Through Black Spruce (23 page)

My last trip to the camp from the blind, I weaved and stumbled from the rye, and this made me sad. The best goose hunt I’d ever had, but today I never really got that first hour of elation when the drinking starts. So many times that first hour makes all of the rest of it worthwhile. But today was a steady pull on the bottle, and I jumped the warm brightness straight to heavy clumsiness. Koosis asked me to share dinner, but I was embarrassed to be drunk in front of his family. I told him as much. He nodded. “Come back tomorrow,” he said in Cree. “We will eat till we burst.”

I thanked him and made my way back into the bush.

26
POSTCARDS

I’ve lied for you to keep you here. Don’t make me look like an idiot. I’m sure you’ve lied before, too, especially when it was a means to a good end. Do you want them to send you down south? You know that’ll be it for you. Yes, I lied. Prove to them that it was for good reason.

I lied about something else not long ago, but only to make another person feel better. Is that so wrong? You tell me. Wake up and tell me. First, though, let me tell you about this other lie.

I lean over the railing of the rooftop and imagine floating down, my lavender cocktail dress fluttering around me, the wind picking me up before I gain any speed, my silver pumps aiming down, straight down. I look up and see the people above staring at me and clapping, whistling in excitement. Gordon stands among them in the vintage 1940s tailored suit that’s a little too short for him in the sleeves. His long black hair is pulled back tight, a small silver turtle pendant for his
Anishnabek
relations tied into the start of his braid.

The weight of the thick silver choker pulls at my neck, this choker Violet lent to me for the night. I daydream from the railing, and I know Gordon keeps an eye on me in his fine suit. Too many people were staring at the two of us when we came out onto this rooftop, the half hit of E Violet slipped me earlier just kicking in. So I grabbed Gordon’s hand and led him here so I could breathe and gather my nerves.

I look over to him, so handsome, a silent-movie Indian looking nervous for the dozens of people nearby chattering and drinking. “I’ll get you a beer. Be right back,” I say, heading toward the gauntlet we just walked through. Women stare at me, men, too, and I feel their eyes even when I’m past them. Maybe it’s my getup, the cocktail dress showing so much leg, the silver heels, the silver choker that Violet placed around my neck and screeched about. My black hair is loosely tied and long down my back. I hold my sequined clutch too tight in my hand and weave through the crowd, ignoring them all. A man holding a tray of thin, tall glasses asks me if I’d care for one. “I’d care for two,” I say, and he smiles at me. What is up with this night?

The music. I can hear Butterfoot behind the beat, cock my head and listen more closely. The wail of an ancestor just below the pound, so subtle that I think only I can hear it. He has come. We will spend some time together later tonight.

Gordon watches me when I approach. What’s he seeing? He looks like a boy seeing the crush of his first ice breakup. My heartbeat bumps rapid now, my feet not touching the ground, and I hand him his champagne and clink his glass and sip mine and the bubbles make me float more. I look good. I feel so good. I reach out and touch the lapel of his jacket decades older than I am. “It’s perfect on you.” I want to dance with him, but he’d never do it. “Dance with me,” I say anyways.

He shakes his head.

“What? You don’t like Butterfoot’s music?” His eyes go sad, and he looks behind me to the DJ booth in the big tent. I turn and look with him, but all we can see are the flashing lights and the movements of people swaying. “He’s come down here,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

Violet floats through the crowd. Violet’s loud voice tickles my ear. “Look at my Indians! Gorgeous, exotic creatures!” She’s arm in arm with a guy who’s too pretty to be real. Behind them, a woman in a short frilly skirt, a small boxy hat angled on her head, carries a tray. “Postcards!” she calls out. “Send your loved ones a postcard courtesy of Soleil!”

I turn to Violet. “So this is the soiree, eh? I pictured something a little more fancy.” She laughs, and the pretty boy laughs, and Gordon has turned his back to us, not out of rudeness, I know, but out of not belonging.

“You feeling me, girl?” Violet asks, touching my arm lightly so that the hairs stand out.

“I feel a vision quest coming on,” I say.

The pretty boy nods like I’m a shaman who’s spoken wisely. Violet laughs again.

“Where’s this famous Soleil?” I ask.

“She never shows up till everyone is here already,” Violet says. “Rule of the land.”

“Are you joking? If I threw a party in Moosonee I’d make sure to be there from the moment the first guest arrived till the last left.”

“Aren’t you polite.”

“Not really. Just worried they’d steal everything I own.” Again Violet’s laugh, which is a pretty laugh. It makes me happy.

“Give me some of what you’re having, ladies,” the pretty boy says to Violet.

I’ve already turned away from him. I look out at the lights of Manhattan all around me, below me. I could get used to this. When I look back, Gordon is gone, and something under my breastbone shifts, then sinks to my stomach. I try to drown it with a big gulp of the champagne. It bubbles up in me, and I imagine it shooting out my nose. I start laughing at the black sky that’s so close I can touch it.

The night is full on now, and the lights of the city twinkle in the billions. I’ve stayed here at this rail, asked the man with the tray of tall glasses to make sure he comes back to me every once in a while. Should I tip him? I stare out at the night, and when I turn around, the people on this rooftop rush in a wave toward the door, then recede, then rush up again. Is everything okay? Should I worry? Somebody nearby says that Soleil has arrived. I watch, fascinated by the people’s movements. They’re trying so hard to look bored.

He approaches out of the dark from my left, and I don’t know he’s there till he is upon me. He takes out his small round glasses and cleans them with a white handkerchief. I notice again the winged skull tattoo on his ring finger. He puts his glasses on and gazes out with me at the billion lights. I want Gordon close by.

“Beautiful night, Suzanne,” he says.

The wave I’ve been riding rushes down. “I’m not Suzanne.”

“My mistake. I forget your name.”

For the first time I can hear his French accent. “I’m her sister. Do you know my sister?”

He looks at me and smiles. The grey front tooth. He is ugly just underneath the facade. “Oh, I know her well. I knew Gus, too.” He looks back out at the twinkling of the night. “You seen them? Know where Suzanne is, by chance?”

“Why do you ask?” I pray for the waiter, for anyone to come up now. But the action is where Soleil is, at the far side of the vast rooftop.

“Just wondering. Haven’t seen them in a long time.”

I need to know. I don’t care anymore. What will he do? Throw me over the railing? The thought makes my stomach drop as I look down to the street and the tiny cars so far below. The photo of a beautiful woman, an image from some old book my mother has, flashes behind my eyes, the woman lying serene on the roof of a crushed car in a New York from long ago.

“When’s the last time you saw my sister?” I dare to look over to him, but only for a second. A thick chest. I picture him bench-pressing small cars. He continues to stare out at the skyline.

“It’s been a long time. Too long.”

“How long?”

He looks to me. He smiles the grey smile. “A couple of months, sister of Suzanne. Tell me your name again, girl from France.”

“Yours first.”

“Daniel.”

“Annie.” I hold my hand out without wanting to. He takes it in his. Small hand. “You’re a biker,” I say. I have little to lose, the anger of thinking that this dirty man might have something to do with where my sister is burning in my throat.

He laughs. “I own a motorcycle. I’m a businessman, from TroisRivières, Quebec. I was in business with Gus for a while.” I want him to tell me more but stay silent. “Your sister, her boyfriend, they walked away owing me some money. Just disappeared on me.”

“Oh yeah?” I want to scream for someone to come help me. I can feel the heat pulse from him. How he barely holds it inside. “How much?”

“Let us just say a lot.”

“What kind of business were you doing together? Real estate? Used cars?”

“Aren’t you the funny one. We can call it real estate.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I have heard from friends,” Daniel says, “that Gus is most certainly in town. If you see him, please remind him that I request his presence at his earliest convenience.” I watch Daniel’s mouth move. “And if your sister wasn’t smart enough to take a vacation from him, I wouldn’t mind a quick chat with her, too.”

Violet appears, shouting over the music. “Daniel! My dangerous biker has been allowed across the border!”

He grimaces out to the sky. I see it, like a snarl. Then I watch his face turn to a gentle smile as he turns to Violet. They hug. I slip away.

The waiter with his tray of tall glasses cuts through the crowd. I take two and down the first, then give it back to him. He smiles the same cute, dumb smile.

“Have you seen the one I’m with? Indian? Long black hair in a braid?”

He shakes his head and smiles his dumb smile again. “Not for a while, ma’am.”

I take another glass from his tray. Shit! I’ve lost my purse again, that little thing Violet calls a clutch, so small it only holds a pack of smokes and a lighter and two hundred American dollars. I must have left it by the biker. What’s his name? Daniel. Shit.

“You look worried,” the waiter says.

“I lost my purse again,” I say.

“It’s under your arm,” he says, smiling brightly, before walking away.

I wander, sipping from one glass, acting like the other is for my lost partner so I don’t have to talk to anyone. People everywhere, drinking and laughing, watching me as I wander, some reaching out to touch me.

I smile and move on through the faces, the bodies becoming a tunnel I walk through. The scents of these bodies mingle, and their teeth flash. It takes everything I have to walk slowly, looking ahead, smiling, acting like I’m searching for somebody and it’s important and I can’t stop now to talk till I find him. I want to scream and throw the glasses and run away from here.

I pass a man who is the famous actor I’ve seen in so many movies, and he looks at me and his eyes widen before he can stop them, and he smiles his white smile. I smile back and can’t believe it, it really is him.

I need to find Gordon. My head is full of air and light and now a dark shadow creeping somewhere up the side. This half of what Violet gave me, it is only feeling stronger, and not in a good way like it has before. Not in a controllable way. My hands are going to shake so that I spill the champagne. I am afraid to open my mouth to a stranger and talk for the fear I don’t know what will come out of it. I’ll be stared at even more. People will gawk in shock this time, or they’ll laugh. If I am forced to talk to anyone, I will talk in Cree. Yes. This thought rushes over and calms me, and I stop dead in my tracks, right beside a group of shining white people. I sip on champagne. Look cool. It’s okay. A woman in the group, she smiles to me and says hello.

“Wachay,”
I answer.

The others turn to me. A thin man in a tight T-shirt holds up his glass in a toast. He looks just like another famous actor, but shorter. The woman, she’s definitely someone famous, but I don’t know who she is. I sip with them and push on, feeling their eyes on me. I must find Gordon, sit down and talk to him about this
windigo
, Daniel. That’s what he is. Daniel will eat me if given the chance. He says he’s seen Suzanne recently, that Gus is somewhere in this city. That’s good, no? The bikers haven’t done what I have begun to allow in my imagination. Right? Fuck. Can’t think straight. Please. No one talk to me right now. I’ll just talk in Cree.

Like I’ve beckoned my worst nightmare, the ones in the crowd ahead of me part. She stands there, Soleil, shining under the carefully planned lights like she means to stand here all night. God. She has. It’s all making sense to me. She orchestrates everything in her life, right down to exactly where she will stand under just the right lights at her own party. Skin glittering, her blond hair shining like a halo around her thin face. She’s like one of these models. She
is
one of these models. The young goddess of them. She talks to a tall, dark-haired man, then flicks her fingers at him, smiling. He walks away as if commanded. I want to duck back into the crowd, but her eyes lock onto me. A second of cold computing, and then recognition. She waves, now to me, beckoning with her thin hand. The crowd around me almost sighs and parts a little further. I can’t escape. I must walk this runway to her, all eyes on me, wondering who I am. Who am I?

Both my hands clutch glasses. My tall heels wobble. I’m not even close to learning how to walk right. I teeter at first, a moose calf in a short dress. Walk to her. Walk to her now. She is my keeper. I will speak Cree to her and it is this alone that clicks that gear in my head and whispers to me the words that straighten my back and allow me to glide, not walk, to the shining girl.

She leans to me and kisses a cheek, the whole crowd, the whole world, watching how I will react. My two champagne hands shiver. I pull back, but then she leans again, kissing my other cheek. I kiss back, the smacking sound of it making me want to laugh. It must come off as a smile because Soleil smiles back at me broadly. “You must be Suzanne’s sister. How goes it, girlfriend?”

“Excellent. And you?” The people around pretend they aren’t listening, leaning in just a tiny bit closer. “Soleil, thanks for putting me and my friend up.” I pause for a second, knowing what will come out next might be the fakest thing I’ve ever said. “My people say
meegwetch. Chi meegwetch
.”

Soleil beams. “It’s nothing, girlfriend.”

I realize suddenly she doesn’t remember my name. Something in that knowledge makes me feel better. Screw it.
“Ki minoshishin,”
I say.

She looks at me strangely, a thin smile on her lips.

“In Cree,” I say, “that means, ‘You are a beautiful woman.’”

“That’s hot!” She grabs my arm. “That’s really hot! Say something else!”The pretty ones around her, they all begin to vibrate with her enthusiasm.

Something in my head tells me this might be the most truly enthusiastic she’s been in a while.
“Annie Peneshish ntishinihkason. Winipekohk ntocin.”