Parallel Rivers Read online

  Walking into town one afternoon he came upon numberless men in business suits, bending over, scurrying on, bending over again. Apparently, a truck containing hundreds, probably thousands, maybe millions, of keypunch cards had overturned on the Bay Street Bridge. Cards were floating out with the tide toward the Johnson Street Bridge. The intersection of Bay and Tyee looked as if it were under an off-white, two-dimensional version of snow.

  “Each flake different,” he muttered as I stroked his thighs under the covers of the hospital bed.

  “Waking up in that place is hard,” he complained. “I vacuum the carpets, move everything to a different location, but still I’m really nervous. I take out my flute, say, and my bowels flip-flop. A physical reaction, right? So I pack away the flute, lie down on the floor and listen to a tape of myself playing soprano on ‘Happy Talk’ with the old band. In Vancouver I had an affair with my best friend’s wife. Man. Saxophonist beds down with percussionist-wife of guitarist: band dissolves: my old lady leaves me. That was a crazy progression.”

  “Gwen,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “Tell me about Gwen.”

  “Not even the bassist will talk to me now.”

  “Did you and Gwen live together long?”

  “Yeah.” He lay stiff in the hospital bed, eyes closed tight. I sat still beside him. Imagined the floors of his apartment adjusting to his absence. The air slipping under closed doors, through loose windows, spinning through the hole in the wall behind the flute case on top of the bedroom closet. He opened his eyes to murmur an emphatic “Nope,” then began to snore. I could hear the racket long after I left the ward, long after I reached home.

  One time in Mexico, I found a goat tied up by a grave and wanted to touch the goat but couldn’t. I didn’t feel safe. And in those days before we met, while Brian opened bleary eyes on his new surroundings, and Naomi brewed tea for one of her cases, and the one-legged pigeon she’d been concerned about was dead, let’s say, buried in garbage at the municipal dump, crows pecking at offal a few feet above its head, a blonde woman with a square chin and a pretty good body took long strides through a tired residential district near the Bay Bridge. She would be thinking about sliced bread. This was Marilyn. This was me. A waitress for the summer, I wore flat shoes. I still wear flat shoes.

  The neighbourhood wears its Monday morning clothes. Women push perambulators. Chatty women sit on steps, wiggle their chubby toes and watch dogs trot by. I quicken my pace, stare down the men looking at me. It’s the starlings, finches, blackbirds, crows, sparrows, and robins who arrange the morning’s parts: in warm late spring the men are desultory or horny, the women bored silly. Birds interweave song and flight to keep the machine humming. Click: minute claws on a fence, pins to a magnet. I want to be in love. I hate the idea. I come to a standstill and viciously stab the walk button. A retarded man flails past, is assisted to the other side of the street by a thin woman in green. Naomi smiles briefly at me. I pretend not to notice. The man keeps moaning, “Where are you taking me? Where are you taking me?” And Naomi answers, “Across the street, Al. Just across the street.” Guided by her, he looks haggard and distressed. Next moment I’m running, thinking sliced bread. Sliced bread because soon I’ll be serving a billion sandwiches. All the aphid-ridden buds on all the rose bushes in all the yards nod their heads at me.

  Often, on my walk to the café in the morning, I see Naomi’s retarded guy alone and wearing a beatific grin. Dressed in a heavy plaid shirt and an old sports jacket, he staggers along the sidewalk waving his arms like a possessed windmill. Pedestrians give him a wide berth. I want him to understand that I notice him. I want to encourage him. I wonder if Naomi chooses his clothes. How effective people seem when they’re alone. The Marilyn of that time was an effective flirt at the trucker’s café! I wore short skirts and tight tops and laughed at the bug-eyed guys. I was learning, in Victoria by the sea, to feel empty, get used to loneliness, maybe wind up like Al, happily trapped in this do-good town, drooling along the street, turning cartwheels, tra la!

  But even he had someone. He had Naomi. I’d lost Naomi. How did that happen?

  Most afternoons, before jamming with his new band, Brian left the apartment. His favourite pastime was to walk the Bay Bridge to the Tally Ho — working man’s bar minus the stripper — sit back and lift glasses of amber liquid from the small round table, tilt rim after cold rim to the bridge of his nose. For weeks, other than practices or gigs, he rarely ventured out except to the Tally Ho. On the way home he’d stop at the Red Kettle for a coffee and to chat up the blonde waitress. When he passed on his drunken journey home after a gig the café was always closed, its windows dark. He’d weave on across the bridge, sulk along the tracks and through the park’s deep shadows.

  One morning he found in his mailbox the first piece of broken glass, the label side of a smashed beer bottle.

  “Gwen really loved ice cream,” he says. “For some reason I still eat a cupful before bed. Christ knows why.”

  “I hate it. I hate the gummy sweetness,” I say. “What was Gwen like?”

  He describes a living room, the two of them facing each other, their dog licking clean the empty dishes on the carpet between them. They do not speak or touch or make any movement. Even if he’s lying, even if it was like that, I want to slap him.

  “Seems like years ago,” he says. “She was fat. Not like you. Smooth belly you have. Belly like a plate.” Those clear eyes of his. He had to leave Vancouver. I see that. He and Jenny tumbled in and out of bed around Vancouver like sick calves. The bassist and the guitarist watched him make a fool of himself. “She’s putting broken glass in my mailbox. Hell. She’s stalking me.”

  Two nurses stood smiling at something outside the ward window. They looked peaceful. In control.

  When Brian was familiar with my schedule at the Red Kettle, he arranged his visits to coincide with my quitting time. Summer afternoons the homebound traffic crawled toward the bridge and we crossed Bay Street through dust eddies in the wake of cement trucks, then waded along Turner into the ramshackle district of warehouses and scrapyards, so hot. I listened to him whine about his life, music, what a fool he had been, and so on.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “At night it’s quiet here,” he told me, like I was born a minute ago, like we hadn’t even slept together, “except for the racket from the mill across Selkirk Water. That bush is Bamfield Park.”

  “Uh-huh.” Why was I not losing interest in this man?

  “See that guy? That crazy guy?”

  “O sure. I know him. He’s just retarded.”

  When we’re closer, Brian stops in front of him, offers his hand. “What’s your name, buddy?”

  “His name is Al,” I say.

  Al shifts his feet, looks warily at me, shrugging his shoulders madly. He encloses Brian’s hand in both fists. Brian pulls free, makes a show of straightening his curled fingers.

  Al throws back his head and laughs. “Ah!” he agrees.

  “Listen to that goddamned sawmill,” says Brian. “The squeals when the saw goes through the wood — brutal, huh?”

  “Brutal,” says Al. “Brutal.”

  “Come on, Al, we’re buying you a beer. I’m from Vancouver. Marilyn here’s from Calgary. Don’t you think Marilyn’s a cute little Calgarian?”

  “Yeah,” Al says. “Bathing beauties . . . and . . . bathing beauties . . . and . . . ”

  In the beer parlour Al sits forward in his chair and studies the tablecloth, glancing up once in a while, then quickly down at his big hands resting on the red cloth. “Gotta get back,” he mutters. “Na-omi, she’ll be watching for me. I gotta get back.” He drinks the beer and watches our faces.

  “Who’s Naomi?” Brian asks. “Woman of your dreams?”

  “No.”

  “Al, you a married man?”

  “Me? Married? Nah. Me?”

  “But you like Marilyn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Br
ian, don’t tease him, okay?”

  The beer parlour fills. The patrons eye us. Al’s tongue keeps lolling out as he gets excited.

  “I play the sax, Al. You know. Saxophone. Nice curves. Bitch you’d like to play.”

  “Na-omi, she’s, she’s watching out for me! I gotta get back. I gotta go.”

  “That chick again, Al? Who is this chick?”

  “Na-omi, she’s, she’s — I gotta go.”

  “That’s right, Al,” Brian says. “That’s good.” He leans over and whispers in Al’s ear. Al blushes. Brian touches my elbow.

  I lean in. “You want to fuck me?”

  “Whew,” says Brian. “Hey Al.”

  “Yup.”

  “See? We’re just one happy family. What d’you think?”

  “Good.”

  “I’m ready to go,” I say.

  And this, I know now, was the turning point. If I had not sat there with him and Al, I would not pity him. Now I see that.

  “Let’s get Al home,” I say.

  “Beauty,” Al says, brushing fingers up and down his ribcage, looking at my breasts.

  In the cab, he fell asleep.

  Brian touched my neck. “You feel sorry for the guy, don’t you?” He sang, “All the girls have gone, I just wanted one.”

  “The most beautiful time in Mexico,” I said as we were crossing the bridge, “is after it rains. All the lizards warm up and dart for a patch of sun.” I whisked my hands along the back of the driver’s seat away from each other.

  After that I got to know all about Brian Hubner, and soon I could dismantle his gaze, undermine his whining. No longer self-contained, he was interested, interested in me because I asked him questions. Of course he expected me to justify his potency by objectifying myself, and it’s true I allowed myself to enjoy his cock, but his balls and the history behind them appalled me. We argued. We grew close. We drank. We fought.

  “What d’you mean you don’t like my balls?” he exploded. “Balls are balls, right?”

  “I wish.”

  “Jesus. I sit on the toilet so’s not to splash. I do that for you.”

  “Your fucking Monroe cup, your fucking apartment, your saxophones and flute, your favourite fucking walk.”

  “You really hate men, really hate us, don’t you?”

  “Poor baby.”

  A nurse popped her head round the curtain. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, nurse,” he said. He groaned. “Jesus Christ. It’s not funny, Marilyn. I should at least be blowing scales.”

  When I received the call Saturday morning that Brian was at the ER and needed surgery and would possibly lose his foot, I was aware of a texture, a thickness in the air I’d not noticed before. The darkness had been shattered with a light that hurt my soul. I can still smell, still taste that antiseptic bloody light. It all started on the bleak sunny Friday morning when I opened the door to Marcelino’s, a plush Italian restaurant on the tourist strip. Brian stood behind me, blinking into the sun-filled lower room, waves of light adjusting his features, changing his expression constantly. The owner, Marcello, alone at a table by the huge rear windows, beckoned us down the stairs. I introduced the men. They sat facing each other.

  “I liked your tape. Okay, you jerk off a bit but you do a lot of Real Book stuff, a lot of standards. That goes over well. I caught you at the Jazz Box last week. That place’s not good for your reputation. Too much underage drinking. The cops will close it down before long. And ditch the pianist — guy’s lousy.”

  Brian sat stiffly on the edge of his chair facing the windows, the harbour. He’d been playing the Jazz Box a couple of weeks. It had taken a lot of persuasion to convince him to start playing again, to get the musicians together, to keep him rehearsing. Marcelino’s had been my idea, too. Marcello slouched, looking out at the brilliant water. He gripped a cigarette in his teeth, raised a match to the tobacco, sucking hard at the smoke. I’d told Brian I’d only met the man once, though I’d gone out with him a few times. I’d slept with him. I watched a thin spire rise straight from the cigarette and dissolve in the higher draughts. Marcello’s lips closed; two coils escaped his nostrils. He thought he was the deal. Thought he was doing me a big favour.

  “Three nights a week, guaranteed. The rest of the summer. Start next Friday. Just you and the bass player.”

  The Coho ferry pointed its bow toward the open water; pursued by lazy mute gulls, it steamed across the harbour. A sailboat bounced through the wash.

  “Eighty bucks each. Take it or leave it.”

  Brian looked now at the room, now through the windows, now at the owner, now at the room, now through the windows . . . The cigarette wagged between Marcello’s fingers.

  “I feel like a little kid,” Brian told me when we left. “That guy’s an asshole. You sleep with him?”

  I shrugged. “So what?”

  “What the hell do I care?” he said. I followed him across Wharf Street through brightly clad tourists with sweaty faces sauntering aimlessly. “Gwen and me forgot we were people, just people. We cranked all the time. When I noticed someone else it was a shock. She hates me, really hates me. Jesus Christ. What can I tell you, Marilyn?”

  I planted the broken glass late every night. Full moon to new moon. Hush!

  Al was hanging round outside Brian’s apartment so we invited him in.

  Brian changed into jeans and a torn sweater while I dished out pistachio ice cream, plugged in the kettle, then stood in the shaft of sunlight that filled the doorway between the kitchen and living areas. He picked up his tenor, slung it round his neck, blew a note and put it down. He looked at me.

  “Cunts, Al. They think they’re terrorists, like they’re working for a bloody cause. They can be as false, as destructive, as phony as they want, because they’re fighting for a cause, Al. They believe in a new order. They want all the control.”

  Al’s spoon stopped in the ice cream. He looked at the floor.

  “They don’t know we’re all people, just people stuck in this mess together. They think it’s a fucking war, Al. It’s not a war.”

  “Leave him alone, Brian,” I said. “He doesn’t understand. Come on, Al, I’ll take you home, okay?”

  “He understands all right. And you” — Brian stood up and began to yell — “I don’t want to fuck you any more. What d’you think of that? You don’t know your fucking ass from a teakettle!”

  “I feel sick,” Al said in a faint voice. “I gotta go. Ah. I don’t want any more ice cream.”

  Brian was running a bath when Al and I left. We entered a lovely summer evening. My plastic duck toothbrush clattered on the apartment driveway at our feet.

  It was in Manzanillo that I found the mutilated goat tied up by a grave in the Indian burial ground. It wasn’t dead and I felt sad and scared, like I’d lost my sight or my hearing. I wanted to touch the goat but I didn’t feel safe.

  I watch Naomi moisten a finger, touch it — psst — to the stainless steel. She’s ironing a pale yellow rayon shirt in the fading daylight.

  “I’m fucking Brian.”

  She stares at me before the iron crashes to the tile floor. She picks it up carefully.

  “Fine. All right, I suppose.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “No!” She laughed. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  Now I think about it, Naomi and Al were the mediators of everything. They arranged those shadows round Brian and me until we could not take a wrong step on our fucked-up paths.

  When Brian lies down to rest at nine-thirty (his gig at the Jazz Box begins at one am) it’s a disturbed sleep because he keeps expecting me and when he hears the apartment door and calls out, a tall figure in a green gown appears in the doorway.

  Al hangs his head, plays with the green sash at his waist. His powdered cheeks shine. His mascara has streaked.

  “Hey, Al,” Brian says. “You walk right in? Just like that?”

  “Where’s Mar-lyn?”

>   “Not here. I’m not her keeper. What the hell are you doing? What’s going on?”

  Brian leads him into the kitchen, makes him sit at the table, gives him a washcloth and a bowl of ice cream and wraps a blanket round his shoulders. The pigeon has stopped being pigeon: the feathers, locked in filth, some straight and kept intact by the pressure of trash, wait for some future impossible flight. In Mexico. . .

  “Wipe your face.”

  “No.”

  “You’re safe here. Eat your ice cream.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “She hates us, buddy, really hates us.”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ. What can I tell you, Al?”

  “What can you tell me?”

  Brian took a cab to the Jazz Box. By the end of his first set he was drunk and blowing rapid, jarring phrases round the room, screaming into his horn, reaching high into the third octave. The set ended. He walked from the stage directly to me.

  “Bitch!”

  I tasted cheap rye, like paraffin wax, on his lips. A group of American sailors in the lighted exit looked on. He stumbled a little when I let go.

  “I met women like you before!” he yelled. “I left two in Vancouver. Me, I’m drinking whiskey and playing good American jazz.” He grabbed one of the sailors. “You ever hear of a great Canadian horn player? Listen. I’m blowing to the Indians and they don’t care. Watch me, boys. I am playing with the Indians!”

  The bouncer raised his eyebrows in our direction.

  I walked the line of streetlights to the twenty-four-hour Shell on the corner, bought change from the cashier for the cigarette machine. A feeling like too much coffee turned my stomach acid, though I felt calm. The pools of light on the bays round the pumps lost definition as the sky brightened. Turning from the cigarette machine’s illuminated Niagara Falls, I recognized the black sailor from the club.

  “D’you know when the buses run?” he said. “I gotta get to the ship before eight or I’m dead.”

  “I’ve got a schedule at home.”

  “I love Canadian women, so friendly! How old are you? I figure around, say, thirty-one? I’m nineteen, but I guess you like that, huh? How d’you like living in Canada?”