Pilgrimage (28 page)

“It wasn't punishment; it was a shower.” Mal responded.

“Thanks. Do you have a towel?”

“No.” Mal then added, smiling, “That's the punishment.”

“Great. I don't think I can stand, so would you mind giving me a hand up? Otherwise I'll just sleep here.”

Mal shook his head. “And let you drip all over the carpet and soak the guest bed? I don't think so.”

“I guess I'm not that tired, anyway. Nothing like a cold shower to wake you up.”

“You want some water?”

“Yeah, but if it's all the same to you, I think I'll use a glass.”

“That can be arranged.” Mal filled up Roland's glass with tap water and handed it to him. Then he took a seat on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite Roland.

“Don't mind me. You go back to bed. I'll be okay, here.”

“I think okay is a strong word in your case, Roland. I wasn't in bed, as a matter of fact – it's only seven o'clock.”

“Really? I thought it must have been midnight or something.”

“Funny thing about sleep, you tend to lose track of time.”

Roland shrugged. “Hey, I'm sorry about drinking all the juice.”

“That's all right. I was only going to throw it out, anyway. Actually, I was probably just going to forget it was there and leave it.” Mal took a pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket and pulled one out with his mouth while his other hand searched for a lighter. “Want one?” he asked through half his mouth.

“Sure,” Roland answered. Mal threw the pack to him. He found his lighter, lit his cigarette and then tossed that to Roland.

“I was going to save some for you. The juice, I mean.” Roland said.

“Spoken like a true drunk man.”

“I guess I am pretty drunk. There was a lot of it there.”

“Well, at least you found a way to thin out all that blood in your alcohol stream.”

“Oh, you're funny. I've never heard that joke, before.” Roland tried to clap his hands. Out of half a dozen tries he only managed to coordinate two.

“Everyone's a critic.”

“But not everyone's a comedian. That reminds me: you said people have died because of you. What the hell do you do, anyway?”

Mal laughed through his cigarette. “That's one hell of a segue.”

“You're not a cop, are you? I don't like cops.” Roland lit his cigarette and took a long breath.

“Do I look like a cop?”

“No. You look like a burned-out businessman who thought opening a bar would lead to riches but it just led to long hours and high-interest business loans.”

“That right? I can't imagine I look half as burned out as you. Is that what happened to you?” There was nothing mean in Mal's voice. He seemed to be enjoying the conversation. He looked happy just to sit, smoke and shoot the shit on the kitchen floor. Roland almost resented him for it. Nobody should be that content.

“That's no fair,” Roland said. “Nobody looks good when they're drunk and wet. Well, except maybe my wife.” He looked down at his wedding band and, for the first time in years, let his eyes linger on it. “But she always looked good.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Curiosity.”

“Nosy.” Roland scoffed. He dropped the lighter into the cigarette pack and slid it across the floor to Mal.

“Where is she now?”

“Gone.”

“Divorce?”

“More like cowardice.”

“Another woman?”

“Fuck you.”

Mal didn't even flinch.

“I may be bad but I was always faithful. Not one slip up, not even close.”

“I believe you.”

“Good.”

Mal tilted his head. “So what was it?”

“I'm sick of this story.” Roland looked away but the kitchen offered little in the way of distraction.

“Humour me.”

“It's a long story.”

“Have you got somewhere to go?”

Roland hiccoughed and shook his head. “I guess not. You really want to know?”

“All of it.”

“Her name was Violet Reyes. I don't remember what job I had at the time but every morning was the same – wake up at six, get dressed, leave my apartment, buy a sandwich for breakfast on the platform and then wait five minutes for the train. I did this long enough that I started to notice the people who were there with me. The man who only had one suit, the guy with the pinstripe trilby that didn't quite fit him, so he was always fiddling with it. Then there was Violet, the woman with the legs. She could have given old men heart attacks when she wore her black stockings. At first she was just another face on my list. A good-looking face, but just a face. She and I rode the same train, every morning, for almost a year. Then one day we got on the train, I sat down and she sat down next to me. She was red in the face and breathing heavy like she'd run a marathon to get there. I don't remember what I said but I like to think it was something smooth. That became part of the routine, five minute conversations before she got off the train three stops later and two stops before me.” Roland ran a finger over his gold ring and sighed. He looked up at Mal and Mal met his eyes. He had stopped smiling but Roland could tell he had the man's complete attention. Roland averted his eyes again before he went on talking.

“After having these five minute conversations for so long, I decided to ask her if she wanted to have a longer one over dinner. She said no. She told me that, after she finished work, she met with this old German guy for painting lessons or something. Violet was an artist and she was in some kind of mentorship program. Maybe it was an excuse but I got her to promise me a date when she was finished in the program. I pretty much wrote the whole thing off, but I kept talking to her. Five minutes every morning, Monday to Friday.

“But when her mentorship did end, she invited me to an exhibition of her artwork. I went and I spent almost the entire night drinking cheap wine, eating cheese and waiting for her to finish talking to people I didn't know. The whole gallery smelled like cleaning chemicals. I saw all her paintings in the first twenty minutes and, after that, there wasn't much for me to do. After the exhibit we finally got a chance to spend some time together when I walked her home from the gallery. That night was especially cold and windy and she wasn't dressed for cold weather. Her black satin dress left a lot of her skin exposed and she pressed herself close against me for the whole walk. By then the smell of her perfume had mixed with the smell of cheap wine and the cleaning chemicals gallery smell. That night, the first night we spent together, she fell asleep while we were talking. I thought long and hard about what to do – whether I should leave, if I should leave a note and what it should say if I did. In the end, I decided to stay. I put her in her bed and slept on her couch. We could decide what happened next in the morning.”

Roland's vision clouded; he wiped away the first few tears with his hand. He heard Mal get up, take his glass and refill it at the sink. When he was sure the tears were gone, Roland opened his eyes again and took a sip of the fresh water. He noticed for the first time that his cigarette had burned away, largely untouched, and dribbled ash down his shirt.

“Got another cigarette?”

“Sure.” Mal tossed him the pack again and left the kitchen. He came back as Roland lit up and put an ash tray on the ground beside him before sitting down again.

“I'm guessing it doesn't end there.”

Roland nodded. “Sure but this water is starting to sober me up and I'm starting to wonder why you want to know so much.”

Mal smiled. “I told you – curiosity. You're one of a kind, Roland.”

Roland couldn't help but chuckle. “Bullshit. But sure, you want a story; I'll tell you a story. Why the fuck not?

“The next morning we agreed that now that Violet had time, we should see if we could make a relationship work. Jeez, when I say it like that it sounds so awkward. Maybe it was. I could tell she was hesitant to risk what had become a good friendship. But friendship could never have been enough for me. Violet was beautiful and intelligent and, most of all, fascinating. I've never met anyone who felt so strong about something as she felt about art. Well, at least until—” Roland stopped. Out of absolutely nowhere Griffith had popped into his head like a friendly neighbour with no sense of boundaries.

Roland shook his head. “Never mind. Anyway, I didn't understand her love of art but I loved her passion and that was enough for her. So, on those terms, we agreed to see what we could make of the world together. Over the next year and a half, we had a lot of fun. We moved into a bigger place. I think I changed job once or twice and she quit her job to become a full-time artist. She was never famous but she was good enough to make it into galleries and she sold her paintings often enough to make a living. Living her dream like that made her one of the happiest people I've ever known. No matter what went wrong in life, you could never crush her spirits.

“I don't remember what put the idea in my head but I decided that a year and a half was enough time and I decided to propose. Diamond ring, expensive dinner, fancy wine, I waited for a special occasion – she either sold a big painting or she was in another exhibition. I'm not sure which, but something. I took her to her favourite restaurant to celebrate. I discovered that, when you start telling people you're about to propose, they're willing to do a lot of extra work for you. I arranged for live music at the restaurant and, over the course of our meal, the musician slowly came closer to our table so by the time we had finished, he was right next to us, playing his guitar. I made a little speech, just like I figured I was supposed to. Then I got down on one knee and offered her the ring, just like I figured I was supposed to. And she cried, just like I figured she was supposed to. Then she said yes. For one brief moment, our lives were a romance movie starring us. You ever been married, Mal?”

“Once, a long time ago.”

“Well maybe you know what I'm talking about.” Roland tried to imagine he was telling a story about somebody else. It wasn't hard. The Roland that proposed to Violet and lived a happy life was somebody else now. Somebody who died a good, long time ago. He ran a hand over his face and hunched forward, staring at the ground as he spoke. “Sometimes you can be in a situation that feels so good from the inside that you miss all the things that everybody else is seeing. Looking back, I can see that right from the start we wanted different things in life. What she must have seen, when I asked her to marry me, was herself, nine years later, teaching a daughter how to paint and living in a quaint suburban home.

“Violet wanted a family and somebody to share everything with – everything she owned, everything she thought. Every experience she had was supposed to be shared with her family. She always talked about retiring from painting eventually and being an art teacher so she'd be able to spend more time with me and our children. That was the first sign we had different futures in mind. I wanted to share my life with her, but I wanted that life to be out in the world, seeing other countries and having adventures. I didn't want to live a quiet life in suburbia.

“Did I tell you I used to be an accountant? My father was an accountant and I became one because, like he said:
Everybody has taxes and most people don't understand them. As long as our great society stands, an accountant will have work.
So I became an accountant when I finished school and I worked as an accountant for exactly one year. I hated it. I never wanted to live the safe, quaint life my father had lived or Violet was planning to live.

“I liked living in the city. I liked the walk up the stairs to our apartment, I liked the view from our fifth floor window, I liked being so close to my neighbours – even the ones I never spoke to. But Violet had other ideas. Over our first few years of marriage, we slowly moved from one place to the next until suddenly we were living in a house. It just sort of happened; it's like I blinked and then suddenly I was in the suburbs. I've never found it that hard to get a job, so, even when we went so far it was impossible for me to keep working in the same place, I just found something else. Blue collar, white collar, it's all the same to me. I just kept trying to make her happy and pretended there wasn't a problem.

“Violet kept painting but we'd moved away from the bohemian world and all the art galleries, so she was selling fewer and fewer paintings. She didn't seem to mind, though. She'd already lived her dream of being an artist and now she was getting ready to live a different dream. I ignored it and dug my head deeper into the sand for as long as I could. Then I blinked again and suddenly, after four years of marriage, half way through my thirties, it happened.

“Violet was pregnant. She was thrilled. I wasn't. I tried to be but I just couldn't. I tried to see the good in our future and in the family we were becoming but all I could see was four years of thinking one day we'll get to have our adventures, while Violet slowly built us up to her next dream. That's how Violet was. She was ambitious and she made things happen. I was just waiting while she planned – and suddenly it was too late.

“And about that time I made the decision to commit to a long line of stupid choices and a life of being a fucking idiot. I should have drawn the line years before, but instead I waited and everything went to hell.