It was four a.m. and your stomach was cramping
from eating a bag of pita and a container of hummus. Well, it was cramping
because in the tiny editing suite where you and Alice were editing your video,
you were trying desperately not to release any of the gas troubling your lower
intestine. “I’m going to step out for a minute,” you told her as she sought a
seamless transition between a shot of a bathroom door closing and a close up of
a beautiful troublemaker leaning in to kiss your main character against the
sink. “Excuse me.”
You went outside. It was balmy and windless. The
street was empty. Almost empty. There was someone standing under a streetlight
smoking and reading a book. You thought maybe you recognized them so you were
staring when they lifted their head, took a drag and turned towards you. Their
nose was the first thing you recognized. You’d never been attracted to a nose
before, but this person, this gorgeous boy or girl—you honestly didn’t
know—this handsome androgyne had a sexy nose. The bridge bulged subtly just
below their deep-set eyes and announced the presence of a bone, or cartilage
that had bone-like distinction, that defined the shape of the nose as it
descended to a narrow, gentle upturn. There was something equine about it,
something muscular.
But wait, they were nodding at you.
You nodded back, worried, though, that at this
distance your nod could be interpreted any number of ways, interpreted as cold
even. You lifted your left hand and held it there while you nodded towards it
as if to say, This is what I meant when I nodded a second ago, Hello.
The person with the gorgeous nose smiled,
laughingly, but didn’t laugh. Harmony was their name, you thought. You tried to
remember back to the Politics and Sexuality course you’d both taken in the spring semester
last year. Harmony.
You were smiling now, too.
Harmony dropped the smoking cigarette to the
sidewalk and stomped it out with a slender leather boot.
As Harmony walked towards you, you became aware of
the bad smell hanging around your person, part flatulence, part sweaty
sleeplessness. You wished for a gust of wind to whistle across the campus from
Yonge Street and disperse your aura of bad air.
“Hi,” Harmony said.
“Hi,” you said.
Harmony held arms wide, welcoming you in for a
hug. You grimaced a bit. “Never mind,” Harmony said.
“It’s not that.” You took a step back. “I’m just a
bit gross. I’ve been up all night editing.”
“I’m here editing, too.”
“Oh, really? Are you in film or television?”
“Theatre. But I’m a dancer, too. Do you know
Carson?”
“No.”
“Carson Martin?”
You shook your head.
“Carson made a video of me dancing.”
“Cool.”
“I’m pretty excited about it.”
You smiled. “I’d love to see it.”
“Okay,” Harmony smiled.
Then you both said, “What—?” at the same time.
“Sorry,” you said.
“No, I’ve been talking a lot.”
The book was deep in the pocket of Harmony’s long,
broad-collared coat. Harmony handed you the book. There was a picture of a
pitcher following through after a pitch, one leg planted, the other pointing to
the gap to the third base side of the set short stop, his eyes towards the
batter whose bat seemed about to make contact with the tiny white ball
streaking towards him. Overwhelmingly, though, the photograph on the cover of The
Summer Game by Roger Angell,
showed the dry, mown grass and carefully groomed dirt and all the open space of
a ball diamond. “He’s like, the poet-laureate of baseball.”
“Literally?”
“I don’t think literally. Does baseball have a
poet-laureate?”
“That would be surprising.”
“Yeah.” Harmony laughed. “My point is, it’s
beautiful writing. Really.”
“Cool,” you handed the book back.
“I was going to ask what you are editing.”
“A project for my production class.”
“What’s it about?”
The précis, the pitch version was something you
were working on. It was a struggle, though. Your stories, the way you told
them, tended to be about minutiae and moments, not big, sweeping changes in the
lives of your characters, so, I mean, how? How sum it up in a few words? “My
main character falls for this troublemaker, who is played by this tall woman
with muddy eyes, and the two of them make trouble together.” You smiled, proud
of your description.
“Sounds like a lot of fun. Mind if I peak my head
in and take a look?”
You weren’t sure what Alice would think about
that, but you couldn’t resist Harmony’s eager face. “Sure. Maybe closer to
seven?” Seven was when they would kick you out of the editing suite.
“Alright.”
“And maybe I can come see yours?”
“I’d love that.”
The first thing you noticed when you returned to
the tiny room where Alice was patiently assembling your video was that the
staleness that had emanated from your body outside permeated the air here.
Alice had a long list of questions for you. In your excitement about Harmony,
you were able to ignore her irritation. Honestly, you even started feeling a
little bad about abandoning her and not apologizing for it but by the time you
were thinking that way it was too late to say sorry because Alice would be all
like, Sorry for what? She seemed to have been lifted up a bit by your positive
energy, though, so there was that.
Alice was fine-cutting the bike scene, where the
troublemaker and the main character double to the ravine to carve their
initials into trees and make out under the moon. The footage was grainy and
making you feel a little shitty for not listening to your camera operator or
for not changing your script, but it was what it was now, so you told yourself
that maybe the story was beautiful enough to excuse the shoddy shooting and the
fact that you chose poetic logic over the limitations that camera and budget
placed on your project.
You found Harmony and Carson in a room off the hall
opposite the hall you and Alice were working down. On the screen was an image
of Harmony suspended in mid-air above a field of tall grass you guessed was
wheat. Muscles bulged here and there despite the tensor bandage binding
Harmony’s torso. You were reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s story, “Harrison
Bergeron.” “Hi,” Harmony said. You introduced yourself to Carson.
At Harmony’s urging, Carson showed you what they
had cut so far, “Even though there’s no music yet and some of the cuts need
fine tuning.”
“Where’d you shoot this?” You watched the screen
carefully, waiting for the leap or bend that would press Harmony’s baggy pants
against whatever was inside them.
“My family’s farm,” Carson said.
“In Saskatchewan,” Harmony said. “We stayed with
Carson’s family for a week. It was so lovely.” Harmony smiled at Carson and
your heart was set on breaking a little until you saw the way Carson turned
back to the screen.
Harmony came back with you to your editing suite
and watched what you and Alice had done. You felt gratified when Harmony
laughed at the scene of the troublemaker arriving at the main character’s
family’s home for dinner, especially when she hopped off her bike and let it
glide into the carefully maintained garden beside the front walk.
“What a great actor that woman is,” Harmony said.
“She’s— Oh, she’s just so perfect. And I love the story.”
You said, Thanks.
Harmony asked you to go to breakfast and you
hesitated for just a second because you never stayed up this late and you were
exhausted, but Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you would love to. “You know what,” Harmony said, “I think you
should go home and get some sleep, but,” Harmony looked around for you didn’t
know what, “let me give you my number.”
Alice, long suffering and patient and so generous
to you always, tore a sheet out of her notebook and, without turning from her
work editing your video, she held up that sheet of paper and a BIC ballpoint
and you watched as Harmony wrote out the area code and seven digits and said,
“I might be meeting some friends later, but I might not, too, so I don’t know,
I mean you could join us or maybe the two of us could go eat somewhere or go
sit in a park, I don’t know.”
“Sure,” you said. Then you nodded and repeated
yourself a few times before you said, “Okay, I’ll call you.”
You thanked Alice as the two of you parted ways
out front of the Television and Radio Arts building. She told you to get some
rest before your big date. You sputtered out what might have been an attempted
laugh.
It was hard to get to sleep, of course, with the
excitement piled on top of the over-exhaustion. The last you remembered looking
at the clock it was after nine.
When the phone rang, it was just after two. Your
best friend was going tobogganing with Pat. You were confused. How long did you
sleep? Giant flakes of snow were piling up in front of your basement window.
“No,” you said. “Thanks.” When your best friend asked if something was wrong
you explained that you’d been editing through the night. You didn’t say
anything about Harmony, but you were so distracted that you didn’t hear what
hill your best friend and Pat were going to.
You scrubbed the tub, then had a bath. You tried
to read. You made your bed and tidied your room. You picked small but visible
chunks of what?—socks, snacks, dead hair—off the carpet, because the vacuum had
broken a few weeks ago and you and your roommates couldn’t agree on who should
take it to the repair place.
You called Harmony. It was 4:02 p.m. “I thought
you’d forgotten about me,” Harmony said. “That thing with my other friends fell
through.” The two of you agreed to meet at Buddha’s on Dundas between Spadina
and Bathurst.
When you arrived, Harmony waved to you from a
chair by the window. Harmony hugged you and smiled and listened to you talk
about the stress your latest video was causing you. Harmony ordered for you
both—spring rolls, imitation duck, Singapore-style noodles, mixed-vegetables
with cashew nuts and steamed rice. You talked more about your video before
discussing baseball, dancing, T-shirts, blue jeans, snow, hometowns, the
suburbs, favourite bands and ice-skating on frozen ponds. It was way too much
food, a surprising amount of food, and you over ate even though told yourself
you wouldn’t. You and Harmony agreed that the server should pack up what you
hadn’t eaten, but when she arrived with the food packed up in Styrofoam and a
white plastic bag, you discovered that neither of you actually wanted it.
The two of you stood outside the restaurant
awkwardly. “Have anywhere you need to be?” Harmony asked.
“Nope.”
“Want to walk with me? I love this weather.”
In Kensington, there was a cluster of street punks
with two beautiful brindle-coated dogs. They thanked you when you offered them
the leftovers and Harmony even went into a Jamaican food place and got napkins
and plastic forks for them. You and Harmony sat on a bench in the Market
parkette, and an older guy in really bad shape offered to sell you pot. Your
feet were cold and wet in your Chuck Taylors. You went into Last Temptation just
to be somewhere warm. Neither of you wanted a drink. You each ordered tea and
got one plate of French fries between you, just so the waiter wouldn’t think
you were cheap. Eventually you ate the French fries anyway. Conversation turned
to roommates and apartments and after you’d each finished your tea Harmony
invited you home.
Snow
drifted lazy past the streetcar’s windows and the city seemed to have had its
volume turned down. As the Dundas car rattled over Bay Street, Harmony reached
out and held your hand. You looked out the window and involuntarily inhaled
through your nostrils, your chest ballooning with happy air.
The apartment was up a narrow flight of stairs in
a tall row house just past Filmore’s. Harmony’s roommate, Max, had a thin,
scruffy beard and beautiful, feminine features. He took his guitar, ashtray,
cigarettes and John Ralston Saul book to his bedroom after Harmony introduced
you.
Harmony got you a glass of water and you sat
facing each other on the futon with your legs crossed. You looked up at the
clock. It was one a.m. Max was playing guitar somewhere in the apartment.
Harmony reached out and held your right hand, opening it and closing it,
tickling the palm and gently pressing your fingers. Once you were kissing,
Harmony moved forward and you lay back, stretched out and cozy in the futon’s
fold, Harmony playing with your belt.
You reached for Harmony’s top button, but Harmony
gripped your wrist and moved your hand away before working on your buckle
again.
Harmony reached down your pants and got you off.
The familiarity, the certainty of Harmony’s hands, made you suspect that maybe
whatever was between Harmony’s legs was the same thing you had. Have.
You reached for Harmony’s waist again, but Harmony
said, “It’s okay.”
You were thinking about reciprocity more than
curiosity when you persisted.
“I said, No.”
Max emerged from wherever he’d been, holding his
guitar by the neck.
“I didn’t mean . . . ”
Harmony sat up and looked away. “You can sleep
here, on the couch, if you need to.”
“Uh. I’ll go home, maybe.”
Max was nodding like you’d made the right choice.
He turned and disappeared again.
You cleaned yourself up in the bathroom. Or maybe
you didn’t. Maybe you got yourself back together right there in the living
room, the whole time Harmony watching you without looking at you. You drank the
last of your water. “Okay,” Harmony said.
“Maybe I’ll call you?”
“I’m sorry.”
The snow outside was melting, even though it felt
like the air had gotten colder. On the streetcar, you sat by the heater, but
your feet wouldn’t warm up. A black man with cotton-candy-pink hair got on at
Yonge and sang silently, beautifully to himself all the way to Dufferin. The
fact that you couldn’t make out the lyrics powerfully drove home your
loneliness and regret.
When you took your pants off to crawl into bed,
you still smelled of sex.
Even under the comforter, your feet were freezing
cold.
Toronto, November 2015
Emoji sequence: Rhya Tamasauskas, co-founder of Monster Factory, writer and artist.
Story: Lee Sheppard
Note: This is part two of at least two stories. The first part is "This One Time".
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