Fall (31 page)

I went up to one and pushed him. His coffee spilled on his sweater.

“I don’t like the fuckin’ look of you,” I said. His shock was so predictable and funny. I punched his mouth from the side and felt a fang give way. He cowered and I hurt my knee on his forehead.

His friend swung at me and I ducked. I jumped on him and bent him forward in a headlock. He tried to lift me up and I held him tighter. I wanted to tear his head off.

Because I’ve heard you had scratches.

I fell into a bush.

And you weren’t at dinner. Or your study time. What do you call it?

Prep.

And you came back late. Next morning you’re covered in scratches.

I don’t know why he would tell you these things. I really don’t. I fell into a bush. There was snow around that night and my shoes have leather soles. It’s no more complicated than that. He’s trying to distract you. Getting attention away from himself for once. Where was he that night? There’s so much about that guy that you don’t know. He’s my friend.

Ant was laughing behind me all the way as we ran. On the bus back to school I remember smiling. “I’m so unsatisfied,” I said.

I
DON’T KNOW
what to do.

Get a cab.

Should I get an ambulance.

No way, J. I just can’t walk on it.

Are you ok.

I just can’t put any weight on it.

She’s smiling like she wants to smile.

I’m scared.

It hurts but it’s nothing, J. I promise.

I think we should go home.

Do you want to.

I’m sober I say.

No you’re not.

I’m not.

I’m gonna be sick if I drink any more she says.

Let’s go home I say.

I don’t want to ruin the night.

You’re not.

Am I lying.

It’s a fuckin great night.

Happy anniversary J.

Happy anniversary. I don’t want you to hurt I say.

Let’s get a cab.

I’ll get the coats. Limp with me to the door gimpy limpy.

I’m holding her ass.

That’s inappropriate she says.

I squeeze.

I’m walking to the coats ’cause I’m responsible. I’m walking to the coats because there are things you do when you’re a dad and there’s a thing of a serious nature going on and you prop your girl like a floppy smiling puppet near the door and she says I need to pee. You take her to the bathroom and all the smiles and shy eyes, in out, and Fall’s in there peeing and nobody knows these things. Fall’s sweet secrets for her and me, and back by the door, so close and I love her leaning on me.

What do you call this.

We’re gonna fill these coats.

That’s the fat guy. Goddamn I wanna go home now. That’s the fat creep staring at me.

What the fuck, buddy. You want my coat.

What.

What the fuck are you looking at.

Go home, pretty boy.

Fuck you.

Don’t ever feel like nobody’s watching you, pretty boy.

What.

Someone’s always lookin.

He’s bigger than I thought.

Look at all the people who want cabs she says.

Fuck.

But look at all the cabs she says.

Oh yeah.

Everything looks like a light I say.

What.

What.

Do your whistle she says.

swhEE!

I love that. Do it again.

swhEE!

Here comes one. See. You called one.

I’m fucked.

Me too.

It’s ok here’s a cab.

I know.

It’s ok. Are you ok.

Yeah.

I’m pretty fuckin hammered.

I’m putting her in like she’s an old lady and I burp and I’m responsible.

Goodnight Saturday.

It smells like a cab in here.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

St. Ebury please. In Sutton.

Ooo we’re driving underwater really fast.

Ooo.

J.

Yeah.

J.

Yeah.

We’re going the wrong way.

Are we.

We’re going the wrong way.

Where.

We’re going to school.

Yeah. Oh shit.

Yeah.

Driver she says. We’re going the wrong way.

Sutton.

We’re staying at William’s she says.

Pardon.

William’s I say. Murray Street.

Not Sutton.

No we’re staying at William’s tonight I say.

Is it a hotel.

It’s an address. Wait.

Where’s that fuckin paper.

Can this cab drive away from the smell of itself.

Pardon.

Here it is. Three. Eight. Is that a three or an eight.

I can’t see it she says.

Three.

One fourteen Murray Street, apartment C. We’ll. If you take us to one fourteen we’ll take ourselves to the C upstairs.

I think I want a bed.

William’s she says.

I can’t remember what tomorrow’s supposed to be.

One fourteen Murray Street he says. In the market.

That’s the place I say.

How could you forget William’s she says.

Fff. Funny. I’m tired.

Me too.

Her head’s on my shoulder.

I feel like I’m falling.

E
VERYBODY’S LOOKING
.

Signs are everywhere, they say.

Before and after whatever happens happens, everybody’s looking for signs.

My second wife was short and cute. Lisette. We almost had a baby but he was born without breath. That was so sad. I remember feeling so sad for little Lisette. No light in her smile after that and no more hope in my head.

I remember thinking Lisette was what I wanted. That name’s pretty. Lisette. Makes me think of pie and country curtains. I liked it, anyway. She was so quiet after Sharon. Nice and cute and warm. Sharon had a pair of hips—I could tell you stories, boy—but she was a fang-toothed maniac with a brain for nothing but biting. Lisette was a home and a hug and a cup of hot chocolate.

Lisette.

She was what I wanted.

And then she wasn’t.

And when you split up you start looking for signs. What went wrong? And she starts looking for signs, hm boy. Why don’t you love that cute and beautiful Lisette, why don’t you love me after all we’ve been through, boy. There was that time, she said, when you got drunk and never came home. I should have known then that you would leave, she said. And the truth is, that time I got drunk and didn’t come home was the time I really wanted to drink and not go home. Sometimes there’s nothing more to it. Not that time.

I never wanted to hurt anyone, I’ll tell you that much, but it seems to me that the hurt would be quieter if everyone stopped thinking that love was the only thing in the world that wasn’t going to change. In nature. Eh. Weeping and screaming when a hair turns grey or a fish can’t do the finning.

Anyways, when it comes to signs there’s none that really helps except WRONG WAY.

That split with Lisette. Jesus.

“What I learned from that marriage was how much you can make someone up. You spend years with her, and when you split you look hard and see the person you loved was never there, she was the skin around what you wanted.

I know that’s not the whole of it, that’s not the whole of Lisette, but the other thing I learned about love is there is no whole of it, no. I’ve always been a kid in the carnival and whenever I’m seeing the truth, someone moves the mirrors. It changes every day.

Lisette went from warm to crueller than Sharon, like that. The truth about anyone is what they’re like on their own. I believe that. What are you like when somebody’s left you. What are you thinking about people and yourself when you’re alone in your apartment. When you sit there on your own and you start looking back, and you say, yeah, maybe I should have seen that coming, maybe I could have changed, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, maybe I wanted something different all along. You start looking for signs.

You’re looking back and you forget that’s not how you went through your days. Things came at you and you reacted. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t but putting a story on it later is not telling the truth about life. And looking for signs in other people. Come on.

Personally, I enjoy a drink.

There are lots of people, sure, who go through their days seeing the signs. A lot of them get on this bus. The guys who bet on sports are the funniest. They always think they see it coming. They’ll say whatshisname has sprained his ankle so his team’s gonna lose by ten,
or they’ve got a new trainer so they’ll make it to the play-offs. These guys have a bit more information so they think they know what’s coming.

What’s coming is me. I drive them back to the parking lot with nothing but a sigh in their wallet.

So I enjoy a drink. I sit there and say, I’m enjoying this. There’s nothing more I can know.

Mr. Ambassador, there. He said one day, William, there’s one thing you can say about Canada: everybody’s decent. I thought that was funny. The more I did that job, the more I thought what a goddamn joke this country business is. I’ve got a cousin who stole a million bucks from a charity for kids with cancer. He’s Canadian. I’m a fat ugly drunk and I got angry at Sharon and hit her. I’m Canadian. There’s Lisette. A year after I left her she stabbed my arm with a steak knife. She’s Canadian. French-Canadian, but still.

I’d drive him from his big house to another big house with a different flag on it. And he was speaking for his country and the other guy was speaking for the other country. What a world of bullshit.

I get goofy old couples with running shoes and baseball caps getting on the bus looking hilariously American. And the man starts talking first all the time, and the woman smiling, and they’re from Des Moines or Minneapolis or one of these places we know too much about because of fuckin television. And I’ll say to myself, Here come the Americans, or, there go the Americans, like that’s going to box it all up. Underneath those baseball caps are the miscarriages, the daughters who don’t talk, the smiles on pillows, the funny secrets and memories that no one else saw. Midnight chuckles and the crying. Calling them American’s got nothing to do with it. But even they think it sums them up.

What are they like alone?

Julius said in one of his letters that they called the guy who maimed him a SOCIOPATH. He said that was some sort of comfort to his dad there, and himself for a while. And then he says later it wasn’t. He knew that word “sociopath” wasn’t the whole of it.

I think the guy was Canadian.

Now, of course, I’d be the first to admit that a lot of Italian women give me a happy feeling under my folds. I’m not saying countries aren’t something to learn about. But I remember starting to think back then how stupid it all was. I know we’re a bunch of families who don’t like the smell of some of the other families. I myself am afraid of bicycle couriers. If there was a country full of bicycle couriers I might want it to fly a flag and keep its distance.

But I remember thinking, in this day and age, haven’t we noticed that everyone’s naked under their clothes. I said that to Julius’s dad, there. He said everyone’s decent in Canada and I said everyone’s naked under their clothes. I’m not sure he got me right away. I saw him in the rearview mirror.

I had a laugh with little Julius about that. I told your dad that everyone’s naked under their clothes, I said.

I wondered what losing his girl would do to him. What a thing.

Couple of years ago he was seeing a girl who drew pictures. Animation. My girlfriend’s gonna draw a picture of me, he said, and there at the end of the letter was a picture of my young friend there, sure enough. Bit of age or a scar or something on his chin but not so different from when I knew him. I told him she should come up and draw a picture of me because she obviously made people look better than they do. I can’t remember exactly how I said it.

Anyways, they broke up.

I just shrug, I told him.

I think I can tell from his letters that he knows better than I do.

You can’t see any of it coming.

I
POLISHED MY
shoes during prep. I got up from my desk when I had finished and took a pair of Julius’s shoes back to my chair.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m polishing your shoes.”

“Why are you polishing my shoes?”

“They needed it.”

“Did I ask you to polish my shoes?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you think I want my shoes to be as shiny and perfect as yours?”

“I was bored.”

“What makes a guy pick up another guy’s shoes and polish them? Do you want a tip?”

“Drop it. I was bored.”

“Put my shoes back,” he said.

He stared at me and I couldn’t stare back.

Did you go out with them?

Not really. Mostly I heard about their nights out from Julius.

What did he say?

It sounded like they had . . . I suppose it sounds priggish if I say some of their nights sounded sordid.

Sordid?

I don’t know. Places I’ve never been. And it’s not because they didn’t invite me. You keep implying that I was left out or jealous or
something of the sort. I truly wasn’t. Frankly, it’s a relief when your roommate goes away for the weekend. I think what I’ve been trying to say is that Julius has a tremendous force of personality. It’s very hard to resist whatever he wants to do. And I feel like Fall really had trouble resisting.

So you think they went places against her will.

Yes.

Did she ever talk to you about these things or places?

Like I’ve said. She was uncomfortable. We had a long talk at a café once. I don’t think Julius knows about this. And she told me, essentially, that she felt a sense of oppression. I remember at the time that it conjured stories I had heard from Julius. Stories about keeping her in his father’s limousine, drugs, etc. I feel like I’m telling on him, but I’m not. I know you think I might be some sort of square, jealous guy. I just know that sometimes theirs was a world I didn’t know and when she talked to me there was some slight fear.