Westlake Soul (10 page)

“
Je trouve l’existence incompréhensible
,” she said. The first time she had spoken French—knowingly—in my presence.

I don’t understand life, either
, I replied.
And I’m the smartest dude in the world.

“
C’est cruel.
”

Yes,
I agreed.
So cruel.

She turned to the regiment of trophies, standing to attention, glimmering in the early afternoon light. Seven in total, and three medals, hanging from their ribbons, die-cast exclamation marks. She read every engraved nameplate. Touched the polished pedestals and figures. She
caressed
my Billabong Classic trophy—curled her hand around the column and slipped it up and down. Ran the tip of her thumb over the happy little surfer dude on top. I could be wrong, but I think
she did this because she wanted to connect—on a psychometric level—to the former me. The trophies were solid and unchanged. As real now as they were when I won them. They could easily be my muscles or square shoulders. My firm jaw or the healthy part of my brain. My happiness . . .

“
C’est cruel
.”

I flowed back into my body and huddled, feeling the deep pain of loss. That vein in my eyelid still ticked. I groaned and Yvette turned to face me.

“Sweet Wes,” she said. English again, and I watched as she reached back and pulled the band from her hair. Light brown hair tumbled across one side of her face. She took a step toward me. Her lips were wet.

Beneath the sheets, my legs began to sweat.

“It’s lunchtime,” she said. “You must be so . . .” She paused, took another step toward me, bit her lower lip, and finished: “Hungry.”

The vein in my eyelid ticked quicker still.

She smiled, brushed the hair from her face (it fell back almost immediately), and started to assemble the necessary supplies: a hand towel, a pitcher of tap water, two empty glasses, a stethoscope, a tin of my prescribed formula, a catheter tip syringe. She placed everything on a folding table beside my bed, smiling deliciously, partially obscured by that veil of hair. I followed her with my eyes, feeling (bizarrely) like I had when I was seventeen and about to lose my virginity. Rigid with nervous energy. My heart somewhere in my throat, restricting respiration. Anticipation like a 747 taking to the sky.

Yvette pulled back the sheets, revealing my body. Legs flopped sideways and toes curled. My T-shirt had rucked up a little, offering a glimpse of my abdomen and the strip of pale hair that runs from my bellybutton to my groin (my Treasure Trail—that’s what Nadia called it). Yvette sanitized her hands with a squirt of Purell. The clear liquid glistened between her fingers, making wet sounds as she rubbed it in. Another dazzling smile, then she reached down and lifted my T-shirt up to my chest. I felt her fingernails drag lightly over my skin.

“Let’s take care of you, Wes,” she said, but what my spinning mind heard was,
Gonna take real good care of you, baby.

She put on the stethoscope and placed the chestpiece on my abdomen, leaning closer as she listened for irregular sounds. Her long hair brushed across my face. I inhaled deeply and imagined some coconut-littered paradise, reclining on a bed of husks as Yvette—her lips cold from the ocean—kissed my stomach. This little fantasy faded when she took the stethoscope away, but I didn’t mind. She touched me. So gently. Three fingers pressing my abdomen with exquisite care, feeling for bumps or swelling. Anything . . . distended. Satisfied, she slowly drew back her hand, raking one fingernail through the Treasure Trail, and raised the head of my bed to a sixty-degree angle. I felt the machinery vibrate through my body . . . bones trembling happily as I rose to a more upright position. Yvette nodded, flipped the hair from her eyes, and poured appropriate measures of formula and water into the two glasses. I waited, a little breathless, moisture leaking from the corner of my mouth.

She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and I watched her upper lip curl. Both mischievous and enticing.

“Don’t want you getting all messy,” she said, placing the hand towel on my stomach to catch potential spillage. Then she took my tube in hand, assessing its length, sliding her fingers up and down and tugging expertly, ensuring a clean connection. My eyes fluttered and I moaned. I wondered if her heart was drumming as passionately as mine—if we were feeling the same emotion: a strong hand that cradled us delicately, and lifted us to a place where the air smelled of sugarcane and the birds were multicoloured. I drifted there for a while, sensation coursing through me as if barrels of desire had been tipped over deep inside. When I came back Yvette had slipped the syringe’s catheter tip into the end of my tube, pushing it in nice and tight. She moistened her lips and administered the primary flush—thirty millilitres of water poured into the syringe, flowing through the tube and into my stomach. I felt it dripping inside me, cool and satisfying.

Feels so good
, I said. My chin was slick with drool and beads of sweat glistened on the bridge of my nose.

Next came my formula. Fifty millilitres of Jevity 1.2 Cal, loaded with protein and calories to keep me from wasting away to bones. With a steady hand Yvette poured it into the barrel of the syringe, not wasting one drop. I groaned again and Yvette smiled.

“You like that, huh?”

Feels so good.

She moved her hand up and down, raising and lowering the syringe, controlling how quickly the formula flowed into my stomach. My fingertips tingled and my left leg stretched out, shaking, toes still curled.

You’re . . . amazing.

“Almost there, Wes.”

Eyelid still flickering, I stared at her while she finished off—at that sheaf of hair, the set of her mouth, and the splash of colour that had risen from beneath the collar of her blouse. I longed to touch her there, in those bright, pink places, but all I could do was stare. The last drop of formula rolled down the tube and into my stomach, and she followed it with the secondary flush. More water. Cool and strangely refreshing. I imagined kissing the sweat from the shallow pockets beneath her eyes. Licking the taste from my lips.

Yvette removed the syringe and plugged the adapter.

“We’re all done,” she said.

Tingling throughout my body. Toes uncurling.

Amazing
, I said again.

My head rolled on its loose hinge, facing away from Yvette now, but that was okay. I sighed and listened to my heartbeat. Proof of life, and of feeling. Sunlight poured through the window and I watched Yvette’s shadow—as unlikely and thin as my body—flicker against the wall as she cleaned up. Hypnotic movement that lured me into sleep. When I awoke the sunlight had shifted but Yvette was still there, rubbing calamine lotion into my reddened cheek. I willed my eyes to close so that I couldn’t see my crippled body, or the Wall of Achievement that reminded me so often of what I had lost. I thought—with eyes closed and Yvette stroking my face—that for just one moment I could feel normal. Wasn’t to be, though. I looked at my trophies, and at the photo of me and Patrick Swayze grinning unknowingly.

So I released. Again. My version of running away, refusing to face reality. I flew in wild circles, venting passion and rage, and by the time I returned Yvette had gone home, the sun had dropped into a pool of red colour, and the vein in my left eyelid had finally stopped ticking.

There is no warning. No sudden cold feeling. One moment life is bopping along as always (bizarre but steady), and the next I am fighting Dr. Quietus, wondering if the next breath will be my last. He came for me Tuesday morning—the day after Yvette let down her hair and bolus fed me like I’d never been bolus fed before. 07:13 AM. I’d just woken up, staring at the ceiling while the pain of sleeping in one position eased from my muscles. I could smell toast and coffee. Dad was getting ready for work. Mom was half asleep, one hand on the alarm clock, ready to hit the snooze button the moment it started beeping. Niki and Hub were curled up on the same bed, equally lost to their dreams. Outside my window, nature turned its reliable face toward the sun, while commuters busied roads, sidewalks, and drive-thrus. Wings of mist lifted from the fields surrounding Hallow Falls. Trains shook their rails en route to the city. Early flights out of Lester B. Pearson marked a sky the colour of new eyes.

Just another morning in the Golden Horseshoe.

Dr. Quietus wrapped his hands around my throat and jerked me from this world so hard that my body didn’t even move. Galileo’s concept of inertia at work. Kind of like that old trick of pulling away a tablecloth and leaving everything standing. Morning light—everything natural—disappeared, along with the smell of coffee and toast. He threw me onto the roof of a burning tower. I landed hard, spitting blood. Through columns of black smoke I saw him move toward me. Sometimes he walks upright and tall, almost human. Sometimes he is on all fours, his muscles moving liquidly beneath his skin and his deathly head low to the ground. Now he
skulked
, somewhere between the two, his mysterious face hidden in the shadows of his cowl.

Did you miss me?
he asked.

Dr. Quietus can’t be defeated. The best I can do is keep him at bay. When he comes back, he’s always a little stronger than the time before. One day, obviously—same for us all—he’ll be too powerful. This wasn’t going to be that day. I was
determined
. Yvette Sommereux had just flowed into my life and, amazingly, we were connecting. My family was in turmoil. They needed
me. It was not a good time to lose everything.

And so, as always, I fought.

If you think I’m just going to roll over
, I said.
Think again.

He flew at me and I burst left, through a curtain of flame, but he was quicker—wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me close. His breath crawled over my face and throat. I thrashed and managed to get away, then ran across the crumbling roof and threw myself over the edge. I didn’t fall; I soared, and with altitude saw that it was not just the building I’d leapt from, but the whole city in flames. Trees and billboards. Roads and walkways. I watched a bridge collapse in a riot of burning pieces. Buildings—from bungalows to skyscrapers—crumpled and exhaled great mushrooms of smoke and fire. Everything was coming apart.

What’s going on here?
I said. Usually, when I battle Dr. Quietus, I set the scene. It is, after all, my life—my fight to lose. But this was all wrong. A feeling of helplessness slowed me down. Was I losing control? Or was control being stripped away? Both possibilities filled me with dread.

I stopped flying.

I fell.

It’s coming apart around you, Westlake.
Dr. Quietus bolted after me, so quick and strong, and so dark it was difficult to distinguish him from the rising smoke.
Piece by piece, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I hit the ground hard.

THWAAMM!

Smouldering debris. Flames like threatened snakes. A nearby structure collapsed with a deafening roar, throwing a pocket of heat that flipped me onto my back. I lay there, searching the sky for a seam of light—my escape—but all I could see was smoke, lit from within by the glow of the flames.

Dr. Quietus touched down beside me. He laughed coarsely, then dragged me to my feet.

It’s all too easy
, he snarled.
All the hard work is being done for me. Can’t you see that?

I hung from one of his fists like a wet jacket. So close to his face—monstrous breath, spitting embers—but I caught only a glimpse. His sharp mouth. One diseased eye. I reached up and clasped his arm. The flexed muscle reminded me of the trains I had seen shaking their way into the city only moments before.

Not so smart, after all.

Sparks drowned my eyes. He drove his other fist into my stomach and threw me aside. I tumbled through the ruin like a hat in the wind—crashed through a burning wall and into a room I recognized at once. My old bedroom in the house I grew up in. We’d lived there until I was fifteen years old. I knew it as well as I knew the groovy room. The furniture was in flames but it was all there. My crazy-cool loft bed with the Godzilla comforter. My little desk with the computer on top, next to my collection of Toronto Blue Jays bobbleheads (I watched as the monitor exploded and Carlos Delgado melted into a creamy puddle of goop). My bookcase with its haphazard arrangement of books and comics.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
and
Where the Wild Things Are
and
Maniac Magee.
So many more, stacked until the shelves were sighing, but all in flames now, their spines buckled and peeling. And, of course, there was Westlake’s Wall of Achievement, version #1, adorned with paintings and crafts, certificates and badges, and two small trophies. One for hockey, the other for skateboarding. Flames licked across the wall and the corners of the paintings curled and blackened. I leapt to my feet, crying out, forgetting Dr. Quietus for the moment and trying to rescue the mementos of my early life. I plucked the certificates from the wall and quelled the flames with my bare hands. I grabbed ugly pottery, daubed permanently with my little thumbprints, only to have it crumble between my fingers and fall in dull shards to the ground. A painting of planet earth (WESTLAKE SOUL AGE 7 scrawled in one corner) began to blister—broad brown holes—as if it were being struck by asteroids. I snatched it down and blew on the spreading flames, but it only quickened the destruction. Within seconds it was engulfed. Clumps of ash rained down on my dandy superhero boots.

It’s the end of the world, Westlake
, Dr. Quietus said, stepping over glowing rubble and timbers burned to a velvety texture.
The end of your world, at least.

I looked at him, emerging from flames, his shadow dancing everywhere. Smoke rippled from beneath his cowl. I imagined him exhaling it from lungs like bullet casings.

It’s all over
, he said.

My helpless feeling deepened. I sagged, fell against the wall. Watched my Godzilla comforter go up in flames. My computer keyboard buckle. My bookcase collapse and spit a mouthful of charred pieces, like crows flying into a fan. Dr. Quietus laughed as my hockey trophy hit the floor and broke into three burning pieces. I caught my skateboarding trophy before it could do the same. The column was scorched. Too hot to hold, but I held it, anyway—
gripped
it. The figure had melted. No longer a silver-toned dude pulling a handplant. More like a stiletto heel, or a spearhead with the tip snipped off.