Three Years with the Rat (8 page)

“I'm on your team,” I said. “I thought things were fine between you and John.”

“It's just—I need space. I need to work.”

I unlocked the door with my key. Nicole and I didn't call it the
spare
key anymore.

“He's at home,” Grace said. “He's at the lab. Everywhere I go, there he is. I'm being consumed by his attention.”

“Hello?” I shouted into the apartment. The lights were on but the living room was vacant. I turned back to Grace. “So you're annoyed that he's being what? Clingy?”

“In here,” came Nicole's voice. The bedroom.

“I just need my space to work,” Grace said quietly. “I'm getting close.”

“Come here for a sec,” Nicole shouted.

“I'll be right back, Shaky,” I said to Grace. I raised my hands as if to put them on her shoulders and all their layers, but Grace frowned at me and took a small step back. I laughed. “Grumpy.”

I walked into the bedroom.

Nicole was looking into the mirror above the dresser, the reflection of her eyes on me at the doorway. From her slender ankles upward she was one smooth line, an S. The back zip of her dress was still half-open and the line of her black bra cut across the exposed skin of her back. She was long legs and hips contrapposto and bare arms raised with her hands to her head. She pinned her orange hair up with her face turned and mouth just a little open. I watched it all and she watched me. The make-up was dark around her eyes. Her lips were red.

The amusement was too much for her and she smiled, closed her eyes. “Well. Hello.”

I walked up behind her.

“You look good.” I spoke into the nape of her neck and its downy hair brushed against my lips. There was the smell of fresh fruit.

She turned to me. We scuffled a little, our faces and bellies pressed together. I tugged her back zip down. Her kiss turned into a laugh and she smacked my hands away. She tugged the zipper up again and turned around so I could finish its ascent.

“Flatter me more,” she said. My hands were on her shoulders, her arms.

“You smell like oranges,” I said.

“Too factual.”

“You are impossibly attractive.”

“Mmm. Boy whimsy, but still too factual.”

She leaned forward to pick up jewellery from the dresser. I tugged at the belt around the waist of her dress and kept our hips close together. She raised her arms again and fastened pearls around her neck.

“Christ,” I said, “I want to bed you right now.”

“Then do it,” Nicole said.

“Can't. My sister's in the other room.”

“Tell her to go. We'll meet her there. She's an adult.” She tugged at my belt.

I stepped back. “No. Let's go.”

“Oh.” Nicole looked startled for a moment, but then composed herself. “All right. Leave it to the princess to spoil the party.”

Princess.
From surprise I laughed, one sharp sound.

Nicole turned to face me, questioningly. Her posture was perfect.

I coughed. “It's a good expression. Never mind. We should get moving.”

She stood still for a moment, a flicker of doubt playing across her face. Then she walked over to the closet. She chose a thin cardigan, hung it over her shoulder, and glanced at me coyly as she left the bedroom.

Over the last month I'd passed the Fortress a few times on the way to Grace's apartment, but this was the first time I'd paid it any attention. Its outside was grime and graffiti, the adjacent sidewalk covered in cigarettes and old flattened gum, but it managed to exude an excitement, the hum of potential through its reverberating walls and its chirping line-up. Lee, Steve, and Brian were in the middle of that line when we arrived, all of whom I'd seen multiple times since we'd met in August. I stood between cosmopolitan Nicole and bohemian Grace, less fashionable than either of them.

“Lookit this young 'un,” Brian said, pointing at me.

“Quite the harem,” Lee said, which was doubly funny to all because one of the women was my sister. “And he can't even grow hair on his face yet.”

“Not true,” I told her. “I just believe in this thing called
shaving.
I know these other guys haven't heard of it, but it's pretty great.”

The women started their greetings. The men swayed together like trees.

“Where's John?” I asked.

“Aw, he's sweet,” Brian cooed. “True bros.”

Steve joined in. “Dude love.”

“I can see up your nose,” I told Steve, then looked to Brian. “And you. You're just a dick.”

Brian laughed. “Sweet and sensitive little fucker. You're fitting in just fine, so far.”

“John knows somebody at the door,” Steve said.

Beside the entrance to the Fortress was a set of stairs, painted black and filthy with use, and a line of people shuffling. John was there, talking to the bouncer, who smiled, nodded, clamped his considerable hand on John's shoulder and waved us up into Ramp Art, the Fortress's dance club.

On our way in, John greeted us all warmly, and then gave Grace a squeeze. She was wide-eyed, as usual, but her face was otherwise unreadable in response to the affection.

It was a fifties and sixties pop music night. Nicole, the only one of our gang dressed nearly appropriately, disappeared into the crowd of revival fashion. The rest of us were too contemporary to blend.

We drank. We cheered. We shouted over the music and twisted to the simple rhythms. We drank more. I watched Nicole dance, joined her, couldn't stand the proximity without pawing at her, couldn't be so close to her damp skin in the darkness, and went back for more drinks.

John and Grace stood facing the bar, he leaning in to whisper to her. I came up on John's side and ordered another beer. John and Grace were drinking from small, wide glasses. I got their attention, clowned with my eyes as if to say,
What's that?

John pushed his glass to me. I took a mouthful, swallowed, hacked, forced my jaw open. It felt as if I'd poured acid down my throat. I pushed the glass back to him.

Grace shook her head, looked away. She was amused but embarrassed for me.

“Not so much, next time,” John shouted.

“ ‘Next time'?” I laughed. “Eugh. What is it?”

“Scotch.” He took a sip.

“Tastes like fire. I've got the mouth sweats.”

We stood together and listened to the thrum of music. I scanned for Nicole but could see only Steve and Lee dancing. It looked like an adult dancing with a child.

“Any idea if you're going to keep staying at Nicole's place?” John asked.

I searched his face for subtext, more meaning, but found only his usual warmth.

I said, “Honestly? I'd like that.”

“Things are good, then?”

“Things are great.” I drank from my new beer and then said what I was thinking. “Trouble loves Danger.”

He nodded once and clinked my bottle with his glass.

Lee came over to me, pulling Steve in tow.

“Haven't forgotten, have you?” she asked.

I turned my head, squinted at her.

“Thursday.”

“Oh,” I shouted. “Yeah, the job interview. When is Thursday?”

Steve and Lee laughed hard. John had been distracted by a girl talking to him on the side opposite to Grace.

Lee said, “You're telling me you don't know what day of the week it is today.”

I shrugged. Steve and Lee laughed again.

“Wednesday,” Lee said.

I could still feel the scotch roiling my guts. “Ah, O.K. Well, I won't miss it. Thanks again for arranging it.”

There was some commotion near me, near John and Grace, but I was trying to focus on Lee to show appreciation.

“Happy to help!” she shouted. “Grace said you needed a job, you seem bright, and I'm on my way out of there anyway. The husband's a bit of a pushover but the wife is a great boss. And anyway, it's easy work. You spend most of your day begging the government for money, essentially.”

I felt someone bump into my back, and when I turned I found John and Grace standing in a triangle with a girl I'd never met. The girl had backed into me, away from Grace.

“Come on,” she said. “Relax.”

“ ‘Relax'?” Grace repeated.

“I asked him where he was from,” the girl said. “Like, originally. That's all. Relax.”

“ ‘Where he was from'? Like where he got his slanty eyes and yellow skin?”

“Grace,” John said.

“No,” Grace shot back at him, and then to the girl again. “You. Piss off. Find somebody else to take advantage of you.”

The girl took a breath as if she wanted to say more, but then just looked at John pityingly and walked away.

“All right,” John said to Grace. “We're done. I'm taking you home.”

“John,” I said. “Don't talk to her like that.”

There was a flicker across my sister's face, that familiar expression of pain, and she made straight for the door. John was about to follow her but I put up my hand.

“I've got it,” I said.

“Everything's fine,” John said. “She's just working too hard, bringing the stress home with her. A little aggression is healthy, logical.”

“Tell Nicole I'll be back.”

I was annoyed, partly because of the way things had gotten out of hand, and partly because it wasn't surprising for things with Grace to get out of hand. Then I reached the street and saw her standing on her own, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a splash of vomit off the curb and the Fortress line-up all giving her a wide berth. She looked in both directions and no one would look back at her. She was a bundle of clothes too heavy for the weather and abandoned near the road.

I put my hand on her elbow and walked her toward the apartment. “Tell me about time.”

“Fucking John,” she said, knuckling her damp eyes. “He's supposed to be on my team.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Look. Tell me about subjective time.”

We left the club behind but not the crowd. Bloor Street was bustling right up to the door between the two sushi restaurants, what was quickly becoming in my mind a regular Wednesday in Toronto. Grace stayed quiet all the way, just little wisps of words when she exhaled. She unlocked the door and we took the stairs up to her apartment. I went to the kitchen, made her some instant coffee, and when I got back to the living room she was spread across the couch and under a heavy blanket. She looked very drunk.

I helped her sit up and handed her a cup that wasn't too full. She used both hands to hold it.

“I never understood how you could drink this shit any time of day,” I said. “Or at all, really.”

“Space and time are the same thing,” she replied.

I nodded, not wanting to argue.

She noticed. “No, fuck. They are. That's why it's referred to as the fourth dimension.”

I couldn't avoid it. “But it isn't the same, Grace.”

“Why not?”

“Well, in space we're…free. We can go anywhere, right? But time only moves forward.”

She smiled, proud. Her eyelids sagged with fatigue. “See, you and I
are
related, after all.”

She handed me her mug. She held out her finger horizontally and pointed at its knuckle with a finger from her other hand.

“Does my finger exist here?”

She then pointed at the tip of her finger.

“Or does my finger exist here?”

I put her mug on the coffee table. “What do you mean? It exists at both points.”

“So do I exist now,” she said, “or do I exist as the teenaged girl who shaved her head?”

Grace had used an electric razor, and the mound of hair she left in the garbage had looked like a dead animal. I'd watched her leave the bathroom, bald except for some wispy bits around the edges, and was hurt that she didn't even seem to notice me.

“Now,” I told her. “You only exist now.”

She slid low on the couch and pulled the blanket to her mouth.

“I wish you were right,” she said. Her words were loose, slurred. “But objectively, it's both. Subjectively, we can't experience more than one ‘now,' one little cross-section of time, as the here and now. We sense time moving forward because we have access to the past, but it's all there.”

“This is why you play with lab rats? You think you're going to—what? Rodent time travel? Astral projection?”

She turned away from me and faced the back of the couch. “Fuck. Forget it. I don't need your help, or John's. I can do this myself. Nobody tortures rats but themselves. Nobody mentioned fucking time travel. I'm talking about just plain
travel
, about access.”

“I'm sorry. I was just trying to keep up our usual banter.” I laid my hand on her shoulder, through the blanket. She shuddered and rolled back to look at me.

“Just imagine you could be the past and the present and the future you, all at the same time,” she said. “Imagine you had full access. Imagine you knew everything was going to work out, or even if it wasn't going to work out, at least you'd be ready for what's coming. The things you could tell yourself, the intellectual conversations, how quickly you could learn. Imagine how much of a comfort it could be. It's going to be all right. Be proud of yourself. This doesn't destroy you.”

“What doesn't destroy you?” I asked.

She didn't answer. Her eyes lay vacant, and just as I began to suspect she was falling asleep, they lit up again. “I think there's more than one dimension of time.”

I waited for her to explain but instead her breathing became slow and regular. After a few minutes I switched off the lights and made my way to the door.

As I pulled on my shoes she roused and shouted, “We're living on a fucking sphere of time.”

“Yes, we are. Goodnight, Grace.”

Without the key, I couldn't lock the door behind me.