Fireball (15 page)

‘She had problems.' He leaned towards us, lowering his voice. ‘Mental problems. I handled her accounts so I ought to know. They put her on drugs, which helped some. But every so often she'd stop taking them, like old people tend to do. And she'd get a bit…' He tapped his temple and whistled, making the cuckoo clock sound. Then he laughed. Also, he slapped Jules on the back, a little too hard, like a football coach breaking the huddle. ‘So I wouldn't beat myself up over it, kid. Between you and me, she's better off like this. If she'd had her choice, well, it wasn't such a bad way to go. I wouldn't be surprised if…'

He trailed off, staring into his wine like she might be swimming around down there.

‘If what?' I said.

The guy looked up, startled. Until then, I hadn't realised how absolutely plastered he'd gotten. It was almost as if he didn't know who I was, or who he'd been talking to.

‘Huh?' he asked.

‘You wouldn't be surprised if what?'

‘Oh, sure.' He drained his glass and wiped absently at his forehead. ‘That's right. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Anyways, boys, you take care of yourselves. It's been a slice.'

He wandered off, cruising around the room like a plane with a broken wing.

‘Jesus,' Chris said. ‘Let's get out of here.'

We each took a bottle and tucked it under our jacket. Then we marched straight through the doors and down the steps. There was no way in hell Jules could drive us home. He could barely walk. Dressed in our suits and carrying our bottles of wine, we stumbled across the street to this park. There was a playground in one corner, and the whole area was covered in kids. They were everywhere: dangling from the monkey bars, bobbing up and down on the seesaw, chasing each other across the grass. The sunlight flashed off their hair, their clothes, their gap-toothed faces. There was an old dead lady in that church and all these kids out here, alive and happy and oblivious. It was completely screwed up.

‘Damn,' Jules said.

‘What?'

‘No bottle opener.'

We used Chris's pocket knife instead – the same one he'd killed that raccoon with. We sort of stabbed at the corks until they crumbled into pieces. For the rest of the afternoon, we sat in the shade sucking back warm wine filled with bits of cork. Somehow, later, we got back to the Cove. I think we took the bus, or maybe we even walked. It's hard to say. I don't remember much after about three o'clock.

26

‘Very few people accept the reality of death. For the most part, they simply forget about it. Life is so much simpler that way. But occasionally death makes a startling appearance, like an unwanted guest at our private party. Then he can no longer be ignored.'

After the funeral and all that wine, the three of us decided to break bottles on our heads. It was enough to convince my dad I should go see a shrink. He thought I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown or something. That's just like him. Since I don't have a mom he can't only be my dad. He has to be my dad and my mom – which makes him a bit neurotic at times. So he made an appointment and took me to this lady downtown.

I didn't know what to make of her.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?' she asked.

I shook my head. She reached for the purse on her desk and pulled out a pack of Players. I shifted around in my chair – this oversized leather recliner that kept trying to swallow me whole. I'd expected a sofa, like shrinks always have in movies, but there was only this chair. She sat directly across from me, right near the window. It was hard to see her because of the light coming in from outside, but I had the impression of sleek black hair and a sort of haggard face. The main thing I noticed were her ankles. She had great ankles. The rest of her body was okay, too, but her ankles were her best feature by a mile. She wore a long skirt – sort of a reddish brown colour – and beneath the hem her ankles looked smooth and pale as fresh plaster.

She lit a cigarette, pursing it between her lips like an expert. She caught me kind of eyeing up the pack and offered it to me. ‘You're old enough, right?'

‘Sure.'

I rose out of my chair, took one, and leaned down to let her light it. It was pretty cool, actually. I'd expected a real grilling and instead here we were, hacking darts together.

She said, ‘I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't.'

I waited, sucking on my cigarette.

‘I had a daughter. A beautiful little girl. Six months ago, her father decided to take her white water rafting. During the trip, she was tossed from the boat and drowned – like that.' She snapped her fingers. ‘She was my everything. Now she's nothing. She's gone.'

I coughed up smoke. I mean, of all the things I expected to come out of her mouth, that would have been pretty far down the list – maybe second or third from the bottom.

‘That's terrible,' I said, choking on the words.

‘It's worse than terrible. But this is what I'm trying to tell you: it's okay to get worked up over what happened. You and Chris and – what's that other boy's name?'

‘Julian.'

‘That's it. You and Chris and Julian. You wouldn't be normal if you could just walk away from something like this and not think twice about it. Death is a horrible truth. People might tell you otherwise but you're better off believing me on this: death is a horrible truth.'

She sighed and gazed out the window. She had a corner office overlooking Pacific Centre. All the surrounding buildings were super modern skyscrapers. The metal and glass structures blazed in the sun like heaps of molten slag. Her office was different. It was cool and dark and strangely intimate. I felt safe in there – safe and protected from the heat.

Without looking at me she asked, ‘What happened to your ear?'

She must have noticed the bandage. I mean, it was pretty obvious. The doctor had just stitched me up and slapped some gauze over my ear with big strips of medical tape.

‘I broke a bottle on my head.'

‘On your ear?'

‘On the back of my head. The follow-through cut my ear.' I laughed. ‘That's the only reason I'm here, you know. When my dad saw what I'd done he harsh freaked out.'

‘Why did you break a bottle on your head?'

‘We were out drinking. Chris did it and then I did it and then Jules tried. He couldn't do it, though. He tried five or six times and nearly knocked himself out.'

She smiled. ‘Chris went into the water first, and Chris broke the bottle on his head first. Does Chris do everything first?'

I thought about that. ‘Pretty much.'

‘What's so special about Chris?'

‘I guess you'd have to meet him.' I leaned forward and tapped my cigarette into the ashtray on her desk. ‘He's a scrapper, for one. He never backs down.'

‘And you admire that?'

‘Sure.' I hesitated. ‘I mean, he's not scared of anybody. Or anything.'

‘What's there to be scared of?'

‘You know. Getting beaten up. Or looking stupid. Or not knowing what to do. He always knows what to do. Ever since we were little it's been like that. No hesitation.'

She mashed her cigarette into the ashtray, twisting it back and forth like somebody turning a screw. After a moment she said, ‘My daughter was the same, in a way. That confident.'

I nodded. All that nicotine was harsh giving me a head rush.

‘Do you want to see a photo of her?'

I did. I said I did and I wasn't just being polite. She stood up, took a picture frame off her desk and brought it over to me. I cradled it in my hands. The photo showed a girl who looked about eight years old. She was grinning at the camera and sitting on this pink bike with a big white banana seat. Blue and red streamers hung from the handlebars.

‘She looks happy,' I said.

She took the photo back and placed it in the same position on her desk.

‘I don't tell everybody about her, in case you're wondering. But I thought it would save us time. Death is something I know about. Even if you're only here because of your father, that doesn't mean we can't talk it over. Is there something in particular that's been bothering you, that you don't feel comfortable discussing with anybody else?'

I stared at the carpet in front of her, avoiding her gaze. From where I sat, I had a great view of her ankles. They were so white and pure they seemed almost saintly. A woman with ankles like that had to be trustworthy. Otherwise there was no point to anything.

‘Well, there's the dream,' I said.

It was always the same.

The four of us would be sitting at the government dock, dangling our legs over the edge. The surface of the water was white with sunlight and shimmered like the scaly body of a giant fish. It should have been hot but in the dream I never felt hot. Don't ask me why. After a bit, Chris and Jules would tell us they were going to get ice cream from the Cove. Other times they didn't say anything – they just sort of faded away or disappeared. Poof.

That left me and Karen, sitting side by side.

‘Want to go swimming?' she asked.

‘We don't have our bathing suits.'

‘We don't need them.'

Then she took off her shirt, peeling it over her head in one clean motion. She wasn't wearing a bra, either. I saw the swell of her breasts and the dark flash of her nipples. None of it seemed strange. It didn't even seem strange when she stepped out of her shorts. I mean, I could see everything and I took it all in stride. Totally casual. Somehow my clothes came off – almost magically – and then we were in the water, which was thick and sticky as glue.

‘Let's see how far we can swim,' she said.

We kicked and stroked through the ooze, pulling ourselves along. I had my head down so I couldn't tell how far we'd come or how far we had to go, but at one point Karen stopped and so did I. We were in open water, far away from land – far away from Chris and Julian and anything except each other.

Karen splashed me in a friendly way.

‘You're funny,' she said. ‘I like that.'

I splashed her back. ‘Chicks are all the same.'

In the dream, I always talked a bit tougher than usual. You know – like Chris. I didn't say much but whatever I said, it was tough. Karen loved it, too. She paddled over to me and draped her arms around my neck. I stopped treading water and held her waist, feeling a little thrill at the smoothness of her hips. We hung together like that, somehow staying afloat.

‘There's something I have to tell you,' she said.

I never found out what it was. We always started kissing. Her mouth was sweet and smoky and wet. I felt her belly against mine. She wrapped both legs around me and I sunk into her slick, stinging warmth. This was it. We were doing it. Karen and I were doing it.

I pulled back to see her face, to see her expression while I moved inside her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was parted in a silent moan. For some reason her hair was perfectly dry. It was dry and in the bright glare of the sun it looked almost gray. Gray and permed. Her features looked strange, too. Her cheeks were dusted with too much blush and her lips were smeared with burgundy. It was Karen and it wasn't. I knew who it really was, under that mask of make-up, but I didn't care. That was the craziest part of all, actually.

I wanted her anyways.

I didn't plan on telling my shrink about the entire dream, but it sort of all came out. Afterwards, I regretted it immediately. We sat there in complete silence, listening to the steady thrum of her air conditioner. Obviously, she'd decided I was a harsh nutcase. If it hadn't been for the nicotine, and those ankles of hers, I would never have spilled my guts to her. Not a chance. But she'd tricked me. I could feel her eyes on me and I started getting all hot and uncomfortable. Why didn't she say something? She could at least say something. I mean, my dad wasn't paying her to sit there and stare at me like I was some kind of alien.

‘Do you know what the French call an orgasm?'

‘Uh, no,' I said.

If there's one thing I can say about my shrink, it's that she was full of surprises.

‘La petite mort. The little death.'

I wasn't sure if that made me feel better, or worse.

27

‘Dude – are you okay?'

When I asked him that, I don't think Chris recognised me. Not at first. It was like he'd breathed all his life into her and that was it. He had nothing left. He was kneeling on the grass, with Mrs Reever stretched out in front of him and mannequins pressing in from all sides. I had to help him to his feet. By that point she'd started breathing again. People gathered around to congratulate him, but just then I could tell he didn't want anybody touching him – even me. I let him go and he shoved his way through the crowd, through the mass of mannequin faces. As soon as he broke clear he started wiping at his mouth and spitting again and again and a
g
ain.