Blasted (36 page)

“And I'm sorry if this is coming on too strong…” he took his hand from my shoulder and scrubbed both palms over his blunt-featured face with a tired gesture. “But I think this city is killing…”

“Jason,” I interrupted, “my arse is freezing off!” He looked shocked, then hurt. “Let's get a nightcap,” I gestured across the street. He paused, then nodded and led the way to the bar. I tottered after him. Another drink to warm that cold thing.

The place was full of mirrors and deco stylings. Jason and I were too scruffy to be drinking here but we bellied up to the bar anyway, and Jason ordered two pints. “You ever been here before?” I asked, and he nodded. I took a swig of my beer and felt a little better. “So what is this precious communication you have to impart?”

He scuffed at the maroon carpet. “Nothing.” Jazz blared over the sound system.

“Ha! Nothing, huh? Just nothing?” I sounded so jovial that I scared even myself. “Come on, confess.”

“Well. I'm going to frappe la rue soon…”

“What?”

“Frappe la… oh, never mind. Leave. Go. Get in my little van and take off for fairer horizons.”

“Yes,” I said warily.

Jason shrugged. “So my offer still stands.”

I was about to say, What offer? then realized what he meant. He still wanted me to go with him. “Look, I… Do you know where the cans are in this place?”

“
What
?”

“The bathrooms.” Once more hurt dawned in his eyes. My voice rose. “I am listening, I just… Hold on, will you? I can't concentrate when – oh, for God's sake.”

“They're on the other side of the dance floor,” and he pointed down a dark, narrow hall. I backed away, muttering something about being right back, he wasn't to move, I'd return in a jiffy. Jason shrugged, stabbing his hands into his pockets. I opened a janitor's closet, then the door to the men's can. I didn't care; I fled inside.

The bright lights hurt my eyes. I tottered over to the row of urinals, pulled down my jeans, and peed. It's a bit of a thrill for a girl; arse-foremost is easiest, but I put my hands on my hips and thrust forward. Getting my jeans up again was something of a production – I really was a bit drunk. I went to a sink and wrenched on a tap. Cool water gushed into the basin, splattering me. I adjusted it, running the soothing liquid over my wrists.

There was a mirror over the sink, and I glanced up. My skin was grey, dark hair snaking around my face, eyes glittering feverishly in the fluorescent lights. I splashed cold water over my face and sniffling, stood hunched over the gushing sink. Water dripped off my chin, some falling to disappear in the rush down the drain, some trickling down my neck and between my breasts, icy. The sound of running water echoed in the empty bathroom. I coughed and sniffled some more, and that echoed too. The sink seemed low; my elbows buckled, my hands almost slipped off the sides. The water spun down the drain, around and around, mesmerizing. Clockwise. I hunched over it like an old woman, sick.

I'd had to stand on a little wooden footstool to reach the kitchen sink as a child. God, how I'd hated doing dishes. I'd always pull the plug with a flourish and watch the dirty water spiral down, bits of vegetables and grease and burnt leavings sucked down the drain with a muffled roar. In winter the draught from the back door, the linny, would creep up my neck and I'd almost welcome the hot water on my hands. The latch had been broken – for how long? – Dad hadn't gotten around to getting a new one.

Except I knew it was a lie. He just hated mechanical things, hated complicated contraptions with little bits and pieces, hated the hard, cold, unyielding nature of metal. Unlike every other man up and down the Southside, my father never had his head inside the hood of a car, never fixed a radio, kept tools in the basement but rarely went down there. We'd kept that door shut by wadding a piece of newspaper under it for over two years; within the larger span of relatives and neighbours it had become a standing joke.

One night: me toiling resentfully over the dishes, wind loud outside and rising. My parents sat silent at the kitchen table behind me. Suddenly the wad of newspaper gave way, and the door flung itself open with a bang. My mother's voice, her hand slapping the table, “Neil, how many times?” And him saying, “Don't start on me.” I looked over my shoulder, equal parts excitement and fear. My mother arose; she looked very tall in her white clothes, standing over my dad hunched at the table. The door kept banging in the autumn wind coming down over the Hill; the windows rattled. She drew herself up even further, readying herself for one of her dramatic pronouncements. “If you do not fix that door,” she said, her head flung back, “I am leaving you.” She walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance.

My father had sat staring at the flapping door. Slowly he'd gotten up and adjusted the newspaper so it wedged shut again. Then he sat back down. I'd turned back to the dishes and let the water out of the sink, sucking and rushing in its dismal vortex.

The next day he came home with the brand-new mechanism wrapped in brown paper, the four-inch-square of black metal with two porcelain knobs and the brass latch inside it. Something closed in his face. “I'll put it on tomorrow,” he'd said, but by the next day he'd gotten that look. I came home from school and found him standing in the back yard; “All around me, they've got me surrounded,” he said, and when I took hold of his sleeve and shook it, he started and looked down at me vaguely. Not seeing.
All around me
. That night as I lay in bed I heard his uneven footsteps, eager on the dying grass over the Hill, and by the next morning his wedding ring was on the dressing table and he was lying in bed.

My mother said she'd “had it.” I heard her voice through the walls, talking, talking. “Baby, I know you don't feel well but you've got to put that lock on. Get up. I can't go through another winter with that door. You promised. I don't care how hungry you are. Get up.” Her voice rose and rose and I called out in fright, “I'll do it! I'll put the lock on.”

Down to the kitchen. The mechanism lay on the table where Dad had left it, and I unfolded the brown paper carefully, still hearing my mother's voice above my head. The thing was cold, black, and I couldn't figure it out, I wasn't old enough, I didn't even know where the screwdrivers were. Voices rose. I heard a door slam. And then my father came down the stairs and into the kitchen, an awful tight smile on his face, his eyes glittering. He moved with a strange stiffness, and sidled past the furniture like he'd never seen such things before.

I moved away from the lock like it burned me.

He spent a half-hour trying to affix it to the door, but he kept dropping the hard iron thing. There wasn't anything the least bit funny about this anymore. His eyes were flat; his face changed. He leapt to his feet, the thing in his hand, while I cowered in a corner of the linny as far from him as I could get. He drew his arm back and flung the latch with all his strength, losing it in the grass. Then his eyes passed over me, a stranger's eyes. He'd gone back upstairs, lain down on the bed. I'd sat by the flapping door, a scared little sentinel, until Mom found me there.

She'd sent me up the Hill to find the latch, and put it on herself. Angry. Scared. “Your father,” she spat out, two sharp black screws clenched between her soft lips. “Your father is hardly a man at all.”

But it wasn't true, it wasn't. He was mine, my own. Something began to fill my throat, to rise into my mouth. The water spun down the drain, a black hole in its centre, sucking light and air down with it. I was bent nearly double, my face almost touching the swirling water. Down, around, dizzying, pulling me.

I tugged on the handle between the faucets so that the sink was plugged. Water gushed into the basin, filling it now, splashing up into my face. What had my mother married? – a man who couldn't screw a latch onto a door, who got sick, who couldn't carry on a normal conversation half the time – no, there was no mystery to it, they'd fought and hurt, that's all. My stomach cramped and I retched, beer bitter in my throat. Metal binds, metal binds. The air was thick around me, full of sound – I shook my head, the water gushed, the sink was almost full, and then I turned off the tap. For an instant everything stopped. Silence. The thickness of the air increased, as if the atmosphere had coalesced into hard dancing fragments. My face nearly touched the still surface of the water. Around the darkness of my own reflection, things, little things were gibbering and singing, jabbing at me. I couldn't move. They had me, a part of me, just like they'd had my father. Their voices filled my ears. I'd left my little girl with them and they were raising up a little scrivelled Ruby-thing. Some winter, some winter soon, it would take my place.

I tried to bat them away with my hands, but they played all around me.

I tried to pray, and could not. Go away, I begged, leave me alone, but none of it was any good. It was over; they had me, they had me.

At that, my old familiar rage rose up in me. “Have it your way, then,” I said. “You little motherfuckers.” And I pulled the plug.

The vortex sucked, counter-clockwise it went, and around my head went the little things and the gibberish rose. The air filled with crying and screeching. “Go to hell!”

The door behind me opened, letting in sound and air and darkness from the hall outside. I whipped around, pressing the back of my hand to my mouth, part of me realizing that my hands and face were no longer dripping, they were dry as bone. A man in a crumpled suit, hands busy undoing his fly, stopped short at the sight of me. He stood there, swaying a little.

“Oh… uh, sorry.”

“No, this is the men's can, I…” Confused, I turned back to the sink. It was dry. “I'm just leaving.” I edged past the guy, legs weak. He smiled sloppily at me, his arms hanging at his sides, apparently unaware that his pants were agape.

There was no sign of Jason at the bar. He'd probably gone off in a huff; I'd been in there for at least five minutes, and he'd already been mad at me for not listening to him. I was a lousy friend, and an even worse exgirlfriend. The place seemed oddly emptied-out: couples were dancing drunkenly to a loud, hideous song; someone had knocked over a giant potted plant, soil trailing out onto the parquet. The bartender was stacking empty pints into glass towers and I went to him, asking if he remembered my friend, big and shaggy? The guy nodded. “He left.”

I looked up and down Queen. The Gladstone was a little further west, now re-done into a gorgeous hotel with artist-designed rooms. Jason had said he had a show there, and I hadn't even said anything – no congratulations, no interest, nothing. There it was, red brick glaring in the electric lights. And there was an unpaved lot across the road. I wove my way through traffic and into the lot, and saw what could only be a van belonging to Jason – dilapidated, three different colours of paint, a smokestack out of the top. There was light coming from inside. He was home.

“Jason?” I tapped on the passenger window. “Jason?” I tapped louder, knocked.

“Go away.”

“What?”

The side door slid open with a muffled roar, and I jumped back. “I said, go away. Where the fuck were you?”

“Where? I was in the can, that's where I was.”

“For two hours?” I had never seen Jason like this – angry, hurt.

“What the hell…”

“That's
my
line!”

“Calm down, Jesus.”

“You think you can just treat people like shit. Taking off like that. I'll tell you something, your friends can only take so much. We've had just about enough of your goddamned dramas.”

“So you're the spokesman now, is that it?” My voice sounded cold despite the wringing fear inside me.

He stepped down out of the van and leaned in close. “Why did you do that to me?
Why did you do that
?”

“What? What?” I almost begged.

“Ffff-fuck! Take off on me!” He glared, towering over me, body taut like a spring. “Did you crawl out the fucking window? Is that how goddamned much you hate to talk to me?”

“What window?”

“The
bathroom
window, what do you think! I barged in on two women just trying to find you! Jesus!” He turned away and stumbled back into the van, starting to close the door. I grabbed onto the handle and tried to hold it open.

“I wasn't in there. I went into the men's bathroom by mistake.”

“Good for you.”

“Listen to me!” He heaved on the door; I was no match for his strength.

“So what? Did you screw some guy while you were in there? Is that what took you so long?”

I let go of the door at the same instant he did. He lifted his head to look at me. “I didn't mean that.”

“Yes you did.” Tears slipped down my face. “And I take longer than five minutes to ‘screw some guy.' You know that.”

Jason sat, almost collapsing down onto the floor of the van. “You've been gone for over two hours.”

“What? Liar. What?” Neither of us moved. “No.”

He lunged toward me and crushed me to him, his lips hard, moaning in his throat. He picked me off the ground and threw me into the van, coming in after me and sliding the door shut. He kissed me again, and again. This wasn't the Jason I knew – this wasn't how he'd been the brief time we were together – he'd always been so gentle, hesitant. He tore at our clothes, he flung me up onto the narrow cot, striking my head against the wall. He didn't notice, was kissing me again. I grabbed his hair, pulled until with a little questioning noise of pain he took his lips from mine. I wanted to say something, tell him I couldn't love him, but before I could he pulled my jeans down and despite myself I opened up to him, yearning and afraid. So suddenly it made me gasp, he thrust inside me. Again and again, the metal zipper of his jeans sawing at the flesh of my inner thigh. He fucked me with something building at the back of his throat, a keening sound. He braced himself with his palms on my shoulders, the weight of him holding me down. He shoved deep inside me, held for a moment; nothing moved, a breaking point. Then he pulled out, hot wetness spilling over my stomach. He writhed over me, calling out. His sweat dripped onto my face. He was saying my name.