, but we don’t care.
I forget about the throbbing in my chest, which has been steadily intensifying over the past few days. I forget about the smoke that has been clouding my mind. Everything fades away, replaced by the flashing lights and pounding bass. The only things that exist now are Decker’s sweaty tangle of golden hair, Vivi’s slender arms as they wave in the air, Raina’s sunset dress as it glides around her body, and our neon-tinted reflections surrounding us. We move and dance and laugh all night. I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror, and we look immaculate. Happy, even.
MOUNT PLEASANT
Six years before the crash
“It’s definitely orange Creamsicle.”
“No way. It’s close but not quite. The clouds need to be wispier to be Creamsicle. That’s more like tangerine vanilla sundae.”
Vivi and I often debated the colours of the sky. We used to spend hours lying on the lawn behind my parents’ house, watching the sky turn from bubblegum blue to cotton candy to orange Creamsicle, then climax in a blaze of melted amber before dying out into a sea of India ink. No sky is quite like Vancouver’s when the sun sets on a clear day.
“Tangerine vanilla sundae isn’t a thing,” she said, turning her head toward me.
Vivi and I were lying on a blanket on my apartment’s outdoor terrace. The midsummer sky was a deep orange haze punctuated by pillowy clouds like scoops of vanilla ice cream.
“Tangerine vanilla sundae is certainly a thing,” I said. “Look. That’s it, right up there.”
She considered this for a moment before saying, “Replace vanilla with marshmallow and I’ll give it to you.”
“Deal.”
It was an important and exhausting day. Elias was moving out of his old studio suite and into my loft apartment in the heart of Mount Pleasant, a neighbourhood brimming with my favourite art-filled cafés and divey dance halls.
Gathering the courage to ask him had taken some time. It was a big step, the
first time I would live with someone other than a roommate or a brother. I knew it was probably too soon — we had been together for only a couple years — but I reached a point when I could no longer be alone.
I pictured the two of us making breakfast together in the morning. He would set the table and prepare the coffee while I would fry the eggs. I imagined us covering the walls with photographs of ourselves laughing, travelling, and strolling hand in hand. He would insist on decorating the space with planes and aviation maps, which I would agree to so long as he didn’t complain about my books and plants. We would compromise. We would collaborate. We would build a home together.
I wasn’t used to dreaming like this. I was never one to let myself aspire to such contentment, so mundane yet seemingly unattainable. I suppose it had never occurred to me that I could have it. I wanted it this time.
He had hesitated when I finally asked him to move in with me. We had picked up coffees from his favourite café and were wandering through the neighbourhood, admiring the murals painted on the buildings. It was meticulously planned to appear casual and spontaneous. I popped the question while we sat on a park bench underneath the shade of cherry blossom trees. The resident dogs frolicked in the field in front of us. He paused and looked down at the coffee in his hands, but he said yes.
Decker and Elias spent the afternoon transporting his belongings while Vivi and I helped haul them up to my apartment. It wasn’t a difficult job. Most of his old furniture had already been sold or donated. Everything he owned was packed neatly into a dozen cardboard boxes that now littered the floor. His entire life in boxes.
Now, Decker and Elias were picking up Thai food for dinner as Vivi and I gazed at the sky.
“It’s still hard for me to believe how domesticated Coen Caraway has become,” Vivi said.
“Domesticated? Never.”
“This is the first step,” she said. “The boyfriend moves in. Fine. Then the boyfriend becomes the husband. Then you adopt two children from Cambodia, or maybe one is Bolivian for the sake of diversity. You push them around in designer strollers. You vacation in Maui because it’s easier than Madrid. Before you know it, you’re wearing matching argyle sweaters and hosting family dinner night on Sundays.”
“How dare you say such things.”
Vivi laughed. “We mock it, but it would be a good life. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if everything I said came true.”
“We spend so much energy rejecting everything that would associate us with our families, only to become a slightly altered version of them.”
“Now that is dark.”
“I know,” I agreed with a laugh. “It’s scary because it’s true. I’ve always modelled myself to be the opposite of my father, of Clark. It’s a waste of time really. We may be so fundamentally different in how we think and behave, but at the end of the day we all want the same basic things. To be loved. To feel safe. To attain something resembling happiness.”
“It’s okay to want those things, babe. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I always thought we were too enlightened for that, you and I, but now I’m not so sure. Truthfully, I think I do want the designer strollers. The argyle sweaters. The predictability. The comfort. I would take all of it if I could.”
Vivi turned to me with a serious look in her eyes. “There is no reason why you couldn’t have all of that.”
I made a sound like a doubtful laugh. “Like you said, this is the first step. So far, so good. But do you really see me getting married? Or raising a family?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Don’t you?”
“It just seems idealistic,” I said. “For Decker, sure. He’ll get the white picket fence. And you’ll get whatever you decide you want. It’s different for me. I don’t think I’m supposed to have a happy ending.”
“Coen, look at me. Leave the past in the past. It doesn’t own you. You deserve the life you want as much as anyone else. You deserve Elias. You deserve every good thing that comes your way. Don’t rationalize yourself away from being happy.”
Vivi spoke with conviction, but I was doubtful still.
“Do you think I’m making a mistake getting Elias to move in?” I asked, shifting my body on the floor to adjust my stiffening legs.
“Why would it be a mistake?”
“I just wonder if it’s too soon. There are so many things I don’t know about him. I want to believe that living together will bring us closer, that maybe he’ll start opening up more. I have this feeling in my gut telling me it’s not going to work out that way.”
“I don’t know if this will end up being a good decision,” she replied thoughtfully. “But the decision has been made. We just spent the entire day hauling his entire life into your apartment. All you can do now is try your best to make things work and see what happens. It’s better to regret the outcome of a decision than to regret not making the decision at all.”
“You’re right. There’s no going back now.”
“You might want to try being less insufferable though,” Vivi said with a sly smile.
I responded by flicking her right breast. She gasped with exaggerated shock at the indecency, then stabbed her talon-like fingers into my armpits. I convulsed on the terrace floor, laughing uncontrollably as my nerves exploded beneath her touch. She knew my weaknesses.
“Surrender!” I screamed. “Surrender!”
She collapsed beside me, panting between giggles. “Don’t throw a snowball if you’re not prepared for an avalanche,” she said.
We lay on the floor and savoured the quiet, the only sounds being our breathing and the occasional sizzle of a bus as it travelled along its electric wires. The sky had darkened into a calming shade of indigo — what Vivi liked to call raw denim — and I wondered what was taking so long for the boys to return with dinner.
“I want to show you something,” I said, remembering what I had found earlier that day. I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up off the floor, careful not to strain my back, before running inside. I returned a minute later with something in my hand.
“Take a look at this.”
Vivi sat up, curious. “Oh my god. Where did you find this?”
“It fell out of one of Elias’s books.”
“Is that him?”
“It must be. Look at him. He looks exactly the same, just miniature.”
Elias appeared to be around eight years old. He wore tattered brown shorts and a wrinkled green shirt. No shoes. His hair was thick and wild. He looked at the camera with a curious expression, his arms hanging at his sides. A house made of concrete blocks with a corrugated metal roof stood behind him. Farther in the distance were two rectangular, industrial-looking buildings painted pale red. This faded photograph is the only evidence I’ve ever seen of Elias as a child.
THE PASSAGEWAY
Six days after the crash
I’ve always hated flying. Unlike Elias, I belong on the land.
Boarding an airplane requires the surrender of all control. It consumes my thoughts for the entire flight. I can feel it wake my nervous system, the cortisol rushing through my blood like tennis balls being released down a waterslide.
Logically, I know that being on a flight is one of the safest places I could be. It is a hypercontrolled environment in which every variable is governed by protocol and safeguards. When the needles begin to prick and my breath becomes shallow, logic doesn’t bring much comfort.
Some flights are better than others, but I’ve learned a few methods to remain calm. I observe the other passengers making pleasant small talk and flipping through the duty-free catalogue. They always appear to be untroubled and trusting.
I watch the flight attendants go about their jobs. They tell passengers to buckle their seat belts. They hand out blankets and discard cups. From takeoff to turbulence to landing, they’re unfazed. For them, this is routine and their manner is always placid. Sometimes they even look bored.
Above all else, I think about Elias, so
strong and confident in his uniform. I imagine the pilot of my flight embodying the same qualities, even looking like him. This would always bring me a sense of security. I would trust someone like Elias.
He never knew how much I hated to fly. I never told him. I think I hid it well.
• • • • •
I wonder whose bed I’m in. This is now my seventh morning waking up in this same bed, in this room, on this island, and it still takes me several seconds to realize where I am, why my body isn’t wrapped in the familiar texture of my sheets, why I can’t feel the warmth radiating from another body beside me. It is my mind’s cruel trick, to deny these foreign circumstances as my new reality so that I wake up each morning free of pain — just for a moment — before the same crushing realization.
The air is staler today. The smoke in my head is heavier. An image flashes through my mind. I am standing in a room of mirrors, looking at myself looking back at me, lights floating around my face in a kaleidoscope of colour. My skin is green, then blue, then purple. My face is distorted, eyes wild and teeth bared.
I don’t remember how we got back to the hotel last night. I don’t recall the time or crawling into bed. I only remember the movement and the reflections. I felt so free. It was euphoric. Now the memory disturbs me, as though I’m coming down from a spectacular high.
“Did you see me last night?” I ask aloud, a rattle in my voice. “I haven’t moved like that in a long time.”
Silence.
“Clark was delightful at dinner, wasn’t he? He never does disappoint.”
Nothing. I lie in silence for a minute before going on.
“I could really use you right now.”
No answer.
“Where the hell are you? Where did you go? You said you wouldn’t let me go through this alone.”
I pull the sheets over my head. I close my eyes and breathe in, then out.
I remember seeing the wedding invitation.
I inhale, dragging the air into my lungs.
After Elias Page 12