Fire in the Firefly (21 page)

“You and your oysters,” she says.

“Me and my oysters.”

He takes a sip of Lily's wine and sets the glass on the table by the door, holding the screen while she turns the lock. On the drive downtown he asks, as always, what she's working on.

“Today I am depressed,” she tells him.

It turns out she has received a rejection notice in this morning's mail. “You wait for months. Then you get a little yellow slip of paper saying sorry, try again.
On-line
submissions are worse. Sometimes you don't hear back from those at all.”

“Which one?”

“Which journal or which poem?”

“Which poem?”

“Ha! Serves you right! It was the one about you.”

“Well, there you go.”

He could quote those verses back to her, verbatim, but won't say that. That too would be cheating. He can't decide what he feels about this: that poem in particular. Not her best work. And probably, he thinks, he has put his finger on why. He also wants to tell her that rejection is inevitable. Clients routinely turn him down; it's part of what they do. What they all do. But that too would be facile. The goal of Lily's writing is to reveal the truth. His is something else again. In Roebuck's trade, sometimes rejection comes as a relief.

“I know what you're thinking.”

“
What?
”

Roebuck is shooting through another intersection; he can't afford to turn his head.

“Interesting.” Lily in the passenger seat bears no such restriction. “Now why did that startle you? You
like
me knowing what you're thinking.”

He has no comeback. What she says is true.

“That's what your aphorisms are for, aren't they? Your collection? Those little squibs you like to have me read. Me. Them. We're what falls
outside
the Roebuck brand, aren't we? We're your
other
self-expression
.”

It's safe to look now, but Roebuck doesn't. He is giving this his whole consideration. “We can't all be poets,” he says gently, wearily. “Regarding truth, I mean. We don't all get poetic licence.”

“Ha! Good! You do impress. That may just be the first time I have ever heard that phrase correctly used.”

“That's my job, you know. Impressing you.”

“Your job is fucking me. That's what you should know.”

The restaurant is packed. A young woman at reception informs them tartly that she was just about to give their table to another party.

“Fancy,” Lily says, watching the hostess stalk away, hips first.

“Fancy,” Roebuck echoes.

“You look tired.”

“People keep saying that.” He is vain enough to be annoyed. But there couldn't be a better cover. “Just jet lag. I don't usually get it. This time I did.”

“It went well, your thing in the Philippines? We haven't talked shop.”

Roebuck feels the crinkles of his own smile. “Yes!” He wishes he could lay out for her all the ironies he'd love to share. “
Yes
. It's possible this could turn out even better than I hoped.” But now the smile retreats. That trip has brought to mind its predecessor. “I want to say again how so sorry I am, Lily, that I missed the AFAs. I hated doing that.”

“Don't worry. Things went ahead without you.”

“Ah.”

A waiter appears with a wine list. Roebuck picks an Alsatian Gewürztraminer he knows she favours.

“And why don't you bring a plate of oysters,” Lily says.

“We have some very nice Bélon.”

“Malpeque,” Roebuck tells him. “A dozen, please.”

“Two.” Lily has assumed her impish look. “Two dozen. Maybe I'll swallow some too.”

“What?” He's a little sharper than he means to be. “You hate oysters!”

“I am learning to broaden my horizons.”

Roebuck scans the list of appetizers and identifies a workable alternative. “Then let's have an order of pâté too, just in case. I'm told they do their own here …”

The waiter does not contradict him, and Roebuck is reminded that the tip today will need to be excessive. He has a wad of cash, prepared and ready.

“Okay. Pâté too,” says Lily.

Roebuck returns the menu to the waiter who obligingly disappears. “We aim to please.”

“So,” she says. “Catch me up …”

The appetizers arrive before the wine, which in other circumstances would substantially reduce the tip, though the waiter is profuse in his apology: the bottle they have chosen is not to be found in the cellar; an alternative is offered and accepted. Roebuck is more concerned with making sure the oysters stay on his side of the table.

“Why don't we have a cocktail!” he says.

“A cocktail? You never drink cocktails.”

“I am learning to broaden my horizons.” He beams at the waiter. “Two Martinis!”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

Roebuck begins sliding shellfish down his gullet.

“Vodka or gin?” The waiter is still standing at his elbow.

“Sorry?” Roebuck's mouth is full of mollusc.

“Vodka Martini or gin Martini?”

“Oh. Gin.” He looks at Lily to see if gin is all right with her. She smiles to tell him that she doesn't care. “Dry,” adds Roebuck, although he doesn't care about that either.

By the time the drinks arrive, his pile of oysters is substantially reduced.

“Are you starving, or fortifying, or both?” Lily is definitely in one of her
come-hither
modes. “That's good. I have plans.”

Roebuck lifts a
half-shell
in salute and washes it down with another swill of gin. He is relieved to see that so far she has dabbled only with her toast. He is downing the last of the shellfish when the wine arrives.

“You're a machine,” Lily says.

Roebuck interprets this as not complimentary, but that's all right now too, because now he can relax. The waiter takes away the stack of empty shells and still unmelted ice. “Any room for real food?” Roebuck's appetite is dead, entirely. But that doesn't matter either.

“Why don't you decide what to order while I visit the men's room?” he says.

Tucked into his pocket, opposite the wad of folded money is a pair of bottles removed this morning from his hidden stash. Roebuck locks himself in a stall and unscrews the first cap. He has told himself there will be no ceremony—no hesitation—and allows himself none.

It tastes
like tree sap.

Most years, at the tail of winter, he and Anne drive the kids up to a sugar bush north of the city for the maple syrup festival. Anne enjoys the sweet smell of woodsmoke and the bubbling, ramshackled science of production; the promise of spring. Roebuck and the kids are in it mostly for the pancakes. The taste of ipecac reminds him of raw sap, straight from the tree. Not as bad as he'd expected.

Roebuck waits.

Nothing.

He sets the empty plastic bottle on the toilet tank and deliberates a moment, reviewing. This has to work.

He gulps a breath and holds it, bouncing on his toes.

Nothing. There is no manual for this.

Roebuck opens up the second bottle and knocks it back. He dabs his lips and drops the empties in the waste container, and—having washed his hands and examined himself in the mirror—rejoins Lily at the table. She has decided on a pasta.

The next fifteen minutes are a challenge. Lily is amorous. You could never call her prudish, not in his presence anyway, but she's not usually this forward. At one point she slips off her shoe and props her foot between his legs. Roebuck diligently fondles toes. He does his very best to keep up his end of conversation, but the uncertainty of what is going on inside his gut begins to weigh against his wit. Lily returns her foot to the ground and back into her shoe. It occurs to him that perhaps she too is ovulating. Roebuck is contemplating the uncertain symmetry of this when he feels an odd sensation in what he takes to be his salivary glands.

“I've been worrying about you,” Lily says.

And, at that moment, a crackling stream of oysters bursts across the table like a spray of fire from an
AK-47
.

Roebuck's choice of order has been carefully considered. Oysters, he has calculated, should come up as easily as they go down. And Lily doesn't like them—one of the few flaws in her nature he's aware of, but it's perfect for today because if he's going to put this down to botulism, it has to be from something he ate and she didn't.

“Oh my God!” says Lily, fork pointed to the ceiling.

A froth of gastric juice backfills Roebuck's sinuses and dribbles, bubbling, out his nostrils. He chokes, gags—now he's having trouble breathing—Roebuck is being waterboarded by his own administration.

“I'm okay,” he rasps as his lungs backfill with acid flux. He can't stop coughing as the space around his table fills with horrified wait staff, then empties again as all parties back pedal, swinging arms and spilling drinks, avoiding the next gush. Through his tears, Roebuck frames an image of a
middle-aged
woman in spandex, two tables over, pressing a napkin to her mouth, shoulders beginning to hunch …

He stumbles to the men's room.

Spasms rack his chest and a gobbet of
emerald-green
bile dangles from his chin for an
oxygen-deprived
eternity, then plops into the toilet bowl. When Roebuck's breath returns, he teeters to the sink, tidies what he can with paper towel, and gropes his way back through the door and out into the open room. Lily takes his arm, though it glistens with saliva and much worse. “Hospital?”

Roebuck shakes his head.

Busboys with mops and disinfectant ring the table. Roebuck drops his wad of bills, heaving still.

“Sorry,” he croaks to Lily.

“Let's get you out of here.”

She has his arm again.

The
long-legged
hostess has disappeared, but an older man, a manager, hovers by the door, aghast. “Should I call a cab?”

“Fucking oysters!” Lily says.

“I can drive,” Roebuck tells them.

And he can, though he keeps to the backstreets where he can stop the car and hang his head out the window when the need arises.

“I'm sorry,” he keeps saying. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's not your fault.” Lily strokes his arm.

When he has pulled up to the curb outside her house, she takes a tissue from her purse and cleans his mouth and kisses it. “Call me, please. Let me know you're okay.”

Breathing through his mouth, Roebuck promises to call.

“Fucking oysters,” Lily says.

He is able to strip off his clothes and shower, once he's made it home, though the spasms continue on and off until it's time to leave again and pick up Morgan. The deal is that Anne will collect her afterward, but it's Roebuck's job to get Morgan to the soccer pitch in time for
warm-up
. He would have to be much sicker than he is to leave his daughter in the lurch. Even so, Roebuck is relieved to have experienced no further vomiting since he's left the house.

Morgan crinkles her nose as she climbs into the car. “It smells.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “An accident.”

She launches into an account of how Ginny Moragani tried to steal her pencil case and how Miss Cram, who hates her, gave her a time out, too. Roebuck manoeuvres his way through the chaos of gridlocks that paralyze this block every weekday at 3:35 PM. A Golden Retriever fogs the window of the car beside him; at the wheelhouse of a monstrous SUV, a Philippina nanny tries and fails to park. Roebuck taps the horn to let her know he's there and gets a fright when she throws up her arms and shrieks.

“Damn!” he says, slamming on the brakes. “I forgot your soccer stuff!”

“I have it.” His daughter's tone is a reproduction of her mother's. “Mommy always makes me bring it with me in the morning.” All three children take after Anne much more than him, but this one is eerily identical.

“Your cleats too?”

Morgan roots through her knapsack.

“Yes.”

“Shin guards?”

“Daddy!”

She opens her lunchbox. Morgan saves a chewy bar for the car ride after school. It's the one thing she can be counted on to eat. When she screws off the top of her drink container, Roebuck realizes he's dehydrated.

“Sweetheart. Can I have a sip?”

“No.”