Unlike his father, he had never
possessed a fault tolerance for liquid forgetfulness. That third beer
had been a technical knock out. He stretched his neck from side to
side thinking that Jerome, ten years younger than him, had a
metabolism better able to go the extra rounds. A faint memory of
Stacey Keach in that boxing movie from the seventies swept up to his
consciousness, that open ended ending, so much like life. He
stretched his legs down to the cold corners of the sofa bed and
wondered if Jerome was all right. His self-doubts and his feeling of
being cursed rose to the surface of his thoughts as he rubbed his
eyes. Were Tullio and Thérèse further examples of proximal
contact? What about Carina? Umberto? His tweedy flight companions?
Were they all in danger of the side-effects of brushing up against
his deterministic fate? It was always when at his lowest physical and
mental ebb that he erected such negative scaffolding, refurbishing a
simple, austere structure with baroque and grotesque features against
a backcloth of fog and grey skies.
He reached out for his watch and felt,
and heard, his shoulder crack sending an electrical current up and
down his spine, his ageing nervous system's wake-up call. It was only
9:30, which gave him preparation time. He wanted to be fresh, looking
his best. He grabbed the CD case, opened it and managed to slip the
thin booklet out, a lyric running round and round in his mind like a
mouse on a treadmill. He turned the small pages and found the lyrics
for the song, The Thread of Love:
The Thread of Love
Sweep my pixel dust away
Sailing strange love's ocean;
Follow me but don't betray
The thread of love's e-motion.
So follow me, follow me
Invisibly, invisibly.
Trace in me, trace in me
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
Synchronize synaptically,
Your camera lucida;
My bitstream flows bilaterally,
I won't be your persona.
So follow me, follow me
Invisibly, invisibly.
Trace in me, trace in me
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
We'll keep ourselves in hour-glass
mode,
Our servers overflowing,
Holding to eternal code,
With topic drift converging.
So follow me, follow me
Invisibly, invisibly.
Trace in me, trace in me
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
Your hard cache won't tear us apart
Byteing dust, and broken link.
We'll balance love right from the
start.
Horizon to the very brink.
So follow me, follow me
Invisibly, invisibly.
Trace in me, trace in me
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
Sweep my pixel dust away
Sailing strange love's ocean;
Follow me but don't betray
The thread of love's e-motion.
So follow me, follow me
Invisibly, invisibly.
Trace in me, trace in me
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
The thread of love
The thread of love
The thread of love's e-motion.
He remembered Livia
Plurabelle had shifted to a small keyboard synth for the song, while
the bass player had taken over the percussion for the new wave melody
with its two minute musical opening sequence. It had imprinted itself
upon Pavor's mind, hook, line and sinker, and he felt it had been the
soundtrack to his dream, a dream of a beach at dawn or dusk and the
tide rising quickly forcing him to the base of a rock cliff, sheer,
steep, unscalable. The consideration that the dream was possibly
allied to the demands of his bladder undermined the romantic suspense
of the narrative, but he admitted it was likely the source.
Jerome had left a
written note taped to the bathroom door informing him that he was at
the Roquebrunes visiting with Thérèse. Breakfast essentials could
be found. Help himself. Taped to the paper was an oddly shaped spare
key which made him think of a pocket Derringer, the kind of handgun women kept in their purse or under a dress in hard-boiled fiction, one that stirred up images of book covers of Dashiell Hammett and his favourite, Ross MacDonald—the key, like the gun, was an open invitation
to come and go as he pleased.
At the back window
facing the Roquebrune house, he drank his coffee and gazed out at the
morning scene. Beside him on a low bookshelf, a cassette radio with
an empty case resting upon it, beckoned his curiosity. He pressed
play, and listened to an atmospheric sound scape emerge which
developed into a melody with a gentle beat, a soft voice, and gentle
arcs of oboe colouration. Picking up the case, he saw it was a group
he'd never heard of, The Dream Academy. The lyrics he heard
linked it to the song listed as In Places on the Run. He began
to tap his foot and nod his head to the chorus. Jerome was
always listening to different music. Outside, the autumn colours
would soon shed their camouflage, revealing the sharp-edges of brick
and mortar humanity and the sinuousities of chimney smoke, an odour
to evoke countless memories.
He began to map out
in his mind the circuitous path to Mélisande: along Maplewood, cut
down to Mont Royal, then across the intersection to the the access up
to the cinder path of Chemin Olmstead, down past the Sir
George-Etienne Cartier monument with its enormous winged figure of
Pheme on high, or, as Mélisande had informed him one day on their
way to Café Santropol, the mythological representation of the Greek
or Roman Fame. He had merely thought it was an angel with a laurel
wreath, but she had educated him, and revealed it could be seen as
either positive or negative, as renown or as rumour, the light and
dark sides of the goddess or spirit. A messenger of truth, or
scandal. So, after a bow and a nod to the goddess, he would continue on the path up behind McGill
University's sports complex, along Pine and finally down University to
the Religious Studies building. He estimated the time required, added
an extra half-hour for hesitations and indecisions, and then began to go
over what he was going to say to her. How to begin he wondered? How
to begin?
*
As
Amelia parked the car at the back of the house, she could see George
III looking out from behind the glass of the kitchen door as if
overcome with ennui, those enigmatic Airedale eyes focused on some
distant prospect of tomorrow. Mary appeared beside him and waved to
her and opened the door to let George out.
“Hello
Georgie,” she said, bending down to kiss him on his long snout. She
didn't mention the word “walk” but she sensed he was in hope.
“Come on, let's go see Mary, come on.”
Mary
settled a pot of tea on the old pine table and dressed it with a
feline fabric tea cozy, snugging it down around the base like a
woollen toque on one her relatives. “So, my dear, what brings you
here so early on a Monday morning?”
“We've
discussed your future retirement plans and we're behind you. We'll
step into your shoes and do the best we can.” She rubbed her hand
into the thick coarse hair of George who sat beside her possibly in
anticipation of a salty digestive biscuit. “It will allow us to
save money towards a house of our own, and be closer to Uncle
Edward.”
“Thank
you Amelia. It's good to know I can move forward. If I live as long
as Edward, I'll have almost another thirty years.” She shook her
head and began to pour the tea. “Thirty years. Another lifetime to
some. At sixty-seven, I'm still young.”
They
both laughed at the unintended rhyme. “Maybe you can become a poet
in your new future,” Amelia said.
“I'll
miss you all, but I'll visit, don't you worry. You won't see the last
of Mary.”
Amelia
touched her forearm, “We'll certainly miss you too, so you better
visit. Every Christmas if you dare confront the cold and wet.” They
both groaned. “When I was coming up the street I passed Mr.
Roquebrune going the other way. I don't think he saw me. I waved but
he was looking straight ahead. A serious look on his face.
Preoccupied.”
Mary
drank her tea holding her cup with both hands, looking over the rim
with the concentration of a competitive bowler. “Arthur brought a
young couple over for Edward to talk to. The young woman, her name is
Thérèse, seems to have suffered some type of amnesia. I believe
Arthur said she was a journalist.”
“Thérèse?
A journalist? Is her last name Laflamme by any chance?”
“I
think Arthur said it was, yes, do you know her?”
Amelia
was stunned. “No, I don't, but I think she used to be the previous
tenant of our place. That's so funny.”
Mary lifted her left eyebrow with mild surprise. The world was getting smaller as she got older it seemed. "Coincidence is an odd thing isn't it? Her boyfriend, or partner is waiting in
the living room. He seems a nice young man, a bit bohemian perhaps,
but then again, he is an artist.”
“An
artist? What's his name?”
“A
good old-fashioned name, Jerome, Jerome van Starke.”
Amelia
felt goosebumps on her arms and she shivered. A bohemian artist with a
vintage car who liked to sit on a street bench and watch people walk
by was now in her Uncle Edward's living room. A light feeling of
guilt passed through her as she imagined him evaluating her Uncle's
valuable possessions.
“Maybe
he'd like a cup of tea.”
“You
can bring it to him if you like. I was going to myself when you drove
up. Bring him this plate of digestives too. He looks a bit like a
starving artist,” she added with a wink.
© ralph patrick mackay
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