Blasted (8 page)

When I opened my eyes again it was dark, I was hot and sweaty, and I didn't know where the hell I was. A little window showed a dirty post-sunset sky, the summer-city garbage-smell wafted in. Some noise had awoken me. The room tilted and swam as I sat up too fast, clutching the sticky sheet – oh. Clyde's apartment. Voices. Voices had awoken me.

His, and a woman's. Oh, shit.

I wormed my way across the floor and stuck my head through the bedroom doorway into the darkened kitchen. Just then the fridge switched on by my head, a sudden whir and whine. I almost bit my tongue off before I realized what it was. It was harder to hear the voices now: Clyde, murmuring… a feminine giggle, then her reply, giggling again. I heard Clyde's voice approaching the kitchen.

“Do you want to drink tea, and talk? Or beer, and flirt?”

I grabbed my helmet and jacket where they lay by the fridge and rolled back into the bedroom, crouching naked in the dark. He opened the fridge – light sliced across the bedroom doorway. I heard the clink of bottles as he moved back into the living room; I guess they were flirting. Or, rather, he was talking, and she was making appropriately fascinated noises. Just like I did. What a fool!

But what to do? Another garbage-laden breeze washed over me from the window. I crawled over to it. Small, but it had no screen, no bars, and it opened onto a back alley. A little to the left, about ten feet down from Clyde's window, a flat garage roof spread invitingly. And there was absolutely no one in sight. I scrabbled around, feeling for my jeans and Tshirt, underwear, socks, boots. The voices in the front room murmured on, Clyde's rising and falling, rising and falling.

I really had to take a piss. I started pulling on my clothes, hoping Clyde wouldn't suddenly grab this woman and sweep her into the bedroom like he had me. When I got to my bra, I paused. It was a hideous bra. I was fleeing like a coward, but at least I could leave Clyde a little memento. I got the rest of my clothes on, then draped the bra artistically over a lamp.

I turned back to the window. I'd have to work it open further so I could fit through. Stealthily I set upon it; it was stuck.
Man
, did I have to piss; I squeezed my legs together until the urge passed. Then I heaved at the window again; it gave way with an awful shriek. I froze. Clyde's voice continued on in the love den unabated, thank you God. I leaned as far out as I could and scanned that garage roof again. Yes, I could reach it. I mean, it was probably physically
possible
, if I happened to be a six-foottall Olympic rock climber with suction pads for hands and feet. I'd have to hang full-length from the window ledge, and swing my legs over. No, there was no way – I was too scared – I pulled my head back in, almost wanting to cry. Suddenly the fridge cut out, and I could hear Clyde, although he spoke softly.

“Your lips are telling me to kiss you,” he said.

Bastard! That's the same line he'd used with me! I jammed my helmet over my head – thankfully, it muffled his voice – but oh, on the same
day
! It occurred to me to wonder where he found the time. I mean, seduction takes a certain amount of energy – you need sheer hanging-around time, and a sort of focus on each woman to make her feel special, and – well, how did he do it? Feeling a grudging admiration, I bent myself in half to get out the window and almost peed my pants, but I kept backing out, the ledge pressing on my bladder as I let my legs swing free. Then clutching with my fingers, I lowered myself down.

My shoulders were pulling out of their sockets. I knew I had to start swinging, but I was petrified. Vertigo swept over me. Heights. Can't stand heights. I'm too young to die. As if I'd die, falling from here. Just break three of my four limbs and look like an idiot. At least my
head
would be protected by my effing
helmet.

I started swinging.

It was getting dark so fast I could hardly see the garage roof, and the helmet cut out peripheral vision. I swung with increasing vigour, made a guess, and with one final violent swing tore my hands from their moorings and fell sideways. You're supposed to relax and roll when you land; I launched myself through the air like I could swim through it. My feet connected with something and my body crumpled, driving my knees into my chest and knocking the wind out of me. By some miracle I didn't wet myself. I fell over onto my side and lay there, gasping on the garage roof.

Wings flapped, and a bird alighted before my face. I stared: it was the pigeon, the black one. It puffed out its chest, opened its beak; through the helmet I heard its muffled coo. Feebly I waved a hand at it to go away. It strutted closer. I sat up, feeling for broken bones. A normal bird would've flown away, but it zig-zagged from side to side. My father had always hated pigeons. He'd have hated this one for sure.

I turned my back on it and crawled to the edge of the roof. The drop to the ground seemed relatively small after my derring-do from the window. I waved my arm at the pigeon, now mere feet away, and it favoured me with a half-hearted hop back. Then I repeated my lowering act and jumped to the alley below. My bladder felt as if red-hot needles were jabbing it. I shuffled into the corner, pulled down my jeans, and pissed gratefully among the mango rinds.

I decided I deserved – nay,
needed
– a drink. I couldn't bear to be alone, I'd only wait for Clyde to call me. The thought of a cold beer sliding down my throat beckoned like a mirage.

I staggered like some wino out of the alley. It took me a moment to get my bearings in the dusk, but after walking in the wrong direction for a couple of blocks I retraced my steps and found my bike. I was about to get on her when I noticed, gleaming fitfully under the streetlamps, something on her black seat, something pale and horrible looking, slimy and poisonous.

That goddamned pigeon.

I drove post-haste to the bar where Steve worked. It had been my regular haunt, a little gem of a place, but I'd been banned from it six months previously for punching some blonde chick in the face. I found out, later, that the chick had been dating Steve at the time. I, drunk, had mockingly started asking to feel his muscles as he worked, saying things like, “Ooooh, Steve, your biceps make me so
wet
,” begging for “a quickie in the beer fridge,
pleeease
?” and grabbing his ass whenever he went by. She took offense, and told me to get out of the bar. “Who the hell are you, anyway?” I asked. When she opened her mouth to answer, I punched her; Steve calmly and sorrowfully threw me out. When he phoned the next day to tell me I couldn't come around for a while, I didn't really blame him. “But you could have told me you were seeing her,” I whined. “Ruby, I did,” he replied. Oh. I hadn't remembered that part.

I hesitated by the door until Steve saw me. “Oh, come on in,” he said, and a couple of old regulars at the bar raised a cheer. The night passed riotously, the bar gradually filling up with people I hadn't seen in months.

People bought me drinks. I bought shooters for everyone. I started drinking tequila. I got up on the bar and danced. Getting banned had probably been the best thing that had ever happened to me – it dried me out a little. Now, I had a powerful thirst to tend to.

The next few days passed in a murky haze. I was on a bender, my own version of the Foreign Legion one joins to forget. What I really wanted was to get laid. You'd think that in a city the size of Toronto a relatively attractive, horny and drunk woman could find
someone
to bed. You'd think so.

But I awoke under the sickening, lightening sky alone, dawn after dawn. Sometimes I'd come to on Blue's couch, sometimes in the guest room at Tad and Judith's house, sometimes in my own bed with a vague impression of some Good Samaritan pouring me into a cab. “I was really getting along with that guy,” I complained to Judith one morning, a cold cloth over my forehead, wincing. “Why'd you interrupt like that? What a thing to do…”

“Ruby,” she said, filing her impressive nails, “if ever I needed an advertisement to keep me on the straight and narrow, you, girl, would be it.” She spoke severely, deliberately intensifying her Jamaican accent.

“Besides,” Tad put in from the corner where he was tuning a mandolin, “that guy was a real dog. You should thank us.” The mandolin twanged. I covered my ears.

“So you're saving me from myself?”

“Yes, dear.” Judith patted the top of my head.

The worst was knowing that if Clyde called me, I'd take the bait. I would. So I turned my battered phone OFF. I might keep myself drunk for days on end, I might be stupid enough to do that, but I was goddamned if I was going to leap up in fear and tremble every time my cell rang.

Of course there was the job thing. As in, I wasn't showing up, and they couldn't get hold of me because I was in hiding from my phone. One sunny afternoon, on a patio drinking beer with Blue, I started laughing, snorting into my pint.

“What's so funny?”

“Guess I've quit
that
job,” I said, and snorted again.

The afternoon wore on, and Blue and I got tiddled together, and in the late evening sun I started feeling quite mellow, even about Jim. “I can sympathize with him, from afar,” I said.

“Who?”

“The last time he saw me, I was walking out of his place, his uniform on my back, in the middle of lunch rush. Poor guy.” I swallowed more beer. “I wasn't even a good waitress.”

“I loved your style, though. You had great style.” One could always count on Blue for support.

I staggered home alone that night, refusing Blue's offer of a crash pad (“I'm onto you and your evil plan, don't think I'm not…”). On my fifth go at the suddenly elusive keyhole of my apartment door, the vacuum seal swished and Earl popped out. I propped myself against my recalcitrant door. “Hi.” I hiccoughed.

“Home late again. Drunk, I see.”

“Shut up,” I slurred, and turned to have another go at my door. I turned too swiftly, however, and fell with a surprised squawk against the wall, sliding to the floor. I looked up at Earl. “I fell,” I observed.

“You should move in with Izzie.”

“Shaddap.”

“It's three in the morning – ”

My arm shot out, the keys dangling from my fingers. “Open my door, there's a sweetheart.”

He took the keys and fiddled with my lock. I clambered to my feet, continuing conversationally, “I've decided I'll go back.”

“Back where? Newfie-land?”

“I'm going to return the uniform. And the red shoes. I want to get the clothes I left there. The T-shirt smells like fucking
curry
.” He opened my door. “Do you like curry, Earl?”

“I have an intestinal condition. I can't eat spicy foods.”

I was seeing two Earls now. I walked into my apartment, then turned back to them. “Earls,” I said, sniggering at my own wit, “Do you ever get lonely?”

The two Earls merged into one, his mouth slightly open, a surprised and eager flush on his sallow cheeks. “Lonely?” He took a step toward me.

“Me, too,” I said, and shut the door in his face.

CHAPTER 6

After seeing her up on the Hill, I couldn't shake my obsession with Shanawdithit. Even the costume fiasco and monument vandalism didn't dent it. I clung to the thought of her like a drowning man to a life raft, wrapped my heart around the thought of her. I developed a ritual meant to summon her. I'd start by braiding my hair, two braids to show how sister-like I was. Then I'd take off one shoe and hop counter-clockwise in a circle so big that, when I was done, I could lie down within its circumference. I'd lie there, limbs spread out like a starfish, close my eyes, and say her name. Three times I'd say it:
Shanawdithit, Shanawdithit, Shanawdithit, come.
Then I'd force every last bit of air out of my lungs and hold until sparks danced under my eyelids and I felt like I was going to pass out. At last I'd suck air and sit up fast, eyes flying open. This time she'd be there, and I'd see her again.

The morning after my encounter with Earl, I awoke fully clothed on my back in the middle of the floor, spread out like a starfish, like I was ten years old. Sun baked me, and the ceiling whirled; my head and body ached.
Not
like when I was ten. I rolled over and began crawling toward my bed.

Once, I'd enacted the ritual in my bedroom and sat up to see my own reflection in the glass – eyes wide and wild. It made my heart leap – in fear or joy I couldn't tell – for one long moment, until I realized what I was seeing and lay back down again with a groan. Sometimes I wondered if I'd ever see her again. Sometimes I wondered if it was right to pull on a dead person so much. But I couldn't stop wishing.

It was taking me an awfully long time to crawl down the hall to my mattress. What day was it? Monday, I thought. At last I gained the mattress,sour in the heat. I pawed at my clothes until I succeeded in getting naked, and spent the rest of the day collapsed there, semi-conscious.