Racket Page 7

  He did. Her cheeks were flushed, the wild glow in her eyes that bore into him like that night under the single bare bulb in his room before she shaded them with her hand.

  He’d already started packing. The job is in South America where he will measure the topography of climate. There’s an accountability about weather he appreciates. Weather has a personality, completely affected by the landscape in which it operates. It’s the one controlling factor in everything, rescue, movement of people.

  “Adam…my guts are in knots.”

  Her gaze was a flare that burnt him before he could look away, seek out the peak of Black Tusk over there to the south. He held the railing as the gondola lurched, braced his thighs against the rushing sense of arrival at the top. He stepped across the threshold as soon as the door slid open, retrieved his gear from the rack, clicked into his skis and headed for the traverse that leads to the Harmony Express chair.

  Layla’s rhythmic swishes were close behind him. He knew the outlines of the world would be softened for her by the pot, the fist-sized snowflakes blurring every tree, skier, contour of land. He wondered which of her lyrics were rolling through her head to match the motion of her body, toe edge, heel edge, toe edge. Certain…magic…first…love…best…day…you-asshole-my-guts-in-knots…

  At the bottom she unhooked her back foot and shuffled through the ski-patroller line. Kyle grabbed her arm.

  “You were wailing on the guitar at Tommy’s that night, after the lights came up—”

  “Oh, I didn’t know you were—”

  Kyle lowered his voice and Adam knew the weed had dulled Kyle’s brotherly concern when he asked Layla, “What’s up with him?”

  She took off her mitten and reached for the pick in her pocket.“Nothing, let’s go,” she said, and they all got on the chairlift.

  Adam wondered what she remembered about Tommy’s.After the lights came up, how she lifted her guitar out from under a table. The song about how she moved west all mixed up with lyrics about landmines. Her guitar, and a resolution to use it to get wherever she needed to go. No matter what. All of this said in a drunken stupor.

  She’d been wearing her Hunter S. Thompson shades that night, and she pulled it off. She leaned over her guitar to chug the last of her beer, but she had all the drunks and druggies as well as Adam and the bartender and the bouncers completely mesmerized. On their way back to his place, her guitar case banging against her legs, he’d had to hold her up by her elbow to keep her from splatting into a snowbank.

  The chair swayed slightly and Layla strummed a steady beat in the crease where her thigh almost touched his. “The drifts of snow, they’re like ghosts dancing,” she said. Kyle grunted agreement, mumbling to his mom or the air or both.

  The first time Adam saw her perform, he’d been on cue to get her a glass of water from the bar. At the end of her set she laid her guitar to rest in its case next to the overturned beer bottles. Her elation was palpable as she glided toward him, her hair a slick, wet frame around her face. He’d held the glass out to her and she shook her head no, her fingers still busy making the shape of the chords.

  The guitar had belonged to a man on a street in Toronto. The concrete buildings, the cars with their first gritty sprays of salt from the road, were monochromatic that time of year, late fall. Layla’s preparation to leave completely anonymous, she said, to stake her own claim to the mythological migration of twenty-somethings heading west. A man in a puddle congealing into ice.

  The lid of the guitar case was open, the finish on the guitar gleaming more brightly as the daylight faded and the streetlights made an orange haze of the fog. When she took it, she said she was calm. No sirens blaring her guilty intent. No panic rising in her guts, tripping her up. The unmoving lump of the man on the ground. The cold when she reached under the blanket, her hand on the man’s chest, no rise and fall. No breath. Some of the things she said made Adam shiver.

  No breath and she said she knew it wasn’t just the fading light colouring his bare toes grey. Someone else had already taken his shoes. Corpse toes like gnarled branches knotted without a name tag, faded in freezer mist. “An Intensity of Timing,” a title for the song she wrote for her guitar, sung with a fierceness that makes him question whether the shivers are cold or warm. She’s superstitious about it, has only ever sung that one for him. Over and over, so that he’ll never forget the lyrics. He never asked to be keeper of her song.

  She chose Whistler, she’d said, for the magical combination of venues to play and snowboarding, the achievable sensation of floating. Even when she was smashed, she never told him anything more about where she came from. Like her whole entire history began with a dead guy and a guitar.

  They dismounted from the chairlift. Adam fetched the rescue toboggan from a culvert, and Layla held the rope attached to the back while he gripped the handlebar to steer it from the front, his poles tucked under one arm. They paused when Kyle indicated the route he’d taken with his brother.

  “I had this bad feeling today, y’know? And my mom—”

  “You can stop saying that now,” said Adam.

  “It’ll be okay,” from Layla.

  They had to ski down a winding trail to get to Harmony Bowl. Layla held tight to the toboggan’s rope until Adam had to either ask her to let go or engage in a tug of war with her.

  “Jesus, Adam, it’s not that I wanted to sit around with you until we started talking about our grey hair. But this? There’s no plan for this, either.”

  “I told you, it’s a job.”

  “Does it have to be so far away?”And let go.

  Adam knows mathematical equations, scientific method. Applicable, functioning transitions from hypothesis to conclusion. Who is he to ponder backbeats and chord transitions, or how a song’s supposed to resonate in your soul? It wasn’t an impulsive decision to accept the job, his finger hovering only a moment before hitting send on the email. Impulsive is a word Layla would say about him then throw her head back and laugh. He who has been known to leave the grocery store, return with a more thorough list.

  Behind him Layla was singing some new song about Adam’s odour still on her skin.

  “Take a picture of me,” she’d said one afternoon in her room. He looked for the camera on her dresser. There was a pile of albums spread west to east: Daniel Lapp to Amelia Curran. The camera perched on a shot glass full of guitar picks.

  He’d turned back to the bed and she was naked on her side, one knee over her guitar. Rubbing a finger up and over the neck, along the strings. An eerie similarity in the curve of woman and guitar that made him want to flatten her with his body, ride her frenzied motions beneath him, or throw on his boots and feel the exertion of getting to the top of the mountain by foot. He did neither. Waited for her to crawl toward him, put her mouth on him, take him inside her and dig herself in until darkness claimed the pattern of scrunched-up blankets and two bodies limp in shared, musky dampness.

  Out here above the tree line there is no smell. It’s not like those commercials for air fresheners, breezy scents to fill your home with the great reminiscence of the outdoors. What you smell is the saliva on your neck warmer, coffee breath and wood smoke. Old boogers on your coat where it zips and Velcros over your chin when your hood is up. You poke your nose out from under your goggles, your snot freezes.

  Their last night together she’d been all over him with elbows and knees, baring teeth and tongue, moaning and crying. His mouth on hers, her fingers tough as the strings of her guitar, fists twisted in his hair, pulling him up and over her body after he’d been down on her, lover’s spit trailing clammy patterns over her pubic bone, her navel, his thumb smoothing damp flesh below her ribcage. All of this in the middle of his escalating explanations and her mounting hysteria.

  They reached the lip of Harmony Bowl, an endless field of powder before them. They could see Kyle’s brother sitting up, relief in the arm he lifted to wave at them. Adam skied toward him to start assessing the injured knee.
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  Her voice is in his mind. It’s not possible to discern it the usual way in this wind. His body a conduit, the sensation of thousands of needles sticking him in every pore, every nerve ending, every fleck of bone. He wonders if this is what any human body feels like just before a leg breaks or a spine cracks. Before he shows up for the rescue.

  He watches the movement of the slab of snow, white on white, with a sort of detachment. He’s prepared to move but pauses to look up the hill at her. Her body relaxes, then tenses. Sweat beading on her skin, wet beneath his palms. On stage, her eyes were closed, her head swayed side to side. Her right arm flew up and down, up and down, fingers of her left hand gripping, flipping, G, D, E harmonics.

  She leans into the hill and Adam searches for her eyes behind her goggles. She lifts her arm to raise them off her face, her chords playing louder, faster. She leans too far. That night at Tommy’s she was closed off from everything around her, he was about to reach out to feel her radiating energy when something crashed behind the bar. His body jerks as hers flips forward and she skids through the snow. A taste rises in his mouth as he skies off to one side of the ice slab, dragging the toboggan. The ice rushes past him. Above the bar a hundred bottles of booze smashed down and sent a brilliant explosion of glass across the floor. The bartender had been on the other side, mopping a spill the stragglers kept slipping in. Adam sees Kyle get away from the slab of ice on the opposite side. No pause in Layla’s playing, she’d kept going as though her song had absorbed the sound, left her oblivious to anything else going on around her.

  Kyle approaches Adam and the toboggan, kneels down next to his brother. Kyle, jabbing a gloved finger up inside his goggles, sniffing, gulping air, one hand on his brother’s chest.

  She’s belly flopped and flailing to dig herself out of the deep snow, instinctively pulling her knees into her chest. Her tongue sweeping the helix of his ear, she’d said, “I may never make it in the world of music. But you’ll never find a better lay.” The two most coherent sentences she ever uttered that time of night. Her face burrows in the powder before she gets her hands under her shoulders to push herself up, every muscle in him braced in her struggle. She manages a squat. Her board wants to ride the powder but her body isn’t ready. The sensation in his mouth is like the first metal taste of regret.

  He calls out a name. The decision already made. He told her once that if you’re ever lost, the best thing to do is stay put. A lesson from kindergarten, she added. Stay in one place and you’ll eventually be found. He watches her catch two syllables on her tongue, slide several meters before somersaulting. She lands on all fours facing downhill. He can feel her shudders.

  He breathes evenly again as she straightens her goggles on her face. The drifts of snow have stopped their dancing, and her arm in the air stirs the few remaining snowflakes. Above, the stratus coverage starts to break apart into fluffy cumulus clouds.

  He said, “Sometimes we’re better off…” The words he’d planned about making a clean break no longer make any sense. The way a storm sweeping across a landscape will alter the mood of its topography temporarily, but knocks down a permanent feature, a giant spruce or a building, changing something essential about it forever.

  Over the trails, across the valley, past the chairlifts and the moving dots of skiers, there’s a line separating snow from trees on the adjacent mountains. Black Tusk juts into the sky, a marker to the right of the setting sun. The serrated peaks behind it seem to shift in the passing clouds. He watches her body recover, start to ride down the hill. He steers the toboggan, her music still in his head.

  A Holy Show

  Melanie Oates

  I FOUND HIM at Holy Show.The friggin Irish bar where a bottle of beer costs eight dollars. Out dancing he was, with this missus I recognized from up the shore. Short blue dress with ruffles around the neck and brown boots to her knees. He had that rotten black beanie hanging off his head and a white t-shirt with something spilled all down the front. I turned into the bar and ordered a pint.

  A tap on my shoulder and a squeal. This Ashley that went from kindergarten to grade twelve with me. Ashley plus fifty pounds and still wearing the same clothes. She started in on the catch up game. I was real friendly and interested. At the end of the song, while everyone clapped politely, there was a roar from the front of the stage. Halt with his two arms up in the air like ladders, barking at the band.

  Look at the state of that fella, Ashley said. He’s in here the whole night. Different girl out to every song. He’s about one dance away from being thrown out, I’d say. What about you, Devi, do you have either man these days? Halt spots me then. Bulldozed through the crowd. Locked his arms around my waist and lifted my face to reach his and kissed me.

  Oh, Ashley said.

  What’re ya doing here, dolly? he asked.

  Just dropped in to see my old friend from home, Ashley, I said.

  He let me down and held his hand out to her. She eyed it.

  Nice to meet ya, Ash.

  She gave him her hand and took it back quick.

  Who are you?

  Tommy Halt.

  Oh yeah, I heard tell of you before.

  His usual scruff had turned into a beard since I’d seen him last. Paths of blood vessels around his eyes. He was grabbing at me. His face into my neck, licking me. Ashley shook her head and left.

  You tracked me down, he said.

  I thought you might be after doin away with yourself.

  I’m too fond of myself for that.

  Can we leave?

  You can leave. I’m havin a time.

  Havin a time at Holy Show? Havin a time, are ya?

  You gonna have a dance with me?

  That’s what I’m not.

  Stubborn as a stop sign.

  When the hubby’s-night-out crew cleared away from the bar, I managed to snag a stool. The band started playing “Will Ye Go Lassie Go” and Halt was leaning on a table full of scrots. The friends were nudging this one girl and she got up, blushing, and went to waltz with him. As if he knows how to waltz now. But he did. The old-fashioned waltz. Singing out the words and twirling her around for fuck’s sakes. He didn’t so much as glance at me.

  He shoots out for a smoke then, in his bare arms, when the song is over. Three of them from the scrot table, with one dress between them, scurry out behind him. I think about picking up some food and going home out of it. I half-watched them through the window. Him and the three of them standing in a little group. Four fellas, two in snowmobiling jackets, two in wool jackets, standing behind them pointing and nodding their heads at Halt. Knows there’s not going to be a racket tonight.

  This lumpy, soggy fella sidles up beside me offering drinks and I tell him I’m underage. Halt brings an armload of drinks from the bar to the scrot table. Shots and red things with ice and straws. Watched him put the straws in the glasses myself. They has a little cheers then. He says something grotesque, no doubt, and they kills their selves laughing. And even in his dirtbag state, he’s only the best thing I’ve ever seen.

  I took the path that went by the scrot table on my way to the bathroom. Glaring at one of the girls while she’s leaning into him.

  I met him on my way out.

  You’re still here?

  The ends of his words were mushed.

  I’m havin a drink with some girls from home, I told ya.

  Come and sit with us.

  With us? Imagine. It was a task not to tear a piece out of her but I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction.

  Do your thing.

  I heard him give the bathroom door a boot. That was just him being playful.

  I plopped down next to Ashley and her friends from university. She didn’t look too pleased about it. But that was it now, wasn’t it.

  Is Tommy Halt your boyfriend or something?

  Not really. Kind of.We’re screwin around, I s’pose.

  Isn’t he s’posed to be a bit of an idiot?

  He is, yeah.

&n
bsp; What’s he at with all them girls? That skinny blonde one on the end by him? I knows her. She’s friends with my friend Sandra. She was at Sandra’s bachelorette party there the summer. She’s a hardcore skank. Got ossified on the Party Bus and puked all over the seat. Still went to the bar. I heard she made out with the groom.

  You have either fella on the go?

  She shifted into me, pleased to talk about it. Remember Adam, she said. He was a few years ahead of us in school.They’re engaged now. Building a house. She showed me her white-gold band with one chocolate chip sized diamond in the middle.

  In Halt’s absence, the b’ys from outside moved in on the scrot table. The scrots were a hit! He came out screaming along the words to whatever the band was playing. They eyed him and just wanted to slit his throat or whatever the polo shirt version of that is. Halt put his arm around one of them, a short fella. Said something to him and flipped his collar down. They scattered back to the bar.

  Out for a smoke and the four boys came out behind me.

  How ya tonight, b’ys?

  I moved into their circle. Chatted them up for a bit. This one, Chris or Kevin, I can’t remember, said he loved my hair and ran his hand down through it. I nestled into the bar with them after that. Two on each side. Halt glanced at me then. Friggin easy. He squat in on the end of Chris/Kevin. Didn’t speak to me and ordered another round of drinks.

  Who’s that fella? Chris asked when he left.

  Some poet. S’posed to be a hard ticket, I say.

  Hear that boys, he said, a poet.

  It was a little joke.

  On our way to the dance floor for a scuff, I nails the blonde with my shoulder coming back from the bathroom. Her red drink runs down the front of her pink dress.

  What the fuck? Watch where you’re going.

  You knocked into me, ya louse. Think now, which kind of stain is harder to get out, blood or cranberry juice?

  She waited, and decided, good thing, to keep moving along. Chris gave me a grin. She was telling Halt what happened. Pointing at me. He wiped her tits down with a napkin.

  Ashley and her gaggle were dancing by me and the boys. She bent into me and said, You’re really trying to start an uproar. You’re still the same Devi.