We Meet

When you were little, someone had given you a wallet with a horse’s head in profile so you had decided you liked horses. Your parents got you riding lessons at a local stable where you spent most of the afternoon in a pool, supervised by disinterested lifeguards related in various ways to the people who ran the camp. When you did get to be around horses, the instructors told you to be extremely careful because they might kick if you came up behind them. You didn’t know at the time, but it had recently come up at a family lunch that the week before you had gone to the camp, a kid had been knocked into a coma.

It was later, on an activity day at a resort you attended with your family, that you really came to fear horses. There was an excursion and all the kids went by bus to a ranch so that all the parents could golf or fuck or argue. At the ranch, a huge horse with a white patch between his eyes butted your stomach and chest with his muzzle. The ranch hand’s explanation was that the horse was asking you for food. If he’d been a smaller animal maybe you would have been charmed, but there was substantial force to his nuzzling, so substantial that you had no trouble recognizing how quickly and with what ease the animal could overpower you, harm you, kill you. You never even climbed on the horse’s back and the stable had no other animal available for you to ride so you did what? “I don’t remember.”

“You know, I’ve never ridden a horse,” I told you.

“What?”

“It’s just a tattoo.”

“Really?”

“Well, sort of. My last name means someone who shoes horses.” I said.

“So it’s not really just a tattoo,” you said.

“Well, I guess my name’s just a name though, right? I mean a horse means a lot of things.”

“I’ve been using that running horse emoji a lot,” you told me. You used it when someone texted you to say they were running late, or when your sister texted you to say that she and her husband had finally cleared out the room that they planned on turning into a nursery in their small condominium. You used it to express excitement when your friend invited you to go see Bruce Springsteen at the Air Canada Centre.

I don’t know, but I found you charming as you know now. I was worried that you were letting too much of your mind out to me, maybe. Like that it might become overwhelming or exhausting. Or that you would run out of thoughts to share.

The first time we “did it”—fucked, or “made love,” or whatever—I thought of a horse snorting and thrashing and racing around, white froth which was its sweat, I guess, clumped here and there on its skin as it passed the camera. I say camera of course because I’m thinking of something from a film. In my imagination or memory, it’s from a Terrence Malick film.

You started talking about guns because of the six-shooter tattooed on my other wrist. When you were nearly six your grandfather had let you fire his shotgun at a tomato juice can nestled into the crotch of a tree and your mother, who had left you with him as she ran errands, had arrived in time to hear the shot and had nearly killed your grandfather, probably would have killed him if it wasn’t the death part of guns that so profoundly offended her.

You told me that that same grandfather had used that same gun—maybe it was a rifle—to kill a bouvier des flandres puppy, nearly full grown, whose temperament had turned mean. Later, when you started reading through forty years of your grandfather’s daily journals, you discovered that he’d killed the bouvier earlier the same day that he let you fire the gun.

He also had a toy six-shooter that he had helped you put real bullets into.

And when you were little—a little older, though, and with the permission of your parents—you’d been skeet shooting with your best friend, whose father hunted ducks, mostly. You were good at it. At least you remembered being good at it. Meaning you hit things.

I had on a pair of Ray Bans that I’d found on the street. Unfortunately, whoever had lost them had a prescription that was a bit too strong for my eyes, but I liked how they looked perched on my head. Anyway, I pulled them down because I didn’t want you to see my eyes when I told you that I had the gun tattooed on my arm as a way to reclaim the idea of guns. Through the sunglasses you looked clear, but much farther away.

“Reclaim? Why?”

I explained how, you know, people reclaimed language that had been used against them.

“Someone used a gun against you?”

I told you how when I was twelve, my father was held up at a gas station. A robbery.

You did this blinking thing. It was the first time I’d seen you do it, but I’ve seen you do it since. It’s like you are trying to bring the world into focus. Figuratively. “With a gun?” you asked.

“He was killed.”

“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t do it.”

You looked at some filthy spot on the floor of the club. “No,” you said.

A member of the band turned on an amp and the sound of a chord swelled briefly into the club. The rest of the band took their places behind instruments and microphones.

The story of my father’s murder was true and painful, but I told it with some frequency. There were other details, which eventually you memorized. Like, “He had twenty dollars in his wallet.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they take it?”

“Yes.” Or, “It was as a gas station right by my parents’ house.”

“Did th—”

The band started their first song. I got up off my stool, grabbed my beer from the tall table beside me and put my lips up to your ear. “What’s that?” I shouted as gently as I could over the hammering guitar.

You swallowed before you turned your head and stretched your neck to bring your mouth to my ear. “Did they move?”

I shook my head.

You blinked again. This time it was like something had suddenly become clear. “I’m sorry. I guess I mean did your mom move?”

I shook my head and smiled gently. I found the modification charming. Almost thoughtful. But also very strange. As if you thought—though I know you didn’t think—that changing “they” to “your mom” could leap back in time to pull my mother out of the funk that followed. Funk isn’t the word. Crippling fear, anxiety, depression, shock. PTSD. “No. We didn’t move,” I said, but our heads weren’t close enough together for you to hear me.

You looked worried. Mouthed, “What?”

I shook my head, No. It’s nothing. Nevermind.

You leaned your head close to mine, your mouth near my ear. You shouted, “What did you say?” then looked at me, all carefully rendered concern.

My hesitation, my reluctance, was real. Eventually, I leaned in to say, “It’s okay. Seriously. We can talk after the band.”

We did keep talking after the band.

But first we stood there. I stood stiffer than usual. You too, I realize in retrospect. Someone watching silent video of the two of us at that show couldn’t have guessed that the band was good, that there were grooves. A few songs in, you finished your beer, held the empty bottle in the air in front of me—closer than it appeared through the prescription Ray Bans—and when I looked at you, your face was asking if I wanted another. You pointed at the bottle, just to make sure I understood. I nodded, Yes. You went to the bar. I finished my beer while a welcome warmth started somewhere near the bottom of my ribs and spread out. I returned the Ray Bans to their nest in my hair. 

We stood closer as we finished our second beers.

The band finished and our conversation went on to cover Bill Callahan, a.k.a. Smog, and his lines “skin mags in the brambles/for the first part of my life/I thought women had orange skin” which you said the pin-up girl tattoo on my left arm reminded you of and which (the lines) reminded you of your own earliest exposure to Playboys and Hustlers or whatever stashed under a log down a dead-end dirt lane between your neighbour’s house and their neighbours on the other side or in a pile of leaves behind your mom’s best friend’s house. In response to a question I asked you inspired by your anecdotes about the skin mags, first you, then I talked about the teachers we wish we could have kissed or fucked or who we wish could have been our parents. At this point, the fact that we would soon sleep together was becoming obvious. The friends we’d come with drifted to the corners of the club. We went on. You described the bedroom you grew up in, one wall covered in Sunshine Girls a classmate gave you, in—you realized as you told me—some strange flirtation, probably. I described the different favourite band posters from different points in my evolution as a music lover. I asked you about where you lost your virginity. It was in your basement bedroom in the house you moved to with your mom and sister when your parents got divorced. It happened on a summer afternoon after a walk by the Sixteen Mile Creek a few weeks before you moved out on your own. You asked me where I lost mine. It was a bathroom at a party after the person I was with, not dating but talking to, someone I knew from school, confessed that they were a virgin despite the story they’d made up for their friends and I said that I too was a virgin, and while I wasn’t so ashamed that I made a secret of it, that I would be happy to break the ice or come of age or come with someone else—or whatever it took to lose my virginity—so we snuck into the bathroom and locked the door and fumbled our way through it while people banged on the door and speculated about who was taking so long before being swept back into the party by whatever.

We were among the last to leave the club. Your friends had left, my friends had left. The bands had loaded out and the bartender had turned on the lights. We held hands down the stairs from the venue and we walked a block in no direction. When you asked where we were going, I kissed you under a streetlight. The beer on my breath must have neutralized the beer on your breath because I tasted you. Your taste is like oatmeal with milk and brown sugar. Sure, sometimes the milk is sour. Or the oatmeal is thin. And in the morning there is something off in there, like maybe an unfinished bowl of oatmeal got dumped into the compost bin and while it remains the most prominent smell, the rotting vegetables and leftovers and the drying coffee grinds are an unpleasant counter-scent.

A streetcar rattled by and we interrupted that first kiss and walked down the first residential street we came to. In a parkette we found, I backed you into a play structure and held your head with both hands and looked at you. You were expectantly expressionless, your mouth open, your breath shallow. You shivered. We continued our kiss, this time more forceful and purposeful. With your teeth, you gently held onto my lower lip as I pulled back to change angles and I nearly came.

I knew I didn’t want to have sex that night, though. I don’t know why. Maybe I knew there was enough to savour already. Maybe I wanted the first time to be special. Maybe it was just that it was too late, way too late in the night and I needed the few hours of sleep I could still get before I went to my mom’s place to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday. “I have to go.”

“Uh—” You shook violently. “Okay.” I put my hand to your sternum, my fingers brushing your clavicle. Your heart beat like it was oversized, a horse’s heart or an elephant’s. Elephants are beautiful creatures, you know.

“I have family shit tomorrow.”

You nodded.

I kissed you, kept my one hand against your chest so you wouldn’t blow away, then I put my free hand between your legs. You moaned into my mouth at a frequency that vibrated and warmed my ribcage. I moved my hand to your right pocket, squeezed my fingers past the hem and pulled out your phone. I pulled my lips from yours.

With your eyes closed, your head leaned forward like our lips were magnetized.

I woke your phone up, tried to open it, but it was password protected. I held it out to you for you to unlock it, but you told me your passcode. You had to tell me twice, I was so unprepared for this openness. I went to your contacts and added my name and phone number. I checked it twice to make sure I hadn’t mistyped something. “I should be done at my mom’s by, like, eight at the latest.”

“Can I text you?”

“Can I come to your place?”

“Yes,” you whispered and shook.

“Walk me to the streetcar?”

You agreed. We held hands like we were new to it, trying different positions to find which brought us closest, which felt best. You waited for the streetcar with me. You leaned against the shelter’s glass. I faced you and let your fingers explore my knuckles, my nails, my fingers, the lines on my palms. My breathing was shallow. Then I explored your hands. You blinked away tears or sleep.

We heard the streetcar’s metallic call as it stopped two blocks away, its three front lights looking right at us.

“Text me as soon as I get on the streetcar, please. So we make sure.”

“I’ll text you now.”

“Yeah.”

You looked strange lit by the phone’s screen. You wrote your full name and I pulled out my phone to wait for it to buzz through. It did. We kissed again, kissed until the streetcar’s lights were brightening one side of us.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Later today,” you said.

I looked back once as I climbed the streetcar's steps. You smiled. I stood above an empty seat so I could watch you as the vehicle pulled away. You stood there watching me for a long enough time that I didn’t see you turn and point yourself towards home.

Toronto, July-Aug 2016

Emoji sequence: Eleanora Ferrari

Story: Lee Sheppard

How Many Roads

Adam called her the Albino Jogger and she ran by the house at 6:23 a.m. each day, give or take a minute. If it was a workday and if all was well, Adam would be on the concrete landing outside the front door sipping coffee and having his first smoke. Sometimes in a parka and Sorels and stretchy gloves he’d cut the fingers out of himself. Sometimes in hospital pants he somehow convinced his father to lift from Toronto Western and whatever T-shirt he’d worn to bed. Once, during a heat-wave, he stood out there in boxers that, he discovered later, were the boxers he had intended to turn into a rag, he had turned into a rag, a change in purpose he’d signified by ripping a hole in the crotch, a hole he’d failed to recognize maybe because of the hangover or the swelter or maybe just because one of his roommates had put the rag back with his underwear when they found his laundry in the dryer and did him the favour by folding it all, which was nice, but which meant when he woke up feeling all swollen and strange and unable to open his eyes, when he struggled even to find the drawer handle and could barely wriggle his bare ass into the boxers, he certainly wasn’t going to recognize that the bunched up feeling he had between his legs was because his junk was hanging out of this rag that was, currently, functioning as crotch-less boxers. It was a good thing the Albino Jogger never turned her head towards him. That morning anyway.

Except in the very coldest weather, the Albino Jogger wore white running shoes that looked to Adam like Asics, white skintight jogging Capris, what Adam had decided after careful scrutiny must be short white bike shorts in place of underwear, a white tank-top, a white sports bra and a white head band. Against the winter, which turned her bursts of breath into vapour, she wore a furry white headband and a white coat that had horizontal puffy bars that reminded Adam of the Michelin man or a cloud.

And if the Albino Jogger wasn’t albino, she had a surprisingly small amount of pigment.

On the occasion of their one-year anniversary, Adam raised his coffee cup to her and she spit, though presumably without seeing him.

After Adam started dating Linda, he gradually spent more and more nights at her much nicer apartment. Eventually, he would just go to work from there. Linda was a fortune-teller who would sometimes wrap a colourful scarf with a fringe of circular mirrors around her head sit on the street beside a small folding table and a deck of Tarot Cards. She told people she was a Gypsy because, “They wouldn’t even know what I meant if I said Roma, and besides no one really wants a Czech lady reading their cards.” Linda encouraged Adam to quit smoking. He was down to one a day, which he still liked to have with his coffee. He was out on Linda’s balcony in a pair of plaid pajama pants that Linda had bought him when the Albino Jogger ran down the alleyway beyond the back fence. Adam spilled his coffee as he ran, with burning cigarette into Linda’s bedroom to check the red numbers on her bedside clock. 6:32.

He exhaled, impressed. If he walked to Linda’s place, he liked to leave himself twenty or twenty-five minutes. Adam walked over to his bedside table, stuck his lit cigarette in his mouth and reached down to pick up his watch. 6:35. Still, he thought. With a great rustling of sheets Linda rolled over. Adam suddenly saw the smoke rising from his cigarette and backed out of the room waving his arms in an attempt to get the smoke to come with him. At breakfast that morning, Linda asked if he could smoke further from the sliding doors because the smoke was really starting to permeate the apartment.

Adam started having his coffee and cigarette at 6:25. He would sit out there enjoying the air until he heard the Albino Jogger coming up the lane. He smiled when she passed the neighbour’s pine tree and he could see her. Some mornings she would have to jog in place to wait for this or that car, whose driver would usually stop the vehicle so the Albino Jogger could pass in the narrow space between the side mirror and Linda’s wooden fence.

Even after Adam finally quit smoking he would drink his coffee out back for the fresh air and the sight of her.

When Adam and Linda broke up, Adam had a rough patch. He applied for a police foundations program. After being accepted, he moved to a spacious apartment in a grand old building out by the college. Near the end of August he started running on a path along the lake. He wanted to get a head start on training for fear that his terrible physical condition would ostracize him from his likely much younger and fitter classmates. Adam pushed himself so hard on the second Saturday morning that he vomited into a hedge separating a rusting children’s playground in the backyard of a building from the blue-black asphalt of the running path and the breakwater’s freshly quarried rocks.

He sat down on the nearest bench and rinsed his mouth with water from his bottle. His eyes teared ferociously. He saw a white figure come towards him in a familiar rhythm. He tried to blink back the tears, tried to wipe them away, but she had rounded a bend before he could be sure it was the Albino Jogger. He wasn’t wearing a watch.

When Adam got back home, he made himself a coffee and used Google maps to trace his route, trying to figure out how far the hedge was from his apartment. No matter how accurately he placed the route’s line, he couldn’t get that hedge further than 6.2 km from his front door.

Then he created a route from his old apartment to the hedge, wondering if the Albino Jogger could possibly be running such a serious route each day. The hedge was at least 15 km from his old apartment. He decided that, if it was her, this must be a special weekend route.

Each Saturday after that, Adam ran past that hedge and each Saturday it got easier. He tried leaving his house at different times and once, on a cold November morning, he even tried sitting on the bench and waiting for her, but the Albino Jogger never came back, or maybe had never been there at all.

Adam was considered one of the fittest members of his cohort and he consistently finished in the top three in their long distance runs. He would even, once he finished, run back along the route to encourage the stragglers.

When he joined the gun club, it was because he wanted to get a head start on his classmates and on all the other candidates for the few jobs on nearby police forces. He started going every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday afternoon. After his Sunday practice, he’d have a beer in the restaurant of the hotel across the street. Diane was one of the servers there and by June of Adam’s first year of the police foundations program, they were dating. She would join him on his Saturday jogs. They would get caffeine-free Americanos and a croissant from a new café near by, then drink their coffees and split the croissant on the bench near the hedge where Adam had vomited last summer.

It was there, with Diane, that Adam saw the Albino Jogger again. Only this time she was jogging with a handsome Asian guy, an East Asian guy, probably Chinese. She was covered in colour, too. The Asics logos on her shoes were cool pink fading into neon green, the shoe’s body covered in grey green splatter; her Capris were light blue with a yellow stripe starting wide at her hip and tapering to nothing just above her knee; the tight tank top pressing against her breasts was orange with reflective silver tiger stripes; her headband was a purple that might have been loud as part of a different outfit. The colours offset her unbelievably light hair and skin in a surprising way. Adam felt like he was seeing an old friend and he was thrilled when her blue eyes landed on him and held him for a second before leaping to Diane. Her mouth twitched with some change of feeling, then her companion said something and she laughed. Adam looked into his coffee, which was cooling with the lid off.

“What’s wrong,” Diane asked.

“Stop asking me that,” Adam said.

Adam looked up. The Albino Jogger and her companion had disappeared around a bend.

“So what do you think?” Diane asked.

“About what?”

“Were you even listening?”

Adam took a deep breath. He’d been feeling angrier lately. He looked at the lake and imagined pitching his decaf Americano into the water. Another deep breath took some of the edge off his anger. “I’m sorry. I was distracted.”

“Obviously. Do you know those people who ran by?”

“Nah. The woman’s just someone I used to see a lot.”

“Does she have . . . what’s that condition?”

“Albino?”

“Oh. Maybe. I was thinking about that thing Michael Jackson had.”

“Oh. Vitiligo.”

“Yeah yeah. You’re so good. How did you remember that?”

Adam laughed a bit.

“What?” Diane asked, leaning against his shoulder.

“I’ve got it on my balls.”

“Come on.”

“I’m surprised you never noticed.”

“Balls are gross. I try my best to ignore them.”

Diane asked Adam again about whether he would want to take a trip with her. Maybe fly down to Florida or Cuba or somewhere south during his reading week. “I’ll pay for it,” she said. Adam worked part-time still, but he was supported largely by his mother.

Adam wasn’t sure. “Um,” he started.

His search for what to say next was interrupted by a guy racing along the path in worn, loose sneakers, baggy jeans, ball cap and a T-shirt that still had some flecks of what was once an ornate network of gold ink covering most of the material. The guy jingled as he went by. One of the teenagers who worked at the coffee shop was chasing after him, too out of breath at this point to be shouting anything about, “Stop that man,” but his determination told Adam that he should stop that man. The guy was fast, but Adam was faster. They were on a stretch of the path where there were no grassy patches, so when Adam tackled the guy, they landed on interlocking bricks out front of a row of posh new condo townhouses whose façades were designed to make them look old.

“My fucking hands,” the guy said. One finger was dislocated. Adam turned away. The guy tried to kick Adam off him, but the exhaustion or the fall had rendered the guy’s legs extremely weak. “Okay. Fuck. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh my God, thank you. Thank you,” the teenager from the coffee shop said to Adam.

Nobody seemed to know what to say then. Adam, the guy and the teenager just breathed heavily while a crowd gathered. The guy was looking up at the sky and started moaning a little. His breath smelled like malt liquor, sleep and stale smoke. The teenager was hanging his head, exhausted. Diane was standing near by, holding the two cups of coffee and half-eaten croissant. Adam smiled at her, though he was disappointed not to see the Albino Jogger and her companion in the assembled crowd—just some tiny, fluffy dogs with old people in Tilley hats and children with their parents.

The guy coughed.

“Okay,” Adam said. “So what happened?”

“He’s got our money,” the teenager said. “Give me our money.”

It was from the tip jar, so it was just over twenty dollars of change. Adam had needed to dig in the guy’s pockets to fish it out because the guy’s hands were in really bad shape.

Adam took the guy in a cab to Emergency. The guy’s name was Max and he was 19, though he looked like he could be in his late 20s. His health card was in his wallet, but he’d left his wallet at home. “I always leave that shit at home. Nothing in it I can use. Not even a library card or some shit.” Adam smiled apologetically at the woman in a hijab holding her sick child within earshot.

“Is there anybody at home I can call?”

“Kwame’s there today.”

Kwame was a worker at Max’s group home. Adam left Max at the Hospital and went home to get his car. He explained the situation to Diane, who was getting dressed to go for her shift. Then Adam drove over to the group home. It was right near the gun club.

By the time Max had been seen and Adam had dropped him off, Adam had decided to volunteer with the kids at the home. That week her arranged with Linda, Kwame’s boss, to come and do a fitness program Wednesday night instead of going shooting and Sunday afternoons after he’d gone shooting.

Instead of going on a trip with Diane over his reading week, Adam did a series of full day activities with some of the kids from the group home, including a canoe trip. From the back of a canoe with Max, Adam watched the first snow fall on the city.

Adam and Diane had broken up by Easter.

Years passed. Adam started working for the City’s police force. Because of his work with youth, he became involved in a mural-painting program that supported illegal graffiti artists to find legal contracts and do legal work. When he turned 30, Adam bought a small bungalow for himself in a neighbouring municipality.

Adam’s dream had always been to work in homicide and when he was 33 he got his chance. It was fascinating and he trained his brain to hold on to and turn over details, which was a professional asset, but a personal liability. One victim, killed in a domestic dispute, was albino, but an albino of African descent. Still, in his dreams, as his mind sorted through the troubling details of that particular investigation, it inserted the Albino Jogger, dressed in all white as she had been back when he’d lived a less structured, less useful life. He lay in bed for a while, then sat up and grabbed a book. Eventually he fell back to sleep with the book on his chest and his bedside light burning.

When Max called Adam with the good news, Adam was jogging along a different stretch of lake, red and yellow leaves skittering across his path. He was out of breath, but happy to hear from Max. “Married! To who?” Allison had been another kid at the group home back when Max was there. Like too many girls her age, she’d hated her skin and buried her face in cover-up of a colour that under the group home’s lights matched her natural skin colour, but that took on too orange a hue when she went outside. Max had kept in touch with her and they’d both straightened out their lives and they’d fallen in love. “Great news. That’s great news.”

“I was, well, we are hoping you can come.”

“When is it?”

“In February. In Mexico.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s excellent.” He closed his eyes. He’d never been to Mexico. “Yeah. Yeah. Send me the invitation.”

He gave Max his email address.

When February came, Adam had just been involved in an investigation into the disappearance and likely murder of a nine-year-old girl from his old neighbourhood. He hadn’t had a full night of sleep in 29 days. He spoke to his supervisor about the possibility of staying home to keep working on the investigation. His supervisor told him he needed the break.

The airport was chaos, but Adam was in no way responsible for managing the chaos, so it had a calming effect on him. He went to the newsstand and was looking at sports magazines and exercise magazines when an image of an Albino child caught his eye. He bought the magazine even though it was about photography. He also bought a book for young adults because he liked the graphic on the cover.

He ran into Kwame at the gate. Kwame was married to his longtime boyfriend, Alex, and the two lived in a co-op in Cabbagetown. Kwame was working with the school board now, as a social worker. He had never been to Mexico, either. They checked their tickets and realized that they were sitting in different parts of the plane. Still, they would be seeing a lot of each other. They laughed. They talked about what a great kid Max had been.

On the plane, Adam tried to read his book, but realized that it was the third in a series and, though he’d been enjoying the book, he found this fact discouraging. He pulled out the photo magazine and looked through it as he sipped a complimentary coffee. He was so tired. He leaned back to sleep.

He dreamed of the Albino Jogger. She wasn’t dead. She was jogging past him on a street of red brick houses he didn’t recognize and wearing a sky blue outfit. She was running in her familiar rhythm, going as quickly as always, but somehow she was stuck in front of Adam. When he realized this, his sleeping mind made the sidewalk a treadmill and even put a person on it who whipped by in the opposite direction.

He woke when the pressure in his head told them they were on their descent.

He woke rested.

He smiled at the woman next to him, but he was smiling for himself.

Toronto, Feb.-March, 2016

Emoji Sequence: Chloë Lum of Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau (f.k.a Seripop), formerly of AIDS Wolf  

Story: Lee Sheppard

Back On Top, Soon, Part II

Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks for asking. It was a lot of fun, I guess. Actually it was a lot of sitting around.

I don’t know why we were there for so many days. The producer, Eric, I think he, well, I think he’s kind of a nervous guy and he wanted to have the, sort of, I guess, the most opportunities to get the footage they wanted.

Eric and me and a camera guy, Matt. I really liked the camera guy, actually.

I don’t know why.

He was married, so.

Obviously. I understand.

Thanks for saying I’m beautiful. Even people always being told how beautiful they are don’t always feel beautiful.

I’m not being sarcastic. When’s the last time your guts were all puffed up with gas and bloating and period and you thought, Yes, thank you, I am beautiful? And beauty, I don’t know. Isn’t there something about the unfamiliar in beauty? Like, my point, I guess, is that it’s always you across from you in the mirror so it’s hard to be all, Oh, wow. Beautiful. Though, let me say, when I saw the footage Matt got of me, I mean, even those little blond hairs I’ve only kept around because I’m afraid if I start going to war with them they will come back darker and coarser, in the footage Matt got even those seem kind a lovely. I mean, not like they are mine so. So I could step back and say, Objectively, those hairs look soft and beautiful and sexy and perfectly acceptable.

We were barely in the air before Matt and I had covered all that getting to know you shit. Like, No, Silva is actually a Portuguese name. Yes, I am a model, but I’m actually a musician, I’m trying to make it as a musician. Actually, Matt even joked like you joke. He actually said, Should be a winning combo.

No, I’m not shitting you.

Yeah, maybe that is why I took a liking to him, he’s a genius like my sista. Get this. He’s a music video director, too. He said maybe he could make me—

I told you he’s married.

No, I won’t stop saying that.

I hadn’t seen any of the videos he’s made, but we watched a bunch of them.

What do you mean where? On his computer.

Yes in his room. Was he supposed to bring his computer to the beach? Come on.

He left the door open and he sat in a chair.

Yes, okay. I lay on the bed. It doesn’t mean anything.

Are you going to let me tell you about my trip?

Right, so I was lying on the bed watching videos and I got really excited about his work so I went and grabbed my iPod from my room and we listened to “Home Wrecker” and “Just One Weekend.”

What do you mean, Of course you did? Of course we did because those are my only finished tracks.

No, not whatever. It’s true.

He wants to do a video for “Just One Weekend.” I’ve got to save up some money or talk to the label.

I can’t— I’m not talking to you anymore.

Yes. He did offer to do it for free, but he was just being nice.

Why are you asking if he had speakers in his room? No, he didn’t have speakers in his room.

No. No. No. We didn’t sit there with one ear bud in each of our ears our thighs lightly touching. He took the iPod over to his chair and I watched him listen. His phone buzzed a few times while he had the headphones on, but he didn’t hear it. He liked the songs and I was really happy he liked them. I don’t know what he was expecting. He even said, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Alt Country.” We sat there for a sec, then I told him about his phone. After he checked it, I asked if it was Eric and he said, “No. It’s my wife. Facebook memory. I guess a year ago, one of my kids, my youngest kid was sick. Threw her milk up all over my wife.” He showed me the picture she sent. There was Milk puke, all white and chunky, sprayed on her gut and in her belly button. “Bull’s eye,” I said. He smiled like the joke wasn’t funny. We made eye contact. He said, “Sorry, that was a good one. I was just thinking about something else.”

Look, stop it. That is not what he was thinking about.

No, not of course. That is not of course what he was thinking about.

Why would you ask about what her belly looked like? His wife’s belly?

A person is more than her belly. I am more than my belly. She is more than her belly. It did look pretty good, though. For someone who’s had two kids.

The kids are super-cute. He showed me on the plane. I mean, I saw pictures a few different times. We were just sitting around so much, so what else are you going to do? But on the plane, he was talking to this guy across the aisle whose wife was pregnant. He had his phone out to show that guy pictures. It was really sweet. The guy was really into it, too. I mean, I would never just start a conversation with somebody like that.

I think, well, the woman was pregnant. Not super-pregnant, but one of those people, those women, who look like they’ve tucked a ball under their shirt. Something about their body type. Skinny ladies. Anyway, I guess it was unambiguous. Still I thought it was bold when Matt was like, “When are you due?”

No, totally. You wouldn’t— I mean on a bus or a streetcar or whatever, you wouldn’t automatically get up for this chick, ’cause, like, you might wonder about it—she’d have a coat on I guess, she didn’t have a coat on on the plane, I don’t think—but with a coat on, you would really not be sure. She wasn’t, like, holding her lower back or anything.

Okay, so, Matt asks, “When are you due?” and the husband jumps in, all super-sweet and proud. The wife, she looked relieved to not have to talk about it. She just put headphones in and pulled out a magazine.

So in between Matt and me getting to know each other, and Eric just sitting all tense by the window and occasionally interrupting to ask Matt if he remembered to bring this thing or that thing, Matt and this dad, the future dad, across the aisle are having these cute conversations. Like Future Dad would be like, How’s the sleeping thing? and Matt would give some answer like, Well, it sucks for a while and while it sucks you feel like the shitty times will never end, but then it doesn’t suck anymore and you can’t even remember what it was like when it sucked or how long it sucked for.

It wasn’t exactly that, I don’t think, but something like that. The part that was so interesting to me, though, was when the pregnant wife got up to go to the bathroom. He said. Well, what he said, that was something, but before he says it he looks me in the eyes then he sort of changes his focus a bit to take in all of me. Not in some sleazebag way. Still, it was hot, somehow, and I got this like rush of—feeling.

Yes, I did get— Yes. I was turned on.

I’m not being demure. Anyway, Matt’s look was like there was some calculating going on. Does that make sense? Like he was doing the old emotional math. Then he turns to the guy and tells him, essentially, to have as much sex now as he can because after the baby is born that’s it for a long time. It was amazing the way his words started piling up. He was talking fast, almost interrupting himself. Or like, it was like he’d had this five minute speech ready and rehearsed, but he’d only been given two minutes to speak.

I wish I’d been able to pay more attention, but Eric taps me from the other side and points to something out the window and asks me if I’ve ever been to Cuba. So I’m making small talk with him. When Matt finishes. I can see out of the corner of my eye that he’s sitting there awkwardly, his hands on his lap. Eventually he pulled out a book and started reading while I was listening to Eric talk about some Cuban metal band he saw at a festival on his three week road trip to see “the real Cuba.” It, actually, now that I’m talking about it, what Eric was saying was pretty interesting. Super interesting. But—

Matt did not want to fuck me.

Okay, sure, we were hitting it off. If he wanted to fuck me, he would have . . . I mean he would have done something to— To— Well, to do it. You know?

How could I miss it?

Think about it. Listen to you.

Shh. Okay okay. I am thinking about it.

Shh.

What do you mean, Just tell me what you are thinking about?

Okay, fine. It’s actually like a montage. Do you ever wonder if we think like we think because of, whatever, TV and movies and such? Or if we—I don’t mean you and me, obviously, but like people. Mankind. Humankind— If we create things like montages because we have the technology now, but we’ve always had that way of thinking?

Fine. I’ll start describing the montage. Roll the film.

I have to close my eyes.

On the beach, he would never actually look at me, except really quickly. Or he might stare at a foot or something.

When I first walked out of my room with my bikini, that one—that hot pink one—he looked down at his feet and held his towel over his crotch.

On the beach, too, I could sometimes see his little man raise its head and flop over to the side as he tried to, you know. As he cleared his throat and shook his head at his open book.

No. See, I told you. There’s more— Actually, well. Although, that stuff’s sort of cute.  

Then Matt had to shoot me for the commercial. Or Public Service Announcement or whatever. Eric had three bikinis for me to try on and I’m getting changed in Eric’s bathroom and I notice he’s got condoms in his open . . . his . . . those little, like, sometimes leather—

—yeah, toiletries bag. His open toiletries bag.

I go out in the first bikini and Eric and Matt scrutinize me and Eric is all asking questions like, “Don’t you think her breasts look too flat in that top?” and Matt’s like, “I see what you mean. Sure.” Then Eric would have me lie down on the bed, which made sense because I had to lie down in the video. He’d stand up on the bed, he’d get down on his hands and knees and look at my breast and my crotch. I flinched when he pointed between my legs and asked me to adjust my suit. Then he’d have me flip over and look at my ass. Each time he’d put hands on either side of me on the bed. I could feel him breathing on the back of my thighs.

Ew is right. With the first bikini he tried to get Matt to come over, but Matt said, “I can see from here.” Eric shook his head and snorted and, like, hot air and maybe some snot sprayed all over me. I actually used his hand towel to wipe it off before I put on the next suit.

As Eric was getting on the bed to check out the second suit, Matt’s phone starts ringing and he picks up.

You’re right. This totally isn’t a montage anymore.

Yep. A full-blown scene. Only I forget the dialogue, exactly, but I know that from what Matt said into his phone that Matt’s wife was missing work because one of the girls had a fever and that there was some other trouble. Matt went outside to finish the conversation and Eric was pissed about it, snorting like some bull or pig. Getting very barnyard. I told him, “I’ve gotta pee,” just so I could get out of there, out of that room with just Eric, and get myself behind a locked door. He wasn’t happy about it, but he lifted his arm and let me free. In the bathroom, I stole two of his condoms.

You’re right, Eric does sound like a creep, but—

No, I don’t carry condoms with me.

I just don’t. You think I have sex with people all the time?

You know I don’t. It’s not my style.

Ha-huh. . . . I— Uh. Yeah. Yeah. You got me. I was going to say that there were beautiful waiters and there were. Bartenders. Guys paid to dance with guests. But no, it was Matt. I was obviously thinking about the possibility.

Exposed. Exposed.

We picked a bikini and we drove to a section of beach that Eric had found. Matt spent more time looking at the scenery than he spent looking at me when I was on that bed. Eric watched—

What?

Nah it didn’t hurt my feelings.

I swear it didn’t.

You’re right, I noticed. Obviously, I noticed. I’m telling you about it. But it felt— I knew he’s trying to be respectful, right?  I made sure he was watching when I stripped down to that bathing suit.

Yeah I did, for sure, and wiggled my hips into the bargain. As sexy as I got in me. Tried to channel my inner stripper.

Why thank you. I hope I did a great job.

That’s right. He got that shot of the little blond hairs. With the camera in his hand now, Matt’s crawling all over me, too. Straddling. So different, though. He apologized anytime his jeans brushed against me or this one time his elbow bumped into my thigh. Even apologized when he breathed on me.

Sure thing. You can take the Canadian out of Canada, but, no, can’t get that Canada out. Eric’s Canadian too, though. As far as I know, so. 

’Kay, but there’s this other shot Matt got. It’s like, it’s not a zoom but the camera is moving up my legs, up between my thighs. A tracking shot? Anyway, my ass cheeks look like a pair of the Rocky Mountains.

In the best possible way.

Like I got booty.

Like that British guy, that British narrator, um—

Yeah, David Attenborough. Like David Attenborough’s gonna talk about the, what is it? Rain shadow? I think that’s it. The rain shadow of my ass.

Eric said, “Damn,” or something equally predatory and appreciative.

No man, I make him sound dangerous. I could take him.

Okay, last story.

Sorry. You have work to do. You’re trying to get a degree or something.

Happy to help you procrastinate, sis.

Alright. So, we are having dinner and Eric gets up to take a call from his partner—business partner—and Matt says, Let’s get the fuck out of here. We get out on the beach and there are all these other people walking up and down and it’s dusk and I actually fully forget myself and I wrap my arm around his arm.

I did forget myself. It was a mistake.

I’m not saying I wasn’t all for what it meant. Like, it was an action I could stand behind, an action that I meant, but not what I intended. It was too late, though, obviously.

Well, he squeezed his arm in towards his body and put his hand on mine. I looked up at his face, not sure I should take it to mean anything and he smiled and laughed and turned red. We sat down on the beach because, he said, “It’s hard to walk with an erection.”

Don’t tell me what he didn’t say.

I told you we didn’t have sex. Sleep together. Fuck. Didn’t I say that?

Sure, I had my hand on the inside of his thigh on a beach as the sun went down. I had my head on his shoulder. I laughed at his jokes. He’s talking about hard-ons and his hand is exploring by back and my side, even brushing the side of my breast as he plays his shaking fingers up my rib cage. It seemed bound to happen. He was shivering. I asked him if he wanted to go inside. “I’m not cold,” he said. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

We were walking back to the hotel hand in hand when he stopped. I was like what’s wrong and he went, “Agh.” We were like almost back to the hotel when he let go of my hand and said, “Sorry. Someone is texting me like crazy.” I stood ahead of him a few steps. He looked strange in the blue light from his phone. I saw him shaking his head. I didn’t want to ask what the texts were all about, who they were from. Mood is a thing. For him, but also for me. I’m not some home wrecker. I’m not the girl from my song.

No, I’m not. I’m just a free person trying to get with another free person.

What do you mean, Nobody’s free? That’s a bit philosophical for you, isn’t it?

That’s a point. Obviously that’s the issue, right?

You don’t need me to tell you that it was his wife. Texting. She was really sick and his girls were sick, too. “I told her to call my mom,” he said, irritated. “She’s asking if there’s any way I can come home sooner.”

I nodded.

He couldn’t look at me. His eyes would find me for a minute—for a millisecond—then he’d look out at the ocean or up at the sky. He might have been crying. He told me he was sorry, he wasn’t feeling well. He repeated that he was sorry, squeezed my shoulder and walked off towards his room.

Ha ha. Um. Yeah. No I didn’t come home with the condoms.

I told you that I didn’t sleep with Matt.

Not some hot Cuban, either.

Eric, obviously. I don’t know why. It wasn’t very good.

He wasn’t, he’s not, dangerous.

I think I’d just prepared myself to sleep with someone.

Don’t call me that. You should know better.

Sure. I’m sure you could guess. He came too soon. Not that I think I was going to come. I wasn’t that comfortable with him, that’s what I’ll say. I’ve got to be comfortable with a person, feel like they aren’t judging me if I’m going to come.

I think Matt had the same flu his family got. He stayed in his room our last day. And Eric got kinda possessive. The flight home was way less fun. We all took a cab together.

Eric was trying to convince Matt to come in the cab and he kept saying no, no, no. Then Eric went to the bathroom and Matt started saying goodbye to me. I asked him to come with us. He didn’t say anything, just nodded. Eric got back from the bathroom and said, “Okay then, Matty. I’ll call you later.” Matt said he was coming in the taxi and Eric acted all surprised.

I know you gotta go. I just. Let me finish. We dropped Eric off at his office. So, Matt lives sort a around the corner from me. The cab went to his house next. I told him, Well it was nice to meet you. He nodded. Said the same thing back. He wasn’t looking at me at all. We stopped in front of his house. “Guess, I’ll see you,” he said. I told him where I lived. “Maybe I’ll see you,” he said. He squeezed my hand, opened the door, then got out. Before he closed the door, he pointed to my hand and said, “You should probably wash that.”

Maybe it was because he was sick. Maybe.

Toronto, Feb. 2016

Emoji sequence: writer, director and music video maker Scott Cudmore

Story: Lee Sheppard

Do We Eat Here? Do We Shit?

We, Max Load and Alex Oliver of Midnight Ryders Productions, loaded up our bags, a camera, a laptop, a box of condoms and a c-light and headed to a Best Western two hours north of the city.

Max’s cousin’s wedding started with a long ceremony in a hot church lead by a preacher or minister or priest or whatever who mumbled into his chest for much much much too long.

The whole service, Max was trying to make eye contact with some other cousin, his favourite cousin, the cousin he’d told Alex about on the way to the hotel, the cousin who Max described as probably the hottest person he’d ever known. Alex thought, No way she’s that hot, thinking, we work with hot women almost daily, actually said, “No way she’s that hot,” but Max pointed her out and, yes, she was remarkably sexy, definitely someone that Alex could work with, but it was only really specific women who we approached to work with him, to work with us—Max did camera and sometimes P.O.V. videos—women with an often messy combination of self-hate and a desperate need for approval or validation or confirmation sometimes masquerading as who-gives-a-fuck confidence. And this cousin, Morgan, she had a different type confidence, something much closer to grace, but grace without the high-religious chasteness that word might imply to you. Grace on a human scale, as Max might have said when he was studying art and filmmaking, as Max might have said if he was in a mood to be mocked. Dirty grace, is the type of phrase Alex would have preferred Max use, but dirty didn’t describe Morgan properly at all.

At the reception, we were seated at the back table, the table for singles and childless individuals. We got our food last and we had to strain to hear the speeches, one of which included a warning to Max’s now married cousin and her husband that they should enjoy themselves in the bedroom now because maybe someone has told them, but probably not— as soon as the kids arrive their sex lives are through. Alex worked his charm on some modestly pretty maybe twenty-year-old relative of the groom’s who as soon as she sat down was giggling over the attention that he paid her. Max watched Morgan and her husband and saw the way that they avoided each other’s eyes, the way that he kept his elbows in like he was afraid of bumping against her.

During the dancing, we really saw what Morgan might mean for our modest website. When the DJ started playing “Like a Prayer,” all Max’s girl cousins let out this excited, sustained, “Oh,” and threw their hands up. One of the girl cousins, smiling and off-balance because of her shining new heels, scurried over to one of the speakers and pulled from behind it, like, twenty hula-hoops and gave them all out.

You’ve never seen anything like Morgan hula-hooping. We’ve talked about it and for each of us our favourite thing is when a leading lady rides cowgirl and grinds her hips like she’s possessed or she’s dancing. Before the work made us sadly desensitized to these simple pleasures, such moments could produce, in either of us, an instant effect. Morgan’s hips have a range and nuance of movement, a language of wiggle that could make her an instant adult film star. Alex thought, “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” and Max thought, “I must have seen Morgan do that before,” but we were too entranced to even turn and share a look that might have conveyed our thoughts to each other.

Somebody was whispering in Max’s ear. Annoyed, he turned and nearly collided with a beefy bicep. The arm moved, wrapped itself around Max’s shoulders. “What?” Max asked.

Alex turned then. The large, veinous hand and forearm reminded him of an engorged cock. He backed away instinctively, then turned back to watch Morgan keeping the hula-hoop up.

The owner of the beefy arm said, “Erin wants us to go over to the fairgrounds.”

Behind the now slender, jaw- and cheekbone-defined face, somewhere in the tilt of the smile or in the light behind the eyes, Max thought he recognized the bride’s little brother. “Fat Phil?”

“I haven’t heard that name in too long.”

“You liked it?”

“No, I didn’t.” He gave Max a squeeze. A very tight squeeze.

“You look great.”

“Thanks. The exercise is better than the anti-depressants I was on back when I was— Back when I had that nickname.”

“Uh,” Max said. Needing an out, maybe, or trying to be polite as some sort of act of apology—hard to say—Max introduced Alex. “Phil, this is my business partner.”

Phil stood and extended his powerful right arm. “You’re the ‘talent’?”

“What’s that?” Alex asked.

Max started burning. How did Phil know what we did?

Phil repeated himself, louder now so he could be heard over the church choir singing, just like a prayer, I’ll take you there. “You are the talent? In Max’s movies.”

“You a fan?” Max’s smile was just weaker than hopeful.

“Before she passed, your mom told my mom what you do.”

Alex went back to watching Morgan, but Max wilted in the heat of his understanding. The internet, so public. Pornography, so hated, so automatically scorned. His family, so? So? So what? Wholesome. Righteous. Ugly.

“Like a Prayer” ended and we went to the bathroom.
Alex unzipped his pants and started pissing into the urinal. “So? Everybody knows.” 

Max stood there with his dick out, but he couldn’t pee. “Keep your voice down.”

“We’re the only people in here.”

Max closed his eyes, took a deep breath and tried to imagine that he was standing over his own toilet in his own bathroom in his anonymous studio apartment in one of now six nearly identical buildings clustered near the train tracks and the bread factory, but his meditation failed because two men came laughing into the bathroom. They stopped when they saw us. What did that mean that they stopped? Max zipped up, made quick eye contact and nodded his head to try and gauge their reactions. Alex washed his hands.

As we gathered at the margins of the big group waiting to walk to the fair grounds, as grandmas in high heels fretted at the change in plans and tried to arrange cabs for them and their grandchildren, as people made their excuses and left for their hotels, Max was scanning the crowd, concentration making his brow crash angrily down on his eyes and fear forcing his head to jerk this way, that way and back again. “You look crazy,” Alex said.

“I’m just trying to figure out how many people know,” Max said.

“Should we do a survey?” Alex suggested.

“You can survey me,” said the girl, the young woman, the vulnerable female relative of the groom’s that Alex had been working.

“Hi Deborah,” Alex said.

“Debbie, please,” Debbie said.

“Easy. Hi Debbie.”

She touched Max on the arm and he flinched and turned. “Hey.”

“Is something wrong?” Debbie asked Max. When he didn’t reply, she turned to Alex. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Alex said. He saw a man turn towards them and look Alex up and down, appraising him. Alex nodded an acknowledgment, then asked Debbie, “Who’s that guy?”

“My dad.”

“Hunh.” Alex started to feel the weight that Max was carrying, the suspicion.

“He hasn’t talked to me in years.”

“Years? How old are you?”

“Twenty-one. When I was seventeen I had some trouble with drugs and with boys. Somebody found a video on my phone and it got back to Dad.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. He called me a slut and kicked me out and that’s that.”

Alex nodded. “You haven’t heard from him since?”

“Every once in a while he’ll get a bit drunk and show up at my house to bang on the door and shout things.”

“Who’s this?” Max asked, suddenly aware of the conversation.

“My dad,” Debbie said. “We don’t really get along.”

“Sounds like it.”

Debbie wrapped her arm around Alex’s and put her face against his bicep. He moved back a step, recognizing Debbie for the storm she was. She definitely would go back to the hotel with them and she would probably be a little crazy, too. Which was good, for the videos anyway.

Debbie’s dad looked at them again, only this time the big brush-cut kid with him, a younger double of the old man, turned too, menace on a rolling boil behind his eyes and under his broad shoulders. Debbie grabbed Alex’s hand, squeezed it and smiled up at him.

Alex knew he was being used.

Max realized he hadn’t seen Morgan in a while. Had she gone home? Maybe she’d been in some advance party to the fair. Was cousin Matthew giving Max some critical side-eye? Wasn’t Matthew the one who always left crying from the woods behind grandma’s house? There was Morgan, sitting on a leather loveseat behind the table of photographs of the bride and groom and all their dead relatives. She was rubbing her feet, a pair of sneakers on the cushion beside her. She smiled at Max and held out her arm, reaching for him. As Max walked towards her, some kid ran into him, knocking him sideway. “Sorry,” the kid said breathlessly. Max looked around to see what grownup was responsible for this child and would therefore be also looking to scorn Max. Morgan called his name before Max could find a head turned towards him. The kid had been swallowed up by the crowd.

“How are you, Cuz?”

“Hi, Morgan.”

“Please, Maxy, you’ve never called me that.”

“How are you, Mo?”

“It’s a decent party, don’t you think?”

“I haven’t seen any of you in years.”

“That’s right, you weren’t at Sarah’s wedding.”

“I think I was in Vegas.”

“Vegas? What for?”

“Work.”

“There’s a porn awards thing there, isn’t there?”

Max looked at his shoes, thought maybe he’d throw up all over them. Morgan touched his knee, her fingers long and gentle. Max wanted to tell her to wash her hands. What was wrong with him that he ever imagined involving Morgan in his nasty work? He loved her. Which explained something, he supposed.

“What’s wrong, Maxy?”

“Does everybody know?”

“It’s exciting,” Morgan said. “That’s the wrong word. It’s something to talk about.”

“Right.” Max looked over at Alex, Deborah standing so close to him, talking to him about whatever.

“Is that they guy? The actor?”

“Alex? Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never watched anything you’ve done.”

“It’s probably better.”

“It’s not really my thing.”

“No.”

“Maxy. I’m— I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You are one of my favourites.” Max made sure to look at her.

“Oh, Max. You too. You too.”

She hugged him. He tried not to picture what her body, the parts he could feel through his chest and chin and hand, would look like naked. “I hate these family things, Mo.”

“I hear you.” People were starting to leave the hall for the street. “Looks like it’s time to go.”

Max stood. He made eye contact with Alex. He flicked his head in the direction of the hotel. Alex shrugged, grimaced a bit, looked at Deborah. Max nodded, thinking he understood.

To Morgan, Max said, “I think I’m going to cut.”

“What?” Morgan asked.

“Leave.”

“There’s so much more party left.”

“I know.”

“It’s really great to see you.” She hugged him again. “Are you on Facebook?”

“Uh. Yeah. I don’t check it much, but.”

“I’m going to find you. Okay?”

“I’ll watch for that.”

“Great. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Max walked out the door with Alex and Debbie. “I’m done,” Max said. “You coming with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I join you guys?” She lay her hand across the front of Alex’s belt.

“I gotta talk to Max.” Alex lifted her hand.

“Okay, whatever.” Debbie turned towards Alex, grabbed his wrist and forced his hand against her breast, her mouth open.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” Alex said. “Real nice. But not tonight.”

“Fine.” She nodded to Max then jogged to catch up with the long trail of people making their way along the sidewalk to the nearby fair.

We didn’t talk all the way back to our room. Alex opened two cans of Budweiser from our cooler and we sat in deck chairs on this small patch of flagstones level with the black asphalt driveway to the back parking lot. We could see the Ferris wheel’s light through a thin stand of trees.

“That girl Debbie was trouble,” Alex said.

“In the good way?”

“I think she wanted her dad to fuck me up. And did you see her brother?”

“No.”

“Carbon copy of the dad, man. And mean looking.”

Max nodded.

“Saw you talking to Morgan.”

“Yeah.”

“What she have to say?”

“You know, I think I love her Alex?”

“Your cousin? That’s some kinky shit.” 

“Ah.”

“I see it, though. She’s super hot.”

Max could feel something open up in himself, something parting.

We didn’t hear Debbie coming because she’d taken off her shoes. She was crying. She wiped her face when she spotted us, then tried to hurry past.

“Hey, hey,” Alex said. “You look like you need a drink.”

He stood up and went inside. Debbie sat down in Alex’s deck chair and stared silently ahead. “I’m staying here, too,” Debbie said.

“I figured.” Max sipped his beer.

“We’ve only got Bud,” Alex said, holding a can out for her. “Sorry.”

She took it from him. “That’s fine.”

Max stood. “I’ll leave you two.”

Max smiled at Alex. Patted him on the shoulder.

Alex sat down beside Debbie. Max listened to the two of them talking, the words obscured by the sliding glass door, until he fell asleep. 

Toronto, Jan. 2016

Emoji sequence: Writer and educator, Nadia Pecaric

Story: Lee Sheppard