Everybody tells Avelia that Carmen is a beauty. That her Mami has a body that turns Monday into Saturday, eyes that burn black and bright. A face that’s beautiful without no makeup, but a face and a body that will get her only so far. Carmen only trouble with that face, Avelia has heard people on her block say. Like Avelia’s own face which everyone tells her is just like Mami’s, her hair which people say they’d trade both feet for, red in the sun, curling without iron or rollers.

The woman gives Avelia a slow sweet smile.

“Are you my Mami?”

“No, baby.” The woman’s smile melts away.

The lady looks scared; her eyes dart left, then right.

In the far corner by the phone is another lady. She has a black braid down her back, her eyes, too, are black and shiny. She’s wearing the same dress as the others, but has on a red sweater. In her ears are gold hoops and around her neck is a thin gold chain with a heart dangling inside the notch between her collarbones.

She is the queen in Avelia’s fairy-tale. A good queen or a bad one, Avelia isn’t sure.

“See the lady in the red sweater?” The woman with the beauty mark crouches low, her breath warm in Avelia’s ear. “The one next the phone, chewing gum?”

Avelia nods, her head bouncing in circles like a jack-in-the-box.

The woman takes Avelia by the hand and leads her over to the lady with the long black braid. They stare at each other.

Avelia glances back at Sister Marie who nods slowly, her arms folded across her habit. Now Avelia knows, this lady is The One.

Mami looks down at her feet. Avelia hands her the picture she’s drawn for her: a flower Avelia has never seen, only imagined, red and purple petals, its thick stem thorned, pasted onto a black ground, floating in darkness. Mami takes the picture and folds it into a small square, tucking it into the deep crease between her breasts. Then she opens the gold heart around her neck and motions for Avelia to look. Inside is a tiny photograph of a mother and baby. The baby has dark eyes, her mouth making an O. The mother holds her close, cheek against cheek, both of the mother’s arms wrapped all the way around the baby.

“Me and you.”

Avelia hears herself say, “You’re so big,” as if some other girl is speaking.

Mami laughs deep and rough in her throat. The laugh turns to a cough; her eyes look wet like she’s laughing and crying at the same time, and Avelia wishes Nana was here. She might wipe Mami’s face with the hem of her skirt like she does when Avelia is crying.

“When I was a girl, they call me little lady. Now I’m full grown, they call me a big girl.”

Avelia doesn’t know what to say. She hasn’t seen her Mami Carmen for three-and-a-half years. No letters, no phone calls. Nothing. Avelia doesn’t remember her. Her aunt Sissy tells everybody Avelia’s Mami is sick, away at a hospital, but this aint no hospital. When Avelia asks Sister Marie, the nun says her Mami did a bad thing, but isn’t bad herself.

“You look tired, babygirl. You sleeping?”

“I’s afraid.  I be waiting.”

“Sleep sneak up on you.”

Avelia shakes her head hard.

“Where’s your sister?” the woman asks Avelia, an ache in her eyes. “Where’s Inés?”

“She didn’t come.” Avelia’s older sister Inés kicked and screamed, said she’d never come. “Inés calls me stupid. She hits me. Every day. I hate Inés.”

The woman puts her arm around Avelia and pulls her in close. She whispers in Avelia’s ear. “Know what you say back? When she calls you stupid?”

“What?”

“You say, I know you are but what am I?”

Avelia laughs as if her Mami is tickling her. She can’t wait to get home and try it on Inés.

“C’mon,” her Mami says. “Say it, babygirl. Try it out on me.”

Avelia thrusts her chin out, and in a clear loud voice says, “I know you are, but what am I?”

Her Mami smiles with her whole face. “You say that, okay?”

Avelia says it again, just to hear the sound of the words, looking into Mami’s eyes. Mami buries her face in Avelia’s hair, breathes in deep. When she kisses Avelia goodbye, she smells her skin.

That night, Nana bakes Avelia a birthday cake with six candles, one just for luck. Avelia gets a toy stove and pretend fridge with play food from Sally Anne. She loves tiny things she can set up as she likes. Even as she eats cake, frosting dabbing her nose and chin, Avelia holds Nana’s pinkie, her lifeline.

While Avelia and Nana are eating cake, Inés grabs the play food, stuffing hard plastic fruit under her shirt. She kicks the little stove. “You’re stupid, Veli. For going. She aint sick, that aint a hospital. You stupid!”

Avelia takes a deep breath and runs up to Inés, shouts right in her face, “I know you but I am I!”

Inés’ eyes open wide. She shuts up for a second.

Before she goes to bed, Nana kisses Avelia in the middle of her forehead and on both cheeks. Avelia feels Nana’s thick at the foot of her bed, and sleep washes her clean over and away.

That summer Radio-Canada changed its schedule so we could watch the Romanian angel fly beneath the flashbulbs. In 1976 thousands of Québec babies were named Nadia in memory of this visit of grace personified to Montréal. Her Holiness wore a white leotard with two blue stripes down the side. On the other side of the screen, three hundred miles northeast of Montréal, sprawled on a warm orange and yellow carpet, my sister and I watched Nadia perform the feats that we would later practice on our very own parallel bars: our father and mother. So, in the beginning, there was this little Romanian cat.

Our mother—the lower bar—loved her children, Elvis Presley, and cats (and had an impressive collection of the latter). Our father—the upper bar—loved his children, Jacques Brel, and women (and had an impressive collection of the latter). From a very young age, I knew that Love Me Tender and Ne me quitte pas were just two versions of the same song. Our mother could find intelligence in a barking dog. Our father suspected every living thing of blatant stupidity. Our mother would consult the oracles to see what the future held. Our father would regularly make a clean sweep of everything and start over. Unlike our mother, our father was always itching for a fight. In a largely federalist village, he would fly the Québec flag in front of our house. Whenever the priest visited the parish, he would wait for him, just to send him packing. He tried to grow tomatoes on the Gaspé Peninsula. In Spanish literature, he would have travelled on a donkey and battled windmills to the death. My mother conjugated verbs in the past that my father knew only in the future. My parents epitomized Québec society in the 1970s. Staying home and seeing the world. Yin and yang. First inseparable, then alternating with each other, these parallel bars once rent asunder by the Family Court would never meet again. My sister and I, the two children condemned to swing back and forth between them, put on an admirable display of family gymnastics for all the world to see.

In old photos from the 70s, my father looks a little like Jack Kerouac, with the indefinable charm of a man on the road. The rebel looking for a cause. He made separatism a way of life. As far as I know, he remains the only person who managed total separation from everything. The day he no longer had children or a wife or a country to separate from, he started drinking to separate from himself. To his parents’ despair, my father become the family’s version of Elizabeth Taylor; or to give you an even better idea, imagine a wholly convincing reincarnation of Henry VIII, King of England. Our mother, a believer who was faithful to the teachings of the Church, was moved away from the throne by various ruses and should therefore be imagined as Catherine of Aragon, the forlorn first wife of a king who wasn’t going to be pushed around by some pope or other and who collected wives like others collect cars. In order, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr filed through the king’s life, with unconvincing cameos from a series of mistresses in between. And these are only highlights from the gripping skirt-chasing contest that became my father’s life. My sister and I occasionally look back on the past, using these women as milestones. “Don’t you remember, it was still under the reign of Jane Seymour in August 1986?” All the trees in Canada will never produce enough paper to adequately describe the king’s love life. And even with what remains of my life, I would still run out of time before I could ever do it justice.

(…)

When we came home from Sundays with my mother, prisoners were exchanged quickly. Nothing else was exchanged. Not a look, not a word, not a sign. My mother stayed in her car, my father in his trailer. We had to spin around a few times on the lower parallel bar to build up the speed and momentum we needed to reach the upper bar. The twenty steps between us and the door served as a buffer between the two bars. Readers who would like to try it for themselves at home must first understand that all you have to do is build up enough speed and grab the bar with both hands so as not to fall flat on your face on the blue mat, which happens often enough all the same. You have to grab the upper bar as you fall back. Forget about the lower bar to make sure you don’t miss the upper bar. And above all else, never mention the lower bar. Forget all about it until the next Sunday. In Henry VIII’s home, heated to 17 degrees, the pure light from my mother’s face slipped away. With the king, thoughts turned to plots, the court, and decorum.

After one such Sunday I once dared, in the home of the king, to utter my mother’s name before Anne Boleyn. I don’t know what came over me, at six years of age, to talk about such unseemly affairs. I had understood I should mention her only when absolutely necessary. It must have taken a moment of madness for me to say my mother’s name out loud. It was sheer provocation. Fortunately Anne Boleyn was on the ball! Censure was sharp and swift in a rasping voice just one degree above absolute zero. “I never want to hear another word about your mother again. She abandoned you. Don’t ever talk to me about her ever again.” It was at this precise moment, I remember, that I understood the touching precariousness of those who have been given the benefit of the doubt. The start of Anne Boleyn’s reign had brought the Great Terror to an end. God bless her. As soon as she tried to wipe my mother’s name from my memory, doubt set in. I also remember that my sister had one day, in order to get into her good graces, dared to call Anne Boleyn “Maman” and that the outcry had been even more vociferous. “What’s wrong with you, you little nitwit? What do you still need a mother for at your age? You’re seven years old! Kittens are weaned at seven weeks. They don’t care where they come from.” And so “Maman” became a hammer blow, a word that made a lot of noise and drew disapproving looks. These are practical because you can use them to drive nails home or pull them out, but they should be used sparingly.

From that moment on, I took pity on Anne Boleyn for thinking that she could win, that for her things were going to turn out differently. I took pity on her because everyone dreams of being No. 1, but she could only be No. 2. Think about it: if Nadia Comaneci had won the silver medal in Montréal, would anyone remember her name? Do you really think so? So go on then, who came second on the parallel bars in Montréal in 1976? Not easy, is it? It was Teodora Ungureanu. She wasn’t a bad gymnast, far from it. She was far better than you or me. Her only flaw was that she wasn’t Nadia Comaneci. That she wasn’t No. 1. There you go. Québec’s registry offices have precious few Teodoras. And I guarantee that most Nadias in Québec who are turning thirty this year are secretly thanking the Romanian champion for giving her all. That’s the problem in a nutshell. Everyone wants to be a Nadia. No one wants to be a Teodora. Anne Boleyn never stood a chance. The day when, after stripping Catherine of Aragon of her royal titles, King Henry VIII had Anne Boleyn crowned, the new queen got a hostile reception as she passed by. When out boating on her decorated barge on the Thames, Anne Boleyn couldn’t make Londoners forget that the real queen was still alive. She was booed by the people, who preferred Catherine, a devout Catholic. For the rest of her reign, Anne Boleyn was despised, first by the people for whom she was nothing more than a crown grabber, then by the court because she had too much influence on the king, and finally by the king himself, who wound up having her executed. Hence the importance of never being No. 2 and always eating your hamburger with your eyes closed.

Little Nadia wasn’t the only one making the news back then. In 1975, somewhere in England a certain Margaret Thatcher had been elected leader of the Conservative Party. Britain’s education minister from 1970 to 1974 had made a name for herself by putting an end to free school milk, earning her the unflattering nickname Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher. But she didn’t stop there. She was elected Britain’s prime minister in 1979, transforming England by giving the country its productivity back. For Mrs Thatcher, self-satisfaction could only come about by putting all thoughts of laziness to the back of one’s mind. Often hard, she was blind to the social dramas her austere policies caused and didn’t think twice about criticizing public opinion, declaring war on Argentina, breaking the unions, or imposing unfair taxes—in short, the Iron Lady deserved her nickname. “If you want something said, ask a man,” she remarked. “If you want something done, ask a woman.” London’s Saucy Seventies—a golden age when rock singers still choked on their own vomit—gave way to Thatcher’s implacable England.

I had never heard of Margaret Thatcher when I lived in Friendship Park. It was only when reading her biography years later that I had the impression of meeting an old acquaintance. Under Anne Boleyn, trains came and left on time. Life in the court was as regular as clockwork. Two and two always made four. The roars of laughter and the sheer madness that had marked the reign of Catherine of Aragon were now in the past. The time had come for education and reason. It was a new age in which women were worth more than men, mothers were interchangeable, and anything was possible as long as you applied the right mathematical formula. We had quickly learned that poetry, hugs, and kisses would get us nowhere in a court where knowledge, science, and cleanliness would be rewarded. Thanks to Anne Boleyn and her books, I could see the chance to walk towards the future a new man. Memories would be of no use to me. They compromised my relations with the crown. Before monarchs, it was simply a matter of feigning approval of all their dreams and projects, all the while imagining their disappearance behind their back and the day Henry VIII would come to his senses. I learned as I waited. My every progress was noted. Unlike Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn believed that a meritocracy could deflect from the gentle chains of filial attachment. In the face of family relationships that stubbornly perpetuated ignorance and mediocrity, Anne Boleyn put forward a new model free from all sentimentality, by which everyone could save his own skin using what they knew.

It was in this spirit of discovery in the fall of 1976 that I was sent to school in Notre-Dame-du-Portage. The first day, Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn (I can’t remember which) came with me and talked for a long time with a little round woman with short black hair who wore a small cross and was going to take care of me. I think they talked about Catherine of Aragon, the Thénardiers, and my big sister. Sister Jeannette Jalbert worked to deliver children from their inner prisons by teaching them to read. Strangely enough, literature speaks very seldom of the women—because they usually are women—who give birth to us for a second time. In the world’s great squares, there are no statues in honour of these armies of teacher who, every September, recreate the miracle of Pentecost all around the world. No chain of mountains has been named after the schoolmistresses who lay the sword of knowledge on the shoulders of millions of snotty-nosed kids each year and say, “Here is the world. Do with it what you will.” Sister Jeannette Jalbert, a teacher in Notre-Dame-du-Portage, Canada, would free me from the shadows of illiteracy. She started by giving us little illustrated books, with no more than a sentence on each page. It was, all in all, simple enough. Someone had drawn on the pages, and the drawings were called letters. These letters, grouped together in a certain way, had a given meaning. This meaning was called a word. By putting a, i, g, h, h, n, r, s, and t in the right order, you got “thrashing”. It was simple enough. The words could then be put together to form sentences like this one: “You have to hide—Madame Thénardier is looking for you.” The system could also be used to ask questions like: “Does it still hurt?” There were infinite possibilities: “Here you go, little one. Now you can write what once was, what is, and what you want there to be.” This was Sister Jeannette’s message in a nutshell. I drank in her words like a precious alcohol. I remember that the first time I managed to decode a word, I heard something like the long whistle of a rocket taking off. Something had built up a head of steam. I moved on to decoding sentences in no time at all.

To track the progress of the twenty-odd illiterates she was in charge of, Sister Jeannette had put a chart up on the wall, where our first and last names appeared in a vertical list. There were fourteen reading levels. The goal was obviously to reach the fourteenth level as quickly as possible. Every week she would have one of us stand up and read beside her desk. If she was happy with our reading, she would give us a little star, which we stuck beside our names. The first stars were blue, the next were red. The second-to-last stars were silver, and the very last ones were gold. Gold like Nadia. This gave me an idea of the speed at which I and the rest of my classmates were progressing. After a few weeks, head held high, I was the first to proudly stick a gold star in the very last box. Far behind, other children were still struggling to put together two or three stars. Without bothering with humility or subtlety, I discussed my success with the others. I waited for them to shower me with honours and make me an idol. My hopes were dashed. One day after recess, I was admiring the glorious chart when I realized that someone had clumsily taken three of my stars and stuck them beside their own name, no doubt believing that this lamentable larceny would conceal their reading problems. I lodged a complaint with Sister Jeannette. Following an investigation that lasted all of seventeen seconds, the guilty party owned up to her misdemeanour. With everyone watching, she was forced to put the tiny stars back in their rightful place. I derived no satisfaction from this exercise, which had been humiliating for all concerned. It wasn’t like other cases of theft when another child stole a teddy bear, candy, or a meal. Truth be told, the star thief had taken nothing from me—to do that, she would have had to make me forget everything I had learned. And you can’t force anyone to forget. You could burn all the star stickers in the world in a great big pile, and nothing would ever erase what they represent. Everything we know, I told myself, will stay with us forever. All we have to do is remember it from time to time. And to do that, we need to know how to read. If we write “My mother’s name is Micheline Raymond. She is a professional cook.” on a scrap of paper, a rock, or a plank of wood, we are not likely to forget. Provided we don’t lose the piece of paper, provided the plank doesn’t go up in smoke, provided we don’t forget where we put the rock, we will remember it forever.

Being able to read put me in Anne Boleyn’s good graces, which gave me access to her collection of comic books. On the other hand, despite my keen interest in reading, my dealings with Sister Jeannette were somewhat distant. The nun’s apparent coolness towards me probably had something to do with the pencil incident. One day, one of the illiterates stole my pencil. Just like that, right under my nose. He left with the pencil, without so much as looking at me. There was nothing special about the pencil. Its only quality was that it belonged to me. It was a crime against my property. I stood up, paying no heed to the fact that Sister Jeannette was in the middle of teaching us a song about Jesus. The tune was straightforward enough: “The Lord is my shepherd, Alleluuuuuuuuia!” Sister Jeannette was first and foremost a nun. Nuns are never done talking about Jesus. Jesus is the son of God and our shepherd. Nothing less. That’s the way it is. This wasn’t going to get me my pencil back, and I wasn’t going to wait for kingdom come to get it back either. So I got up and reclaimed my pencil, punching the crook so hard on the chest that he fell back on his ass. There then ensued a fight to the death accompanied by the cries of seals lost on the ice pack. Sister Jeannette cut her hymn short and, just as I was about to strangle the little louse, grabbed me by the hand and lifted me up off the ground, dragging me out of the classroom to the stairs. The stairs of the elementary school in Notre-Dame-du-Portage, if stairs could talk, would still have plenty to say today about the scene they witnessed that day. She held me by the shoulders with the grip of a lumberjack. I yelled that she was crazy, which made her laugh. I tried to hit her, which made her laugh even harder. I said crisply that I didn’t like her, then burst into tears. Tears tend to calm a nun down. We stayed there for five minutes on the stairs, me resting my head on her chest, until I opened my eyes and saw her cross right up against my nose. I asked her why she was wearing a cross, when neither I, the king, my sister, nor Anne Boleyn had one. She replied, “Everyone has one. You do too.” The incident was closed. The pencil thief trembled every time I walked past until June.

The summer breeze from the Arabian Sea tenders no moisture. This betrayal, it simmers your blood and sucks your skin taut over the edges of your bones. In the daylight you wipe at your face and neck with wet rags. At night you claw at the skin in your sleep, trying to remove it, replace it. Then a beard piercing the chapped skin gets so bad you have to shave. And that will be the first time you notice again.

You swear that the dust and the sand hanging in the air have bent the light to a yellow haze. It’s the same dull amber blush like a patio lantern that hangs over the city at dawn. You comb the bristles with your dirty nails, you look at your teeth and gums, and you examine the pores on your nose. Then you pull down at the dark rings under your eyes and look into the pupils. The crackled mosaic of your irises take you down the trails of fractured red fissures crawling over your eyeball. You’re positive they were white when you got here.

Those first days, you were as high as a kid when the fair comes to town, excited and nervous and sick from the food. You didn’t know what ride to go on first. It’s a war, and you respected that, but you were working. You were here and you were working again.

You were no longer designing new municipal roads curving and rolling into new cul-de-sacs and a green space, or putting up three new traffic lights. That last set with pedestrian flashers outside Black Gully Elementary, you are proud of those. You let little Katie be the first to push the yellow button before crossing.

“Do I go now, Daddy?”

Staying a step behind Katie, you kept a hand between her shoulder blades even though there was no traffic.

And that was it. You didn’t drive by the new residential developments in a municipal truck. You walked by once at night. But the foundations that had been dug remained without houses like a lonely boot at the edge of a road. Then you just sat. Katie left with her mom back east, and you moved back in with your parents, because your mortgage didn’t care if your unemployment stopped. You thought you needed a war.

Here you get to wear a belt again, not ratty shorts and a T-shirt stained with Colonial Grey used on your parent’s new fence. And the tightness of your boot straps pulls your head up. You walk quickly, and you feel everybody looking to you.

So you sent a photograph to Katie. You had the envelope in your hands and you examined the photo one more time; it was clear and sharp. Your cheeks were full and your eyes were bright. You had tried to station yourself in just the right spot, had tried to capture the rolling curves of the tanned gravel retaining walls that lay under the road construction imposing itself from Mushan towards Kandahar, the loaders and packers and tanks grumbling and hissing about the maw of mountains pushing up through the ground like decaying fangs. Then, sliding that photo into that manila envelope, you saw your eyes were definitely white.

Then you think maybe it’s jaundice. Even a healthy man in this country can be tied up in knots in the infirmary with bad tans. You’re eating, but nothing stays in. This place treats your guts like a ketchup packet. The fatigue, the weight loss, the thirst: you have it all, and that empty bottle of Canadian whisky you sleep with under your bunk thinks maybe your eyes are jaundice yellow. Your Popi saw men in Korea drink and drink and drink when he was posted on the 38th parallel. He even knew of Canadian journalists who would trade Canadian whisky for a story. But some of those soldiers would drink themselves into an infirmary bed to get away from the Kapyong Valley and Seoul. But you’ve only been here for a matter of days.

So you search the back of your mind. And there’s Bertrand and Thompson killing time on the dunes as they pounded rifle shots at stray dogs scrapping over garbage. It was your second day. You just got your service pistol for your upcoming patrol with the engineers and the architects. It was a nine-mil. The same Inglis Pistol your Popi used in Korea. You recognize this relic, because you used to fire one off the back porch of the cabin.

“Jesus Christ, don’t shoot the dogs,” you said.

Bertrand’s lip curled up at you, “First Day?” His shirtless, white torso, his tattoo—a neck chain of grey barbed wire—his straight-back shoulders boxed you out. “We’re just keeping on, man.”

“Shooting dogs?”

“Well you let me know a better way.”

“A better way to what? They have a target range beyond that first ridge.”

“No man, we’re good.” Bertrand wiped the dust from around his rifle with a bandana, then wiped his mouth.

Thompson a large, thick blond, leaned in between you and Bertrand just to look you down. He only smiled before slamming a new clip into his rifle.

“They’re dogs—what if they’re somebody’s pet?” You said.

“Those dogs don’t belong to anybody. They’re walking wild.”

“Those are feral dog?”

“What?”

Bertrand and Thompson share a laugh. “They are wild dogs. And we are cutting down their numbers.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Thompson thumped your helmet.

“Don’t worry Bob Barker, we won’t kill them all—we still need that additional security barrier.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t know a lot about the wildlife around these parts, do you?”

“You don’t have to be a dick,” you said.

“Can you believe this guy,” Bertrand chucked his thumb at you. “He thinks we’re being dicks. I’m sorry you don’t know about the ‘feral’ dog alarm system. How about… hummingbirds, man? You must know about the hummingbirds.”

Thompson fluttered his hands across your face, his thumbs wrapped together and his wrists crossed.

You shook your head. But you looked into his eyes. They seemed steeped in sand and gravel. Just like yours now.

“What’s a hummingbird?”

Bertrand fired one last shot into the pack of dogs chewing at the piles of garbage spilled on the mountain side. Thompson followed. A dog yelped.

You asked yourself again what a hummingbird is, because you are about to head out on a patrol with Bertrand and Thompson, and you don’t want them snorting and coughing into their hands.

You asked Janzen, that stocky brunette who sat next to you on the plane. She seemed to know everybody’s story, like any good small-town Saskatchewan girl. And she knew. She told you about a young Pakistani boy, maybe ten or eleven, who rode a bike up on a patrol near dawn. The boy was crying. The soldiers kneeled to help. Then the boy jammed his thumb like a dagger under his ribs. “And blew everybody up,” she said before she walked away.

That’s not true you said to yourself. That was a myth. Why would somebody belt a bomb onto a child? You wanted to ask other soldiers, but you didn’t. You wanted to confirm with Bertrand and Thompson. But you didn’t. You walked the length of camp. You skipped supper. At dusk you headed to the west edge following the gravel to the sun falling behind the road construction. You looked to the packers and gravel trucks for the familiar. The feral dogs were yelping, like the coyotes back home, but a barrage of gun fire followed for 20 minutes. Katie. You fished her picture from you left chest pocket, took it in your hand, and followed her smile. It glowed from the three candles dancing over the pink and white icing. You wished later that you could have thanked her for helping you find sleep that night.

Every day following, your thoughts deepened. Inwardly your vision fell away from the present, and the shadow of memory hung over your sight lines. You admit your eyes are a customary yellow, because that third day happened to you. You have Popi’s eyes. They were bone white in all his old photos. Grandma used to talk about how clear and bright-eyed he was. Then after Korea the whiteness became tarnished. At thirty he puttered and shuffled about with a smile, aware and normal. But the downward corners of his eyes, the narrowed crease between his eyebrows, showed you he was just out of reach of any given moment, preoccupied with the memories. Popi only talked about it with me once. Hours after Grandma’s funeral, he sat at the edge of his bed, staring into the closet at Grandma’s shoes and talked of defending himself against an attacking Korean woman. His patrol was in her home. He had picked up a nearby hatchet and was slapping it back into its stump. A shot rung his ears before he noticed it had also burned through his shoulder. The old woman bore down on him with the pistol pointed at his face. The gun misfired three times before he could defend himself. He hadn’t been able to lift his arm because of the instant nerve damage of that first shot, so he snatched the hatchet with his good arm and slammed it into the side of her neck. He said she had dropped onto the floor cross-legged and swallowed her pistol. It did not misfire.

You know where Grandpa was. You are there now, that third day. He is a cute kid, maybe six or seven, darker than most of the boys you saw around. You notice him in the bazaar with an older man, picking through stands of rosy red pomegranates and onyx grapes. The man and you keep meeting eyes. He doesn’t sneer at you. But he doesn’t avoid you either.

The boy, you remember, has on blue clothes. They are the colour of the blue sky the morning after summer ends when autumn pushes a cool breeze around your neck. A fraying bound rectangle of cloth–the size of a matchbox–hangs around the boy’s neck pointing to his heart. Inside is a small copy of the Quran. His kameez comes down to his knees, but it isn’t buttoned all the way.

Off the corner of the bazaar is The Grand Hotel. The clinking of silverware on plates and the white noise of conversation swallows the outdoor cafe. You, Bertrand, and Thompson are escorting contractors and architects and engineers through Kandahar. You never got their names, but they wear pinstriped black and grey suits, thin in the leg. Their hair matches their suits but not the large platinum watches that make a clunking thud against the back of their hands when they pull their wallets from their pockets. You try to engage them, ask about the idiosyncrasies of pouring housing bases for the fibre optic lines across the foothills into the mountains, but they’re only interested in the difference between Turkish and Ukrainian prostitutes.

You are taking them to the National Bank. The bank is only across the street. The bazaar, the cafe, and the patrons, everything doubles in size off the reflection of the foyer windows.

“You can’t do business on an empty stomach,” one of the contractors says.

You take the contractors under the hotel entrance awning, through the lobby and back outside onto the patio. You spot a southeast, third-story window opened in the bank above you; nobody is in it.

Then you see the boy next. He is standing outside the bazaar beside the cafe in the middle of the street. His arms are in the air. He is heading towards you and the contractors. You do not see the old man anywhere. The boy takes off his kufi cap and wipes his tears away. You don’t know why he’s crying.

Bertrand and Thompson, their rifles level to their eyes, translate for the boy, “I don’t know what to do.” They are motioning at the boy’s waist where his kameez unbuttons yelling, “We have a hummingbird.”

You hesitate on that suspicion, looking at the wind whipping at the bottom of the boy’s cloths: a utility belt, a money belt, something? You don’t know what you are looking for on this small boy. He isn’t pointing a gun at you.

You hold your hand up to the boy to stop, drawing the nine-mil. The boy complies with the order to stop, wailing louder at the sight of the pistol. Everything in the cafe pauses, too, until you move the contractors and engineers and architects back to the Nyala. The contractors, they are yelling at you out of a door of the three-ton jeep to get in and drive their asses back to the base. You look to Thompson to take the wheel. But he takes a lean on the hood of the Nyala, his rifle steady.

The cafe clears, women screaming, people ducking inside the hotel or their cars, hiding down behind corners of the concrete buildings.

You gaze into the boy’s face. His nose pushes down towards his lip. His lips push out, spit dripping from the corners. His wailing is deep and long.

You look at the boy’s kameez again, but you can’t see any device. You aren’t even positive the boy isn’t just lost, or maybe he can’t go through with it, maybe he’s turning himself in to you.

You take your eye from the sights. The old world pistol feels clumsy and makes your dehydrated hands look wrinkled and old. You wave Bertrand and Thompson down. “Clear the contractors,” you say dropping onto a knee. You lower the nine-mil, and the boy reaches his hands to you. Then one hand retracts back to his chest. His knuckles bump against his Quran. A single shot thunders through the business corridor.

Jackson has broad shoulders and massive forearms. Every morning he gets six-foot Alex easily to his feet. That is some trick because Alex towers over Jackson and has Parkinson’s and dementia. Two hours and a lot of sweat later, Alex is showered, dressed, fed and sitting in the sunroom of his home with salve on his eyelashes, his face a picture of intensity and sleepiness.

No matter how confused he is, Alex always knows me when I come. At least, so far. He sits there in the sunshine and talks to me about the President. He always cared about prestige. Now he talks in titles: the President, the Bishop, the Queen, the Governor, the Attorney General.

“The President of the United States…” Every word clear. Alex pauses and looks down at his glass of tomato juice. “…Moonbeams! Applesauce!”

“The President?” I say, expecting no reply. Knowing that if I receive one, the parts won’t connect. When Alex doesn’t continue, I say, “The President is in a lot of trouble right now.”

“Roosevelt!”

“No, Clinton.”

Alex nods. “Play-offs soon. Play-offs.”

I smile, amazed at how his response relates to the ridiculous politics of the day. An unintended bit of sense. I’ll never think of play-offs in the same way again.

“You…” Alex says. “You are my greatest… My greatest…”

I wait for the blank to be filled and when it is not, I say, “I am your greatest,” as if it’s a complete statement. I sometimes turn into a parrot when I talk to Alex.

Alex says, “Peaches!”

Jackson comes onto the sun porch. “You tell her about the piano?”

“Plums!” Alex says as if that were an answer as well as one of life’s deepest secrets.

“You still play the piano, Alex?”

“I studied music,” Jackson says. “So I play for him. And he plays for me.”

“No kidding?”

“Wanna play for her?” Jackson asks.

Alex nods. “We’re workin’ starlight.”

“Great!” says Jackson just as if Alex actually said yes. Jackson’s hands close around Alex’s pasty liver-splotched ones. “Okay, Mr. Alexander. Put your feet together. There you go!”

Alex rises to his six foot height, not a quarter inch shorter than he was in his prime. But his cheeks have collapsed. His hair is a lot thinner. His thighs are mere sticks within his trouser legs. His pants, three inches too big in the waist, hang loose from his suspenders.

Lurching like a freight train getting underway, Alex and Jackson begin their slow walk to the music room. Alex shuffles along.

“Pick up your feet, Mr. Alexander.”

Sometimes I think back to the good days when Alex was still here. Even then he would change the subject in the middle of a sentence or slur his words. Especially when he disliked the topic. Be vague could have been his personal motto. Maybe his dementia started years ago. Or maybe what you do is what you become.

They arrive on the wrong side of the piano bench. “You first,” says Jackson and helps Alex sit down.

“Before,” says Alex, waving his hand in the air. “I…before!”

Jackson says, “Play for us.”

Alex looks at the keys so vacantly, I think he’s falling asleep, but then he puts his hands on the keyboard. An old song spills forth. “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” He plays the whole thing. Starts over. Stops after the first measures. Looks at me.

“Before!” he says, waving again.

“Okay,” I say and smile. I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me. Sadness sweeps his eyes, and I know Alex knows I don’t understand. He plays some ragtime. Scott Joplin. The corners of his mouth turn in a half smile. Spittle runs onto his chin. Jackson wipes it off. Alex bangs out chopsticks. We all laugh.

“Good!” says Jackson. “Good, Mr. Alexander. See what I mean?”

“I can’t believe it,” I say. “Playing the piano is so complicated.”

Jackson grins. “Yeah. But he does it!”

Alex groans.

“He’s tired,” I say.

The phone rings. Jackson goes to answer it. Alex points to the sofa. I get him turned on the bench. He takes my hands. Leans forward.

“On three!”

Alex stands. Wobbles. Shuffles to the sofa. Turning him around to sit takes a lot of effort and coaxing, but he is gentle and does what I say, even though he is stiffening up again.

The sofa is deep and soft. We hold hands and listen to the tick of the grandfather clock, the sound of Jackson’s muffled voice in the other room. From far off comes the slow determined swish and thud of yesterday’s snow sliding off the roof.

After a long while, Jackson returns. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” I say.

Jackson disappears into the kitchen.

Alex comes alive, his hand in mine suddenly strong and animated. Shaking, Alex leans toward me and kisses my cheek. Leans partway back. Freezes. Unable to move. Unable to release my hand. Stuck.

I am just about to call Jackson, when he appears with tea and pound cake. Seeing our hands entwined, Jackson says, “Unhun! Unhun!” He long ago figured us out. He works at our hands. Finally, Alex’s hand relaxes enough to separate it from mine. Jackson pulls Alex half up. Resettles him.

I pour the tea and feed Alex a piece of pound cake. Alex looks at the piano. “You!” he says to Jackson. Jackson sits down at the ivories. “I’ve Got Rhythm” pours from his fingers.

Alex is all animation. His boney legs shift and bounce to the beat. He moves his shoulders. Taps his left foot.

When Jackson finishes, Alex says, “The Queen on Tuesday…applesauce!”

Jackson says, “The Queen is coming here on Tuesday?” Alex grins at him. “Well, I’d better polish up the silver, Mr. Alexander.”

“Moonbeams,” Alex says. “Apricots.” His head slumps forward.

Alex is all tired out and needs a nap. It’s time for me to go. On the way to the car, Alex, who has been walking along well, stops so abruptly Jackson nearly trips.

“Here,” Alex holds out to me his cupped hands, palms upward. “I want you to have these tiny red birds.” One perfect sentence.

“Now stop that, Mr. Alexander. The lady will think you’ve gone crackers.”

I say, “I’ll just put them on the car seat. They’ll enjoy a little ride.”

“They will!” Alex says. One more perfect sentence.

“I’ve been talking to him about that,” Jackson says.

It seems that every day Alex sees more and more stuff that isn’t there. Jackson has tired of going along with it all.

My problem with the invisibles is that the first time Alex showed me those tiny birds, I saw them, too.

Alex slides the birds into my hands. I see a flash of red, a flutter of wings. I put the birds on the passenger seat. They settle down.

When I am in the car, Alex points at the window. I lower the glass.

“Before…You are my greatest…” He motions toward the sunroom where we sat.

I don’t understand, but smile and say, “Yes, before! You are my greatest…”

We look into each other’s eyes. His are blue with little gray flecks. He knows I haven’t understood. Sadness lives in his eyes, the sag of his shoulders. He stands there in the sunlight while I back the car out of the drive.

I step on the gas, my mind playing with Alex’s words. “Before…You are my greatest…Love is a many-splendored thing…Before…”

I see Alex in the rearview mirror, tall and frail. Where did that broad back go? Those strong arms?

And then everything clicks. I stop the car and walk back.

“‛Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.’ What a great old song!”

Alex grins. “Before!”

“What we were before. I am your greatest love!” I say, having filled in the blank. “You are my greatest love, too.”

His hands are heavy on my shoulders. He begins to shake. I lean into his vibrating kiss, born of Parkinson’s and excitement. One kiss. One stiff embrace.

Jackson says, “Okay, Mr. Alexander, let’s let the lady go.”

I kiss Alex’s sunken cheek. Step away. Go to the car. Look back.

Alex stands with one arm up, stuck there after waving goodbye. He is half-turned toward the house. Jackson says, “Feet. Feet. Do your thing! Come on feet.”

“This one time, this guy – and you gotta know that I’m not that judgemental, I’m really not. Like, if you’re kinda shitty, but you tried real hard, well, okay. I can live with that. You get an “A” for effort. But this one guy… he was just, he was just something else.”

From the way things are sounding, Thomas over in the next room is doing alright. The two of them have been dating for about a week, and according to Zoe they are very much in love. His divorce was finalized a few days ago, but she wasn’t a rebound; they have a special connection. “Like, they got married at 16 anyways,” Zoe says. “People that get married at sixteen are supposed to get divorced at twenty-seven. Tom is right on track when you really think about it.”

The thumping is picking up, growing more urgent. “I’m an animal,” he yells in a voice loud enough for me to hear. I try not to laugh.

“Here, let’s flip. Yeah, like that. Like—”

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Ohhhh.”

Oh god. I don’t want to hear this.

I make my way to the living room. Turn on our old, dusty TV and flip through the channels. At two in the morning, there’s not much left to watch other than infomercials on TLC. I try to concentrate on the Slap Chop guy. I would even turn the volume up, but I don’t want the neighbours to complain.

Zoe is two years older than me, but you wouldn’t guess it, most people don’t. Most people don’t even think we’re related. She’s got short black hair that’s always a little greasy. She dyed the tips pink about a month ago, and it suits her. My hair’s long and brown. I’ve never even dyed it. I don’t think any of us really remember Zoe’s natural hair colour.

The moans and the thumping stop. I can hear Zoe say, “That was a good one.” The door clicks open and out she comes. She walks over to the fridge and fumbles around. I can hear her tearing open a cardboard box, the beeping of the oven as she sets the temperature and slides something in, and the sound of her bare feet padding on the floor.

“You want some pizza?” I turn around to see her standing there in her blue polka-dot house coat, her hair sticking on end like an electrocuted porcupine.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Kay.”

About half-way back to the kitchen she stops, pauses and turns around. I can hear the excitement in her movements.

“Jennnnz,” Her voice is a couple of pitches higher. “Jen, I forgot to tell you.”

She pauses.

“I talked to Andrew.”

“And?”

“You have a date this Saturday.”

A huge part of me wants to squeal, run to her and jump up and down. The way we used to when I was twelve and we were best friends.

“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.”

“Oh, yeah. I am. Thanks so much Zo, it’s really sweet of you.”

Zoe looks a little defeated. She wanders back. Closes the door. I keep watching infomercials.

I am happy. Of course I am. I haven’t really dated much, so this is kind of a big deal. Zoe’s always telling me I need to get laid. That twenty-five and no sex is not cool and that I’m too damn pretty to be a virgin.

“You’ve got abs,” she points out. “Virgins don’t have abs. That’s a scientific fact.” But I’m here anyways, so something somewhere isn’t adding up.

***

Saturday morning I wake up at eight; no alarm clock necessary. I sometimes get anxiety attacks that make my whole digestive system feel like its constricting like a giant snake is writhing in my body. It hurts and I can’t eat anything and if I am eating something, it usually comes back up.

I don’t want to be nervous. Not now. I already know what I’m going to wear, so I try it on so I can stand in front of the mirror and try out different conversation bits. Babble about my life like a crazy woman. Anything, anything but the weather. Never talk about the weather.

I keep staring at the clock. Compulsively. It’s the kind of day that’s simultaneously the long and short. I have no idea how Einstein’s understanding of relativity can be at peace with that.

Even with my careful timing, I’m still at the coffee shop thirty minutes early. It’s okay though, I have a book ready for this. I brought Zoe’s copy of A Game of Thrones.

I want Andrew to come and see me sitting there, with the sun beaming down on me and a cup of coffee lounging on the table. I want him to see me deep in a book, a book that he might have read or heard about. He could ask me about it and I could put it down carefully and let my fingers linger on the cover. We could start talking, maybe laugh at a joke I’d say, and settle into something warm and cozy and right.

But I’ve never read A Game of Thrones. He’ll come in and see that I’m right at the beginning. He’ll know that I’m just doing it to look chic and intellectual or something really poser-ish. He’ll find out it’s Zoe’s book, and want to talk to Zoe instead of me.

When the waitress comes to ask me if I want anything, my voice is a little too high. I don’t really want a coffee – I don’t even drink coffee – but I want the cup on my table for when Andrew gets here. I order a hot chocolate instead: they look about the same anyways. He’ll probably know the difference though.

I try reading. I try making sense of the words, but I’m too busy thinking about how I must look to everyone else. People must have noticed that my eyes aren’t moving at the right pace. They know I’m not reading; I’m spending too much time on one page. I look like such a sham.

“Jennifer?”

I want to say that I looked up slowly, casually, not too quickly. I look up and see a man, probably in his early 30s. Already balding. Stooped shoulders. Hopefully not Andrew. He’s not ugly, but there’s something about him that seems so dull.

“I’m Andrew. Nice to meet you.”

He shakes my hand. Shakes my hand? He says something about the weather. I pick up the menu; I won’t be too nervous to eat.

“I’ll have a chicken parmesan sandwich.”

Andrew’s wearing a white shirt, a grey tie and a black suit. On the right kind of guy it would look classic, but on Andrew it just looks sad. Like he wanted to wear something with some colour, but didn’t have the courage so he went with what everyone else was doing. He looks like he could just disappear into a mass of commuters and nameless nobodies.

“He’s the male version of you.” I remember Zoe telling me, over and over. “He’s a great guy. He’s not bad-looking. Personality-wise though, he is just so you.”

Except that my kind of guy is… the vanilla ice cream of people. Andrew says something about his high school buddies. I nod and smile.

Then my sandwich comes.

“I decided to become an actuary since in today’s economy, you really need to pick a job that’s going to pay. It just made sense.”

I take huge, glorious bites from my sandwich. It tastes like garlic and cheese and chicken. It’s warm and soft in that bready way, but there’s enough crunch to it to make it so, so worth it.

“I get good vacation time and everything. The pay’s good too. No one really likes their jobs anyways. You just gotta get ‘er done.”

The fries are good too. They’re thin, crispy, and they come with mayo to dip them in.

“I’m saving up for a new car right now, since the one I have is, well, it wasn’t made yesterday, if you know what I mean.”

I’m alternating between sips of hot chocolate, French fries, and the sandwich.

“You got something on your—”

I wipe at the corner of my mouth.

“Almost, you just—   yeah, there you go.”

Is this how Zoe sees me? Is this how everyone sees me? Do I look like – do I sound like Andrew? And Zoe, Zoe who knows me better than anyone. She really thinks I’m like this?

He thanks me at the end of it. Tries to kiss me and gets my cheek. He gives me his business card and tells me that we should so this again sometime. Maybe next week. He knows this great Italian place that has really good lasagna.

“Sure.”

I don’t want to go home just yet. I don’t want to see Zoe. I don’t want to see the confusion on her face when I tell her that Andrew isn’t for me.

It’s kind of cold outside, so I fold my arms tightly over my chest and walk quickly. Like I have a purpose, like I have somewhere to be. Like I’m someone interesting that people might see and think, “Geez, I’d want to get to know her.” A train passes by and that’s the only sound other than my footsteps.

I can see an old motel at the end of the street. It’s the City Scene Motel and the neon lights look like they could have been chic at some time. The “c” and the “n” in “Scene” are burnt out. The lights that do work flicker like they could go at any moment. I don’t know why, but there’s something about the place that makes me want to go in.

The door has heavy metal bars on it to keep some people out, I guess. The lobby is musty. The walls were painted a warm shade of red, and now it’s peeling.

“Are you lost?”

“No, no. I’m okay.”

The clerk behind the counter looks almost too hopeful.

“Do you want a room?”

I think I do.

The clerk warns me that trains go by pretty often, especially around this time. That’s fine though, I don’t mind.

I check into room number five. It’s small and the air smells stale. Everything about it is tiny: the bed, the bathroom, the TV, the desk. The only big thing about the room is the window, which is a bit strange since it has a pretty amazing view of nothing. It’s like a glass case beside the train tracks. With the light on and the curtains open, anyone could see what’s going on inside.

For a minute, I think about turning on the TV and watching Say Yes to the Dress. But the remote is nonexistent and I could watch TV at home anyways. This place needs something different. I don’t know what exactly, but I want something to happen.

The whole little room shakes as a train rumbles close. It booms past and I can almost see the people through the windows. I can’t make out their faces, but I know they’re there. I know they can watch me too. Not well, maybe not at all, but if I was doing something crazy, they might catch a small glimpse of it.

I get up and stare out the window carefully. Press my face close to the glass and see my breath fog and then melt away again. My hands against the window feel the cool smoothness of it.

I’m still standing there, looking out, when another train rocks by with its men in their business suits. I try to catch their faces. I want more than tiny glimpses, but they slip away and soon they’re gone.

If I had brought pyjamas to change into, I would have done it then. I toy with the idea of sleeping, but the beds are the kind of beds that always feel dirty no matter how many times the sheets are washed.

I think about heading back home. But I want the train to rock me to sleep. I want to feel the watchful, confused eyes of hundreds of unknown strangers.

I slip out of my sweater when the next train goes by. I take my shoes off with the next one. Then my socks.

I don’t know why, but it fells right, so I’m doing it.

I slowly pry open the buttons on my shirt, watch my reflection in the window and pretend not to watch the people in the train as it goes by again. I don’t want to see them, but I want them to see me. I want them to catch a glimpse of skin. Just enough for them to jerk up from their newspapers. And then I would be gone before they ever knew for sure.

My shirt falls off slowly. The fabric slides down my back, and slips onto the floor. Another train rushes by. I can almost feel the wind of it passing against my skin and it feels cold, but in a good way. I take my bra off just as slowly, savouring the chilly air as it hits my vulnerable skin. I look down at the small goosebumps that run all over my arms and chest and breasts. Another train goes by.

One thing Zoe finds strange about me is that I never masturbate. When I tell her, she almost announces it to the world. “Everyone masturbates,” she tells me. “I swear, masturbate totally means ‘master’, as in master of our bodies. And ‘bate’ as in beat. ‘Cause for guys it’s fap, fap, and for us it’s shlick, shlick, shlick. And that is kind of like some beat or some rhythm or something. And yes, that has nothing to do with what I was saying, but its okay ‘cause everyone masturbates anyways.” That’s Zoe logic for you.

I lean my body against the cold glass panes, nipples first. The shock of it runs through my body and I feel a deep pulse between my legs. I take my pants off when the next train comes and stand there naked except for my underwear. I plant my feet firmly on the old carpet and feel its fabric between my toes. Legs apart. I stand there studying my reflection. I cover my breasts, as if the next train surprises me when it comes. Mouth slightly open. Like a picture frozen in time. I stand there in shocked, exposed silence and imagine their eyes as they go by. I imagine men growing hard in their seats. Young professional women going home to their cats and thinking of me. Wishing they could find the woman in the window. Wishing they could touch her. Wishing she would fuck them. In front of the window, for everyone to see.

I’m almost surprised when I reach down and feel how wet I am. Shocked at how good it feels, at how much I want it.

Another train goes by and this time I don’t pretend to be surprised. I stare right out at them.

I let my fingers slip into the wetness. I let them run over me, let them rub. Trains rush by. Passengers watch.

It’s me and the train and the countless, nameless, people. I think of them thinking of me and I rub harder and faster and I gasp from somewhere I didn’t know existed.

My body tingles for almost an hour afterwards.

I sleep on the bed covers, naked. When it eventually gets too cold, I sneak under.

I need to live like this. I need to find a place like this one. Get a promotion. Buy a briefcase. Sit at the counter in bars and sip martinis. Cross my legs. Feel the men stare at me, women too. Maybe some of them would be too scared to approach. Maybe some of them would try. And I would talk to them, and let them buy me drinks. And if I wanted to, maybe I would take one home, back to the apartment by the train tracks. And I would fuck them with the lights on and the curtains open and if they didn’t feel comfortable with that then they could take their things and go.

And the men and women on the train would see me, and they would want me. I would become the one in their dreams and they would wish that one day they could find the woman in the window and come up to her place and screw her as the rest of the world watched.

Zoe is the loud one, but I can be seen. People will always want me.

***

I come home the next day to find Zoe sitting on the floor, music blaring, halfway through a bottle of wine. Her eyes are wet and red when she turns them up to look at me. They look huge and vulnerable and so, so full of hurt.

“How was your date?” She asks.

“It was okay.”

“Just okay?” Her voice croaks a bit.

“He’s kind of boring”

“Oh.”

She looks down at the carpet. I sit down and wrap her up in my arms.

“I thought you’d like him.”

She pauses to wipe her nose with her hand. I can see the wetness of it shine on her skin.

“I wanted you to like him so badly.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “I wanted you guys to go to dinners and movies together. And I wanted him to pop your cherry and buy you roses and send them to your office. You guys could get married and have cute little kids. I could be the cool aunt that buys them beer and vibrators.”

She breaks off and I can feel her tiny body shake as huge sobs start spilling out.

“I would be such a good aunt.”

Her face screws up and turns red and blotchy.

“I think that’s the kind of person I’m supposed to be: an aunt. I know I’m cool and funky and loud, and I know guys want me. But I don’t think they love me. They see a quirky girl and they think ‘Hey, she’s cool. She’ll get me to be spontaneous and stuff.’ But they don’t really love me.”

The sobs are coming out in huge waves. I can feel her tears seeping into my shirt.

“I’m too unstable. I feel suffocated when I date normal guys, and when I date guys as screwed up as I am, it doesn’t cancel out. We’re just extra fucked up. I just–”

“That’s not true.” I tell her. I realize it is though, and hope she doesn’t hear the lie in my voice. “Hon, what’s going on? Why are you like this? What happened to Thomas?”

“We had a fight.”

“But you guys always fight.”

She takes a swig of wine, straight from the bottle. She passes it to me and I take a sip too.

I think about the train and about the motel and moving out.

“Please don’t leave me Jen.” Her voice is a whisper.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her, “I won’t.”

Yep, we slamm’d ‘em! Ah, vengeance is sweet, that’s for sure! Sweet as honey, douce comme d’la mousse de Molson, eh Mitch? Ha, ha! … rhymes an ev’rythin’! Yeh, sure feels good to put ‘em ‘n their place. Hey, and ya know what? They play in these stupid one-piece things, the fags! No kiddin’! Suits real tight ‘round the thighs, all purple with stripes ‘cross the shoulders. Makes ‘em look like grape popsicles!

Buncha snobs! Losers! But you gotta hand it to ‘em, they sure can throw straight for such assholes — s‘cuse my language, Mitch! Ya know, it’s the first time we ever beat ‘em. Yep! Been ‘n the Pros, what, ten years now? Can ya believe it? We beat Benoît Quillard and Paul Libéré-Chantelois! C’est pas d’la p’tite bière ça! Speakin’ awhich, Mitch, gimme me another beer! Makes you thirsty, victory does!

Yeh, we sure taught ‘em a lesson they’ll never forget! And’s even sweeter ‘cause was them came lookin’ for a fight. That’ll teach ‘em to go around lordin’ it over everybody, pissin’ everybody off, like they’ve been doin’ their whole goddamn lives, those losers! Yep! Hey Mitch, remember when we were kids in high school? Nah, I guess ya don’t ‘cause you was older, paid no attention to the litt’ler kids. Anyways, they useta call Louie and me fat ass. Bouboules, grosses ballounes, every name you could thinka, all kindsa names, ti-cul, gros-cul. An’ plenty ‘a other ones that ain’t fit to be repeat’d in polite company. Every day, never stopp’d.

Once, Louie there, he was admirin’ the lovely Françoise at recess. She ‘ad the most beautiful set ‘a melons ya ever saw, even at that age, so ya can see why Louie was lookin’. Her ‘n her little short shorts… flashin’ ‘im a great big smile, ‘cause she knew what that did to guys, seein’ her like that.

So big Paul Libéré, he start’d beatin’ up on him, right ‘n fronta everyone. And just to humiliate ‘im, he said all fancy like, “A piece of shit like yourself has no right to look at a bee-u-ti-ful woman like Françoise, so go and get off on a grosse laide like yourself, least then you’ll get lucky.” Or somethin’ to that affect. Louie was on the ground, arms over his face tryin’ to protect ‘imself, but the asshole just kept kickin’ ‘im up ‘gainst the brick wall.

After that, every time Quillard saw us ‘n the hall, he’d give us a kick ‘n the ass. Why? No reason. ‘Cause he thought us too short or too ugly or too slow, or whatever. An’ the two of ‘em, struttin’ their stuff in fronta Françoise. And Sonya my ex. Anyways, said we spoil’d their view with our big fat asses. Guess they were right, ya know, cause Louie there, he ain’t real svelte, that’s for sure. Me neither. Them in their fancy new suits, cruisin’ the chicks, smellin’ all pretty.

But was that our fault? When it comes right down to it, just gotta admit that life ain’t super fair. That Paul Libéré-Chantelois — what the hell kinda fag name is that ! — he married Françoise just two months after they open’d up a hair salon together. Only seventeen years old! His dad gave ‘em the down payment. But, ya know, they deserve each other. Just sucks that Louie, he goes there to get his hair cut. Been goin’ for fifteen years now, sez ’e likes it when Françoise leans her boobs up ‘gainst the backa ‘is neck and head. But Chantelois there, Françoise is two-timin’ ‘im, that’s for sure! What with everythin’ they’ve been sayin’ about her. Looks like she ain’t real satisfied, eh? … Problem is, every time Loulou goes there he comes back more miser’ble. It’s torture! Least now, after us winnin’ he can go an’ brag ‘bout it!

Yeh, and that’s not even talkin’ ‘bout how that Quillard bastard stole my Sonya! My wife! Seven years together! The Thursday night guys sure talk’d enough ‘bout that one! Leavin’ like that, makin’ a scene ‘n fronta everyone, and durin’ a match too! Christ! Can’t get much worse for a guy! But, hey, they’re good together, two big-shot laaw-yers. Said she want’d to be happy, that she was doin’ it for the kids so they could have a better life. What, livin’ ‘n a big house suppos’d to make ‘em happier? That’s a buncha BS! They miss their daddy, that’s what!

Ya know, ‘n life everyone’s suppose’ ta be equal, but there’s two big injustices in this world: money and good looks. ‘Cause they don’t depend on you and me, they depend on whoever brought us into this world. It ain’t right, but that’s the way it is, eh Mitch? Anyways, gimme another beer Mitch! Une autre p’tite frette, one more for the road!

But those two, they musta known that one day they’d get what was comin’ to ‘em. Yeh, they musta known since Sec. 3, when they shov’d me down those stairs. Roll’d all the way down, from the first floor to the basement — ya know, where they had the lockers for Sec. 1, 2 an’ 3. ‘Cept this time, it was a kid on crutches they shov’d, a kid who couldn’t fight back, his leg in a cast, just walkin’ down the stairs mindin’ his own bus’ness. So that time, Johnnie, he scream’d that he’d get even. Shouda seen me — face cover’d ‘n blood, screamin’ like a lunatic. One day, they’d be sorry! Like they say, a promise is a promise. Chose promise, chose due. And it came due yesterday! The waitin’ is over.

Back then, everybody want’d to be on their side, ‘an you can see why. They dominat’d the league for years, just like they did the school yard. But no more! ‘Cause that’s what happens, Mitch, when you screw people over. That’s what happens! I’ll tell you the story…we were playin’ doubles, the best four outta seven. They were ahead. Pretty soon it was three games to one. Already beatin’ ‘em one game was somethin’, the first time we’d ever beat ‘em! That gave us courage. It was pretty near all over for us. But then Louie play’d a near perfect game — 261 points. So it was 3-2. Then those bastards realiz’d that maybe they gonna lose. You gotta understand — a comeback like that, ain’t every day you see that. Yep, a comeback! Ya don’t know the story, Mitch? Well I’m gonna tell ya the best damn story you ever heard! I swear on my granma’s grave! The best goddamn story you ever heard!

So Louie there, he was on fire! He pull’d off a 298, unbelievable throwin’! Strike after strike after strike! So our score was 552. Man we play’d hard! It was too much for ‘em, though they can do it, they can throw a 300. They ain’t done it tons a times, but Quillard, I seen ‘im ‘do it ‘least four times, and the other guy ‘bout twice.

So Mitch, une dernière p‘tite bière, s’il vous plaît! So I can finish my story.

It was 3-3 and they start’d out bad. Real poche! You know how it is, things can get real stressful, real quick! You shoulda seen me, got four strikes in a row at the starta the game. Man, that put so much pressure on ‘em! They’d been lookin’ pretty pleas’d with ‘emselves, in their purple suits with Quillons-les tous! written across the back. Huh! Puttin’ that joke on the backa their shirts like that, how stupid is that! And did you know it was that two-timin’ Sonya who embroider’d that on there? In gold thread too, so goddamn pretentious!… Ya gotta say, havin’ a name like Quillard in bowlin’, that’s kinda like bein’ call’d Joe Stiff in a funeral home, always know what he does for a livin’ eh? Remember, Mitch, back when the Expos play’d the Atlanta Braves? There was that player call’d Dave Justice. What a name! Got respect everywhere he went. The Braves couldn’t lose ‘cause they had Justice on their side.

Anyways, don’t ask why, but Louie, he start’d throwin’ gutter balls in the middle a the game. It happens, nobody’s perfect. We play’d for shit, and then Paul threw three strikes so they caught up on the last square. Then it was Loulou’s turn, we were down just ten points. Louie always plays fourth, ‘cause he likes to take his time, conc’ntrate on his throws. Well, he took more than ‘his sweet time this time! He took his favourite ball and rub’d it good, he count’d the steps to his swing, forwards then backwards, he visualized everythin’ possible to visualize…and he ended up throwing… a 4–10. A goddamn impossible split! We were down just two points. Yep, ça prenait la réserve! Louie had to dig down real deep. He rubb’d his ball like it was some kinda magic lamp. He was sweatin’ like a pig, while Quillard there, he stood there all casual like, nose up in the air, pretendin’ like he couldn’t give a shit, like anyways idiots like Loulou are always chokeurs. The other loser, Libéré-Chantelois, was gettin’ all worried, and not just a little! He musta known that diggin’ deep, that’s Louie’s speciality. That Louie might even pull it off with that magic spin a ‘is.

So it all came down to this… Louie thought his hands were too sweaty, so he put his ball back and went to dry ‘em off. Chantelois, he decid’d to take advantage of this — the asshole went an’ sneez’d on Louie’s ball. Loulou saw him do it but he didn’t say a word. Just stare’d ‘im straight in the eye, challengin’ ‘im like, then return’d to the floor lookin’ determin’d. Didn’t even wipe off his ball! Just took it, all slimy an’ cover’d in snot. Got into startin’ position. Then, without even a look round, he cried, “Game over!!” and threw the best damn spin on the planet! The ball skimm’d ‘long the gutter, then it cross’d o’er to the 4, and then the 4 flew ‘cross and hit the 10. The place went dead. Dead silent. It was 401 to 401. Just one throw left. Louie was hypnotizin’. We all watch’d ‘im wait for his ball to come back , watch’d ‘im rub it clean, watch’d him get ready, watch’d him throw… it was a pretty crappy throw, but hey, it didn’t matter! ‘Cause we won by 3 points!

It suck’d that those big snobs pretend’d like they couldn’t give a shit. Like it wasn’t a catastrophe. But believe me, they deserve to be miserable! Yep, Mitch, now we’re at the toppa the league! There’s no one better than Louie and Johnnie, the legendary pair that beat Quillard Libéré! Now everyone’s gonna know who’s on top. Yep! It’s written on the board at the front — Louis et John, grands gagnants des Pros du jeudi. Your wife, she wrote it there, in big fat bright blue letters on the green board. It’s gonna be right in their face every time they come bowlin’. It’s payback time. Now it’s their turn to suffer.