The small coin rose up high above them
flickering with a crescent of reflected light—whether merely
wavering back and forth or fully rotating they couldn't tell in the
dismal street lamp's glow—before reaching its acme of freedom in
the cold December air, a moment that would likely decide its future
before its descent. Heads they would go to Hurleys, tails, to
Brutopia, and if they flubbed the catch, and it dropped to the
slush and snow at their feet, they would go to the Madhatter,
the five cent coin a donation to the distant spring thaw when some
keen-eyed waif would perceive it as a coin of incremental value and
pocket it carefully with its kind. Whether it was the dimness of
their surroundings, the chill in their fingers, or the rowdy
Concordia University students who passed them making a joke about
referees and the Montreal Alouettes, they missed the catch. Madhatter
it was. Crossing the street, they settled their thoughts upon the
warmth of a corner seat, a pitcher of beer, a mound of crispy hot
onion rings, a dish of steaming chicken wings, and the pretty face of
a server who could probably take out an unruly customer with a flick
of her serving tray.
“My stomach's been growling all
afternoon,” Tom Culacino said, bringing a rough-edged onion ring to
his lips. “I don't think I had lunch.”
“Tabarnac, that's what you always
say.” Yves poured beer into their glasses. “Growling all the time
your stomach. It's like a little animal down there. Feed me, feed
me.” They laughed. “Remember that song by Dunc's brother, that
punk anthem with da growling stomach?”
“Hmm, how can I forget. I think it
etched a little place in my brain forever.” Tom looked to the
scuffed wood floor, and began to tap his foot while recalling the
lyrics. “I don't know, but I have a hunch, day to day's no
poetry. As they say, there's no free lunch, our stomach's are
growling with poverty. It was the repeat of those last five words
over and over that ground itself into the consciousness of the crowd,
their heads bobbing like those plastic novelty drinking
birds.” He selected a chicken wing and held it over the plate as if
contemplating a chess move. “I used to wonder if Gavan's break away
band, The Spliced Off, would have gone anywhere if he hadn't
died.”
Yves concentrated on the appetizers,
hoping to avoid one of Tom's digressions on the nature of names and
their statistical anomalies.
“There are some lovely multi-syllable
names on the roster of the CBC these days.”
Yves was dipping and crunching,
munching and sipping. He gave Tom a “hmm.”
“Pia Chatapati, Ian Hanomansing,
Paolo Pietropaolo, Ann-Marie Mediwake, Martina Fitzgerald, and Anna Maria Tremonti which just gallops along. Such lovely names.”
“Thomas Culacino works too,” Yves
said, in the hope this would lasso Tom's run away thoughts.
“Yes, that does seem familiar.”
“I wonder where Dunc is?” Yves said
checking his watch. He then took out his smart phone and dialled the
bookshop. Placing a finger in his other ear to overcome the loud
music from the sound system, he began to shake his head. “Just got
the answering machine. Maybe he forgot.”
“Yeah, it's possible. He could be at
home with a glass of wine in one hand, an open book in the other,
Amelia nearby likewise, Hugh at their feet, and a piano sonata
tinkling in the background.” Licking his fingers, Tom looked
towards the door. “Though if he's on his way he'll find us. I tried
to convince him to get a cell phone, but no, he says he doesn't need
one. Too expensive.”
“I bet he went to Hurleys. He likes
that triangular corner table in the front.”
“Yes, he likes that corner. Snug as a
bug in a rug.”
They looked up as they heard three
young women enter. The three graces stood for a moment, hesitating in
their expensive coats, boots and handbags as if they'd expected an
Alice and Wonderland interior instead of the rather seedy no frills
pub before them. Tom and Yves exchanged looks expecting the women to
turn around and deprive their sad eyes of a welcome sight, but the
trio found a table and ordered pale ales.
With a voice slightly louder than
before, Yves began, “There I was last night, watching les Canadiens
on the tv, and Céline was looking at a magazine on fashion eh, 'Look
at this,' she said, shoving this magazine in my face, 'a handbag that
costs $9,000 dollars.' Tabarnac, a handbag for $9,000! I told Céline
that would cover the cost of that new roof we need. Handbag! Roof!
Crazy.”
“Yes, but it's all relative. That
kind of money to the movie star is like 90 bucks to us. Milly bought
a new bag recently for about $70 and I thought that was a lot. Her
money though. I told her it was lovely.”
“But $9,000 dollars? What did the
designer do? Hire a private jet to fly to the Amazon to kill the
animal for the leather? Then travel to the Himalaya to find the rare
bird for the rare colour to dye the leather? Then get someone to
weave the gold thread to stitch the bag together? A roof is tar
paper, wood, nails, shingles, man hours, blah, blah, blah, profit
added in. Understandable. But a handbag? C'est incroyable.”
“You forgot the generator and the
portable radio blasting 80's hits to keep the roofers happy.”
They laughed and glanced over at the
young women who were talking into each others ears seemingly
oblivious to their loud conversation about handbags and roofers. They
were working their smart phones, their safety lines to the wider
world, and Tom wondered if they were tweeting about their exploratory
excursions into the grottoes and warrens of Montreal's pub life. They
began to take selfies, having fun, smiling, laughing. Youth he
thought, so much more connected and sharing. As a computer geek,
albeit an old one, he felt it was progress. He gnawed on a chicken
wing thinking of his twenty year old self in 1978, a time that had offered the novelty of Walkmans and chaos theory, Fortran punch cards
and fractals, pocket Instamatic cameras and Apple IIs, digital
watches and DRS-80s. The slide rule, ruled, but the future hadn't
come quick enough.
“Tristan's into shredding now,”
Yves said, changing the subject.
Tom dragged himself back from the past.
“Shredding?”
Yves mimicked the style of guitar
playing by running his left hand fingers quickly up and down an
imaginary fret board. “Like you know, metal guitar, what Randy
Rhoads was doing in the seventies, but faster. Tristan wakes up, eats
his Shreddies and those little Oateo's or whatever for breakfast, and
then he practises the shredding. Sounds like scales to me. Céline
bought him the headphones so he could hear himself, and we don't have
to.”
“I thought he was into computing?”
“Yeah, yeah, he still wants to be a
geek billionaire, but one who is cool, you know, one who can shred
like his heroes, those oddballs, weird guys with names like
Buckethead, Bumblefoot, and zillions of others. Mon dieu, there's
like eight year olds on the Youtube shredding away like masters.”
He shook his head in astonishment.
“Yeah, crazy fast times we live in.”
While they continued to diminish their
plates of appetizers, Tom was thinking of the books he liked to read,
postmodern, speculative works, pages thick with rapid, metaphorical
riffs, ones that reminded him of the guitar virtuosity of a Joe
Satriani whose riffs not only impressed, but moved, not only shook,
but stirred. It was all in the emotion funnelled into the slide in
and slide out, the pull off and hammer on, the melodic overlay on the
rhythmic underlay. “I'm sure Tristan will go from scales to adding
some emotion. The rough edges of youth are mellowed with age and
experience aren't they? Look at us?”
“Hmm, yeah, mellow, like when I
shovel the snow in front of my shop, and I'm fine, but an hour later,
I bend over to pick up a pencil, and bam, there goes my lower back,
eh, sacrifice!”
Tom laughed. “Yup, I know that
feeling. Surprizing what reaching for a thumbdrive can do to you.”
He looked at his watch. “Maybe we should phone Dunc at home. He's
already a half hour late.”
“He's got a lot of books to pack,
but, he as said, he has to do that himself.” Yves withdrew his
phone and began to dial. “One thing you can say about Dunc, he
knows how to pack a box of books.”
“Yes, but he'll welcome us when the
heavy lifting comes round.”
*
A sacred geometry of soap
bubbles floated above the sink, an emblem of some distant harmony
beyond everyday life. Melisande gently blew the bubbles towards Pavor
who waited with a fresh drying cloth before the wood dish rack, and
he too added his breath to their trajectory and together they watched
their fairy-like progress as they rose and fell towards the floor
between them, attracting the attention of Clio sitting on her
haunches in the act of licking a forearm to wash her face.
“I was thinking of a
having a labyrinth walk on the Sunday after the Saturday wedding. I
could make one of my seven circuit birdseed classical labyrinths.
Depends on the weather of course.”
“We've walked labyrinths
together in the rain before.”
Melisande ran a soapy sponge
around the edge of a plate. “Yes, but I've never created a birdseed
one in the rain. I'd be wet right through. Anyway, perhaps I could
create one at Pavor's friend's art gallery if it has a room big
enough. Easy to sweep up birdseed after.”
“True. Nice fit with an
art gallery too.”
“Walking the labyrinth
would help everyone shed their habitual thinking, reawaken their
centre balance, overcome their self-consciousness and open themselves
to each other more fully. A new beginning for everyone.”
“It would be wonderful.,”
he said, giving her a little kiss on the top of her head. He dried a
plate with solemn clockwise motions. “I really am glad you asked
Pavor to join us on the day. Hopefully Thérèse will agree.”
“I hope she's all right.”
“Yes, I feel responsible
for triggering her involuntary memory. I shouldn't have used the
fictional name Evan Dashmore. Jerome told me it was too close to
David Ashemore, but I couldn't resist the evocative symmetry.”
“Maybe it's for the best.
Jerome said she was more like herself. Maybe it was just what she
needed.” Handing a bowl to Pavor, she imagined herself watching
them all walk a labyrinth together, but then the field of vision
shifted up and she rose like a soap bubble and looked down on them
walking and could see they were really all walking in closed circles
around each other, circles within circles, no access to each other,
like the rings around some planet. “I had the oddest dream last
night,” she said.
“Tea with the Queen?”
She laughed. “No. I was on
a plane and in front of me was the actor Colin Firth, and beside him
was a woman with a child. I figured they were his family. Then I fell
asleep on the plane and dreamt I was in an absolutely enormous old
house, rooms upon rooms, and a vast open gallery and entrance as
well. I sensed my sister was there but I didn't see her.” Melisande
stopped washing, and taking a towel, dried her hands and rested,
leaning on the counter.
“You were dreaming within
a dream?”
“Yes, I've never dreamt I
was in a dream and then falling into a dream before. Anyway, we
sensed someone was coming home, and Colin Firth showed up and was in
a bad mood. He went straight to the smallest room in the house, a
book-lined study and locked himself in. I went up to the door and
there was a peep hole which allowed me to look in, and he was sitting
at a desk, surrounded by books.” She looked down at Clio who was
now in a yoga position licking her right foot.
“Then what happened?”
She looked up at him with moist eyes. “I was back in an enormous open gallery, full of
sunlight, and I was twirling around and around and around.”
“Wow, that's quite a
dream. Colin Firth eh?”
Dipping another bowl into
the soapy water, she smiled. “The poor actor must be in many
women's dreams. Mr. Darcy and all that.”
“Ah, right. That reminds
me of my own dream last night. I was in the old public library you
used to work for before McGill. I had two pencils and was trying to
sharpen them on that old-fashioned wall mounted pencil sharpener, but
they kept snapping, grinding improperly. I ended having pencils with
squared ends instead of points, and so I returned to the large high
marble topped circulation desk and began to make a list. I think it
was groceries of all things.” Pavor tilted his head sideways trying
to recall the details, details as elusive as a handful of fog. “All
of a sudden the library was full of people, and the man at the desk,
who seemed to be my double, began to sing opera. No one reacted. I
went to the front door, the aria following me. Next I was in the
metro, but had just missed the train, and, remembering a bus could
get me where I wanted to go, I made my way up and caught the bus, but
it was soon apparent it's route had been changed. I got off and began
walking, thinking of the street I was supposed to be on, a street I
dream about often, have dreamt about for years, one with the same
shops, ones that sell antiques, books, flowers. I've often dreamt of
entering the bookshop and browsing the shelves, picking up and
handling volumes, their colour and titles palpable with felt
existence, but it's a street that doesn't exist in reality, only in
dream, only in my dream memory.”
Melisande washed the cutlery
and then rinsed the small handful before giving them to Pavor. Their
dreams seemed divergent, desperate, the beginnings of two
constellations swirling towards each other. “I sometimes dream of
that old library,” she said. “Dreams of finding people wandering
at night when it's supposed to be closed. Anxiety dreams of having
forgotten to lock the front door. I go up to them and tell them
the library is closed, but no one hears me, they sit there
looking through me, they walk around like ghosts. I haven't worked
there for years. Places stay with you. We carry them inside.”
© ralph patrick mackay
No comments:
Post a Comment