The Monkeyface Chronicles (39 page)

I kick at the dirt. Something glints in the moonlight at the tip of my toe.

I drop down and pluck the burnished-gold object from the soil. It is a tiny finder scope from one of Landon's handmade reflector telescopes. Although the brass is discoloured from the heat of the fire, I can still see through it when I hold it up to my eye.

Something from Landon's past did survive. I slip the little scope into my front pocket.

“Want to share another bottle of wine?” Anthony asks.

“Okay,” I say, and we walk down the hill together, away from the ruins of my old home, past the empty shell of the Tabernacle of God's Will, and toward the roar of music and excited chatter that echoes from The Incredible Blues Bar.

“Okay, Anthony,” Cecil says, “you and your new best buddy here are gonna have to take it somewhere else. It's way past last call. I need to lock up for the night.”

“Cecil,” Anthony says, “It's Philip.”

Cecil takes a closer look at me.

“It's me, Cecil,” I say to him. “It looks like we both survived, eh?”

He bursts into tears. Good Old Cecil.

The three of are sitting together at the bar, sharing stories from the past two years, as well as another bottle of Anthony's delicious wine, when Carrie Green rushes into the empty barroom. “Hey, C.B,” she pants, “I left my purse behind when . . . Tobias!”

“Hi, Carrie,” I say, reverting to my Tobias Fluke voice. I'm shocked by the weirdly strong physical attraction I feel for her right now.

“Thanks for standing up to Sam,” she says. “I'm glad he didn't hurt you. He enjoys hurting people.”

“He didn't hurt me.”

She blinks, then pulls my face to hers, kissing my lips slowly and gently.

“Please!” Anthony yelps, rolling his eyes emphatically. “Get a room!”

“Want to?”
Carrie whispers in my ear.

Maybe I've had too much to drink, but I
do
want to.

Carrie closes the door to her apartment above The Goode Faith Gift Shoppe, and lunges at me, smashing her face into mine, her tongue writhing wildly inside my mouth. She gasps for air, says, “I want you, Tobias.”

She pushes me into the living room, kissing my mouth, my earlobes, my neck.

“You are
so
sexy,” she says between kisses, “and the fact that you don't . . . seem to know it . . . makes you . . . even . . . sexier.”

Of course, I am aroused beyond description, but still I stutter, “Are . . . are you sure this is . . . ?”

“I'm not looking for a long-term commitment here, Tobias,” she says, her fingers nimbly unbuttoning my shirt, pushing it from my shoulders. “I just
want
you. And you want me too, don't you?”

She was one of the Little Colour Girls. She used to taunt me and my friends, and right here, right now, in my very drunk, very aroused state, she is correct. I
do
want her.

“I haven't felt this way in
soooooo
long,” she says, pushing me farther into the room, unbuttoning my city-guy jeans. “Now say my name.”

“Wait,” I say.

“Say my name.”

“Wait, I . . . ”

“Please,” she moans, causing goosebumps to speckle every inch of my skin, “say my name!” She pushes me toward the sofa.

I have a flashback of Dennis methodically nailing Desiree the cannonball-breasted prostitute. “Wait,” I say. “Not here. I . . . ”

She tugs me toward her bedroom.

“Wait! No! There's something I want to . . . I need to tell you something.”

“After,” she says. She wriggles free from her jeans and top, pulls her bra up over her head and tosses it to the floor, then slides her panties down, and I follow her down onto the oriental-patterned rug that I remember once decorated the floor of her mother's gift shop.

She pushes me onto my back and slowly rolls a condom onto me, a feeling that is quickly eclipsed by the warm, tight, slippery sensation as she straddles me.

I breathe in peaches, baby powder, and another new scent, and feel higher than I've ever felt. Her long hair brushes my face as she pitches forward.

“Say my name,” she moans.

“Carrie,” I say.

“Yes,” she says.

“Carrie!” I cry.

“Yes!” she cries.

“Carrie!”

“Yes!”

“Carrie!” I am about to explode.

“Wait! Wait!” she pants. “I'm so close! So close. Wait, wait. . . ”

My studious re-readings of
The New Illustrated Art of Sex
are not without reward. Her eyes roll, her back arches, and she screams like she's releasing a trapped spirit from her body. I burst inside her, and she collapses on my chest. “Ohhhhh,” she sighs. “Wow, Tobias. Wow.”

A volatile mixture of triumph and guilt bubbles inside me. I have lied about my identity. And I have just had sex for the first time. And I thought my first time would be with Adeline. Although we never made any promises, I feel as if I have been unfaithful somehow.

After her breathing has slowed, Carrie Green rolls off me.

There is no deception left inside me. It has been burned away. “Carrie, my name isn't Tobias,” I tell her. “It's me. Philip. Philip Skyler.”

I expect her to scream, to recoil in horror. But she doesn't.

“They did a good job fixing you up,” she says. “A
really
good job.”

“I expected a stronger reaction than that.”

“I'm not surprised by much anymore.” She snuggles up beside me, places one small hand in the middle of my chest.

“Me neither.”

“I'm glad you're alive. Philip.”

“Me too.”

But I feel more than just alive. I feel as if I've just been reborn. And I can go anywhere from here.

Fourteen Hands

T
he first orange light of day is colouring the sky when I finally arrive back at the old mayor's house. I tiptoe past Artie and Landon, who are asleep beneath a blanket on the living room floor. Dennis is sprawled out and snoring on the Edwardian-style sofa; the old mayor never would have allowed this before. I assume that he and my mother are still asleep in the master bedroom, while Michael and Caitlin slumber in the small second bedroom. I wonder how Michael sleeps at night; another part of me doesn't want to know.

I slip quietly into the dining room, being especially careful not to trip or bump into anything. I'm half way between still drunk and hungover.

The half-eaten
Welcome Home Philip
cake is still on the table. I sit down on one of the red leather chairs, and rest my forehead on a stack of papers on the table. What a night. I abandoned my family in the middle of my surprise party. I beat the snot out of a bully from my youth, and was moments away from murdering two others. I made love to a woman that I intensely disliked as a girl. The world seems even more tenuous than usual.

Stack of papers?

Outside the bungalow, the morning silence is broken by the sound of a big car engine rumbling to life.

I sit up again. My vision blurs from the sudden motion.

Insurance documents. One is an auto insurance policy. Another is life insurance. Both policies pay out large amounts of money to the beneficiaries — my mother, Landon, Dennis, Michael and me — in the event of the “Accidental Death or Dismemberment” of the insured. The old mayor's signature is on the line at the bottom of each policy.

“
There is no insurance in life”
he had repeatedly said.
“There
are no guarantees. You can only do what you have to do, and
hope that things go your way.
” Why has he purchased insurance now, after all these years? Isn't it a bit too late for that? He's already lost everything.

Beside the stack of insurance documents is a calendar of the current year, with a date circled in red marker.

This morning's date?

Yes.

And I know what today is. My heart beats faster, my temples throb more intensely.

It was exactly two years ago today that Michael was paralyzed by Graham and Grant Brush, and the old mayor let the culprits off the hook. It was two years ago that he and Landon toppled the crackling Jacob's Ladder, and burned our hilltop home to the ground. Two years ago, I climbed onto Landon's CBX, and left half my face behind on the jagged cliffside.
“I have a plan, Philip,”
the old mayor said to me in my hospital room in Toronto.
“A plan that will require the use of
my car. A plan to make everything right again.”

I open the blinds on the dining room window, just in time to see the glistening black 1940 Ford Deluxe Sedan roll out onto the street, its flathead V-8 gurgling confidently, with the bespectacled old mayor sitting tall behind the wheel.

Caitlin is in the driver's seat of
The ‘Bility Bus
. She's the only one who can get the old beast started and keep it running. She throws the column shifter into reverse, and the old transmission engages with a clank. The engine sputters and almost stalls, but the red van finally rolls out onto the street.

On the duct-taped vinyl bench seat behind her are Landon, Arty, and Dennis. Michael is in the back of the van in his wheelchair. We couldn't just leave him behind, but jockeying him in and clamping him down has cost us precious minutes. Our mother sits in the attendant's seat beside him.

I'm in the front, with Carrie Green on my lap. She showed up just as we were all rushing out to
The 'Bility Bus
.

“You left these at my place,” she said to me, holding in her small, warm hands my jackknife, Michael's pocket watch, Dennis' 1983 dollar, and the tarnished brass finder scope. I handed each of the items to their respective owners as we all scrambled into the van.

As
The 'Bility Bus
sputters and coughs along Faireville Street, Dennis flips his silver dollar over and over in his palm,
heads, tails, heads, tails
.

Landon peers though the van's dusty window, maybe trying to see the future through his little handmade telescope.

Michael holds the stopwatch between the thumb, index and middle fingers of his right hand, using all the power he's got to control the only three digits on his body that still function.

I hold on to Carrie, and I clench the jackknife.
Stainless
Steel, Philip, Stainless Steel.

Caitlin steers the van onto Gasberg Road and toward the highway. As the engine warms, the sputtering sounds less like a death rattle, and the speedometer needle gradually struggles farther clockwise.

As we round a long curve, we finally see my grandfather's car, so far ahead of us that it is a mere speck on the road. Caitlin stomps the accelerator to the floor. It sounds like at least three of the engine's eight cylinders are choking to death, but the van does speed up, gaining on the 1940 Ford Deluxe until I can see the silhouette of the old mayor's head through the round rear windows.

I can also see a blinking yellow light, straight ahead.

Suicide Curve.

Caitlin hits the brakes.

The old mayor does not.

There is an explosive crunch of metal on metal, a burst of steam, and the old Ford leaps upward, its belly catching on the cliffside railing.

The 'Bility Bus
is still rocking from the sudden stop as Carrie and I leap out through the front door and sprint toward the Ford Deluxe. The car teeter-totters atop the guardrail, its round rear end swaying in the air, its headlights peering past the cliff edge into the abyss. I grab onto the cold, shimmering chrome of the rear bumper. Carrie takes hold also. Then Landon, Arty and Dennis are beside us. Caitlin's and my mother's hands jam in between mine and Dennis'.

“PULL!” someone shouts. It's me. Sometimes I still don't recognize my own voice.

Fourteen hands pull back on the bumper.

“PULL! PULL!” Landon yelps.

The car rocks back and forth.

“PULL! PULL!” my mother cries.

Back and forth, back and forth; the rear end of the car dips closer to the ground each time, while the nose drops a little farther over the cliff.