Places We Keep

She sat with her back against the seat to keep herself warm. She only allowed the most minimal of tilts of her head to indicate that she was still listening, to portray boredom, half-there, half-far away.

“There’s days when I just want to set things on fire,” he mumbled, as he licked the tips of the cigarette paper between his fingers.

“Why would you do that,” distastefully as she could across the two millimetre empty space separating them both, occupied by a broken radio that would only play The Edge.

“So things can be re-born.”

She smiled.

Waiting

Imprint by Koyamori

She waits beside the red brick wall outside her office, beside her window, japanese cherry blossoms beside a 27-inch computer screen, with her colleagues wailing, “When is it too early to have scotch?” at 4.30 on a wednesday afternoon, sitting at the edge of her seat, eyes widening left to right, fingers drumming on top of a glass tabletop, listening to mainstream 90’s music from the office beside her, Pink Floyd from below, high notes of Uncomfortably Numb climbing up the carpeted floor, glancing at the memo (once, twice, three times) before clicking back, staring at a white empty space waiting to be filled with experience, to be woken from the deep slumber of an average life, to be showered by rainbow spices from a distant land, from the fields in Ohio to the the bees of Holland, Argentina in the blink of an eye, back to snow in December, walking in sky blue boots, holding a purse stolen from her mother, clad in someone else’s winter jacket that they had thrown away, holding back a smile while riding the subway, thinking this is it, this is it, now my life is about to change – and back to the office chair, to the tweedling keyboard, to the smell of espressos and cappucinos amidst the staleness of a room that housed the silhouttes of Dai Vernon, and the dreams of a young child trapped in the body of a wasted, old woman.

The Shaman Queen

“One more line!” she proclaimed, her tie-dyed skirt flowing to her knees, held together against her chest by two, tightly clenched fists.

I grinned and said, “When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

She bit back a laugh and replied, “When the hurlyburly’s done / when the battle’s lost and won.”

The three of us cackled, the three witches of Macbeth, the Shaman Queen of Toronto, by the corner of Bloor and Spadina, where I met her, asking for change and cigarettes.

So I adopted her, the feline-inclined, the healer of all sorts of imaginary ailments, the dress that filled my couch for the longest days, browsing through Masterchef and Netflix.

I only ever tried once to ask her about her past, which spontaneously flowed into the question of, what she used to do, before home became out of the question.

She squared her shoulders, and spoke in rhyme, using alliteration and onomatopeia to sugarcoat her lies and lullabies;

Not in exact quotes, but the basic gist was this: lounged in an old man’s bed and sat around looking pretty.

She said, “I guess old, dumb rich men will never run out of young, dumb poor women.”

“You knew what you wanted,” I softened, reaching out for her hand, “so you took it.”

Taken in the form of powder-white crystals lined up in rows neatly against a reflective surface.

“One more line,” she says. This time, I don’t recite Shakespeare.

Party Anecdotes

the party by 8o_clock1

5:30 AM, Markham

From downcast eyes, he said, “We used to crash cars just for fun”.

I went into probe mode, unashamed, just kept prodding —

What kind of cars?
Where?
How much did that cost you?
How many did you crash?
When you say us, who else do you mean?

I could tell he felt my questions dig into him like blades.

I stirred not; moved not.

It was getting silent, all eyes on him, most people were uncomfortable, although I doubt any of them knew why.

His answers were what I expected, curt, short, offering no real stories nor lives.

If you’re going to lie about something you did in the past, make sure you get your back story right.

8:45 PM, Sneaky Dee’s

Holding a glass of red wine sangria, while sucking on an alcoholic slice of orange, she lifted her shorts to show a hickey on her thigh, as she squealed in drunken delight: “I’ve been seeing this boy!”

She looked at me, apologetic, communicating to me, through furrowed eyebrows and a bitten cheek, to agree with her, that he was amazing.I rebelled, par usual, and glanced away.

10 PM, The Phoenix

In the middle of the dance floor, she gave me the cut eye and raising her hand in the air, swivelling her hips, she mouthed, “Let’s get the fuck out of here”, while still pretending to dance.

I mouthed back, “NO.”

Glare, straight through the crowd, sharp and piercing, soundlessly communicate: “WHY?!”

“It’s her birthday!”

Ten minutes later, she gave me the signal, and I left anyway.

3 AM, University of Toronto
His opening line : “I believe in opposites. That was just a side story to the public. What happened to me, in private, is much worse.”

Then a stop (a full pause) as doubt took over.

Those eyes are sizing me up and I did my best to hide my starvation to portray to him (as best as fiction could) a mouth that could conceal secrets and resist the temptation to narrativize.

So I waited in silence.

Finally, after a long, conscious soundlessness of two minutes, his voice returned to say: “I need to know that you’re not going to write about this,or fictionalize it in any form.”

Everything everyone says is a version of a version of a script they have formed in their heads, designed to impress, overestimate and overanalyze. An opening like this is an invitation to gather this as material: to be included in a slice of a chapter, or transformed into a premise.

This is his script, and it’s dying to be told.

“I promise,” I say, meaning something else, simplifying his story into a footnote, despite his intentions for it to be born as a novel.