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  I shrugged. That was as much lying as I wanted to do. But she wouldn’t give it up. She loved this story.

  “And then?”

  “What do you mean, then?”

  “What happened next?”

  “You know, there was a bit of a fight, but nothing serious. I gave as good as I got. I managed to get out of it. That’s the main thing. I don’t like fighting.”

  She sighed at the end, as if content — happy to hear that that in my heart, I was peaceful. And I was. Sitting there, with the sun and the pot smoke shimmering in its light, I was peaceful.

  We talked some more. She planned to go live in Vancouver and become a marine biologist. She loved the ocean. She had visited Vancouver two years ago and pronounced it to be the most wonderful place on earth.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I am thinking of staying here.”

  “In Montreal?”

  “Yeah. Why not? Get a job and all that.”

  “It is not easy to get a job here. Especially for… you know.”

  “For an English speaker?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, there goes my plan at working the door at one of the sex clubs.”

  She didn’t understand, so I explained my dream of being a doorman or bouncer at a sex club. She found this cute.

  “Well, most people who visit those clubs are American, as far as I know,” she replied, after hearing me out. “So maybe you would not need French after all.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  When the light started to fade, somebody suggested we go to an apartment off Cherrier — a street not far away. I regretted leaving the Square Saint Louis. It was one of the prettiest places I’d ever seen. Marie was still by my side.

  At a dépanneur — a store that sold everything from eggs to videos to booze — I gave someone ten bucks to pick me up a six-pack of beer. Somebody else bought a bottle of screw-top wine. There were now about seven or eight in our group. We continued on our way. The darker it became outside, the cozier the lights of the buildings seemed, and I was glad eventually to turn into a courtyard and find a safe haven. The weather had turned cooler, with a wind that gathered in gusts and challenged you straight on. Underneath the second-floor balcony and in the corner of two walls, a sort of patio emerged. The wooden floor was mostly rotted and a newspaper served as a doormat on the way inside. Despite the air of dilapidation, somebody had taken pains to throw a clean blanket over a threadbare sofa and arrange a few chairs facing it. Here we gathered. I gave Marie a beer, took one for myself, more joints were passed around, and the big bottle of wine changed hands between the guitar-player and a couple of the hacky-sackers.

  “Whose place is this?” I asked.

  The guitar player put up his hand.

  “Just yours?” I said. “That’s cool.”

  He shook his head. Marie explained.

  “He has two roommates.”

  “How old is everyone?” I asked.

  “Me, I am eighteen. He is nineteen. I don’t know for everyone else. And you… You are not even old enough to buy your own beer!”

  I decided to claim that I was seventeen. Sixteen sounded childish.

  That evening went on for a long time, but it is difficult to recall later episodes in detail because of the large-scale scrambling of my senses. I had several beers, took a few swigs of wine, and continued to smoke pot liberally. Some things stand out. On a trip to the bathroom, I encountered a cat that was so big that its tummy touched the floor. Somebody joked that because of all the pot smoking that went on in the premises, the cat continually had the munchies. Shortly thereafter, I had the munchies myself. I didn’t have much money left. What was I going to eat? The last food to pass my lips had been at breakfast. Around this time, more people were arriving at the apartment. When I explained my predicament to someone who was even more high than I was, he just gestured to the fridge. “See what’s in there,” he said. So I did exactly that. To my amazement, I found a plate with two thirds of a pizza lying on it. I knew it went against the spirit of these people to steal. So I took the pizza, returned to the bathroom, locked myself inside, and devoured the whole thing.

  The pizza prolonged the evening. With a better base, I was able to drink another beer and help partake in another joint. I started to wish that Marie didn’t have a cold sore. I really wanted badly to make out with someone.

  I started to feel a bit nauseous. I went inside to the washroom, leaned over the toilet, but nothing came out. I drank some water. I felt a little better. There was a telephone in the living room and the screen informed me that the time was nine-seventeen. It occurred to me that I had missed dinner with my parents and Dr. André Bouchard. It didn’t matter. I phoned the number for Zoe Laboucan.

  She answered.

  “You’re a bitch,” I said. “I’m not coming back to Edmonton for you.”

  I started to laugh. I dropped the receiver and walked away from it. I wonder if she stayed on the line to listen to the sound of the party.

  About half an hour later, I was sitting on the sofa when the nausea returned with double intensity. I started to get up, but as I did so, puke burned its way up through my chest and into my mouth.

  More puke followed, and the excess trickled out of my mouth. I ran to the bathroom. Thank God it was available. Now the puke was hurtling out. I had a bit of a mess on my jeans, but most of it was ending up in the porcelain bowl. I suppose you had to be thankful for small mercies. I had witnessed worse. I heard a banging on the door and it was Marie. She came in to help me. She ran some water, splashed some on my face, encouraged me to drink and then sit down. I was too drunk and high to be embarrassed.

  “You’re so nice,” I said. “You are such a nice person. I wish you could kiss me.”

  I told her she was a million times nicer than the girl I had just broken up with in Edmonton. I don’t know if she could possibly have found this flattering. She guided me to a bed somewhere, then I passed out. I never saw her again.

  The next day, I returned to the hotel at noon. The ensuing argument between my family and me was the last genuine moment in our history. Everyone said what they meant. We would never do that again.

  22

  I was missing my parents for the first time. I thought of all the ways I had been a torment to them, of how difficult it must have been to have a son who wanted only to escape his family and his home, and my heart sank. How could it be that Jacob Brookfield had known them so well and that I didn’t know them at all?

  The road my parents had died on was not one for an inconspicuous end. The sky was enormous and all-seeing. There was nothing between you and heaven. The humans had barely scratched the surface of the earth. I was unnerved by the openness. It could have been the ocean.

  I had only been at the Brookfields’ home for forty minutes. It hardly seemed possible that so much could have changed. I watched the prairie roll by as I traveled back to Edmonton in the slow lane. I felt utterly adrift. So much land, so much nothing. But there were traces of humans, if you searched hard enough for them. The local farmers had hung their hats on rickety posts hammered into the ground every ten metres. The reds and the greens and the blues were fading like old canvases over time. Beyond the fence were the fields, already harvested. It would not be long before the weight of the first snow descended on them.

  My van was rising and falling gently over the undulating terrain, rising and falling no more than on the chest of a gently sleeping giant. I saw a white house before my wheels clattered over the train tracks. I knew it must be the house of the old woman who had seen my parents’ final moments. I did not stop.

  When I was back at the old house, I parked and ran down the road to Julianne’s. I knocked, and one of her roommates answered. She was a plump blonde woman of about twenty-five. She told me that Julianne was out. That wasn’t enough for me.

  “Where is she?”

  The plump woman loo
ked at me strangely.

  “I don’t know. I just got back.”

  I was due at Laura’s that evening. I cleaned myself up and set out in the van again, wondering what I should tell her. I decided not to tell her anything.

  The family I found getting ready for dinner was happy — endearingly so. They seemed to me like innocents. They didn’t know the things that I knew. Laura’s mood had turned. She had just received news that a poster she had designed a year ago had won a prestigious graphic design award. I was jealous of these five people who were busy with their lives and with their respective losses and successes. It seemed to me that I had never been happy like they were. Even an asshole like Jacob Brookfield had found plenty of happiness in his life. From when Howard welcomed me with an unexpected embrace at the door to when he dropped me off at the old house, I pitied myself.

  Then Julianne reappeared.

  “Where have you been?” I said, as I let her into the house.

  “I’ve been with Mike. We just went to see a play. God, it was awful. Everyone got naked just for the sake of it. It was very pretentious.”

  “Mike? Your friend in English?”

  “Yes, that Mike.”

  “I called on you several times.”

  She produced a bottle of wine from her sizable purse.

  “Do you want to open this?”

  I took it from her. I was vaguely aware that I sounded like a nag, but I had to figure out why she’d gone missing for so long.

  “I went to your house a few times,” I persisted. “No one was there.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Today there was someone there — your roommate. She didn’t know where you were.”

  “I was on campus, of course.”

  “And the rest of the weekend?”

  “I was at my parents’ place in Fort Saskatchewan.”

  She was making herself at home, hanging up her coat and moving into the living room. I could tell that she was a little tipsy. I went to the kitchen for a corkscrew and two glasses, and opened up the wine.

  “You’ve been drinking already?”

  “Yeah. Mike and I had dinner after the stupid play. I had some wine. It wouldn’t hurt me to have more. I want to get those ugly naked bodies out of my head. I’m not against naked bodies, but it was so unnecessary. The man was like twigs. And the woman looked really weird. She had one breast noticeably way bigger than the other. Then there was a young guy who got naked, too, but that was kind of creepy, because he looked so young. I know the director. He’s gay. He likes the boys. But this one looked all of sixteen. It was a bit sick, to tell the truth.”

  I sat down next to her.

  “It’s good to see you,” I said.

  “It’s good to see you too, Luke.”

  We proceeded to get drunk.

  I told her about my encounter with Jacob Brookfield. She was the best confidante I could have wished for. She heard out the whole thing and understood how unnerving it was to me. But she was determined not to let the mood get somber.

  “Your parents were swingers into their fifties?” she said, smiling. “That’s incredible. And both marriages survived intact. That’s quite admirable. Do you think they slept with anyone else?”

  “I don’t want to think about it. It’s a shock to me.”

  “Sure, it’s a shock. But how many people can say in their thirties that their parents shocked them?”

  “I wish they hadn’t.”

  “Seriously? You wish they hadn’t? What difference does it make now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. I’m almost jealous. My parents are boring.”

  “I would’ve been fine with my parents staying boring to the end of their days.”

  “You’re reacting like an adolescent. Think about it rationally. They made themselves happy. They hurt nobody.”

  “I don’t like thinking about it rationally.”

  “All right, then. Be that way. Pour me more wine.”

  We drained the bottle to the last drop.

  “Now we’ll have to break into my parents’ stash of liquor,” I said.

  “That’s the liquor you were trying to tempt me with when I last saw you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you up to that night, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, putting her hand on my knee. “When you invited me in for a final drink. As a friend.”

  I laughed.

  “It was a genuine offer,” I replied.

  “I could tell.”

  “Julianne,” I said with a sigh, having decided in that moment that I had to make a clean break with the past. “While you were away, I broke up with my girlfriend.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Because of everything. I didn’t want to go back to Vancouver. Life there was drying up. She and I were drying up. And because of you, yes.”

  The lie that I told seemed minor. I had convinced myself that it was a question of when, not if, the breakup with Stephie would occur. And I told myself, happiness is right here only inches away — I can feel its warmth — why not permit myself to just have it? When I put my fingers on Julianne’s shoulders, the muscles underneath her skin were taut.

  If I had not lied, I would not have had the chance, scarcely twenty minutes later, to kiss her from her lips to her neck to her navel, and further still. I would not have heard her voice descend an octave in a groan of pleasure. I would not have sunk my fingers into the flesh of her hips and felt the bones moving underneath. I would not have seen her rapidly lose herself, and demand me inside her.

  Afterwards, she was lying on my chest, and it was silent. We hadn’t spoken yet. It was almost embarrassing to have returned to quietness — to hear the angry buzz of a motorbike on 99th — and have now only words at our disposal.

  “Well, that happened,” I said, eventually. An hour ago, I could not have contemplated being so buoyantly nonchalant. It was a comfort to hear her laugh. I felt it against my heart.

  “It definitely did,” she said.

  “Will it happen again?”

  “Oh, I think there’s a good chance that it will.”

  “You are beautiful,” I said. “Your body flows. Your tummy into your hips into your legs. It just flows.”

  “There’s nothing so beautiful as the naked body,” she replied.

  In the morning, opening my eyes and seeing her beside me seemed a little miraculous. The quilt had slipped from us in the night, and she was exposed all the way to her waist. She was facing me, still fast asleep. The corners of her lips were wrinkled upwards. I furtively crept out of the makeshift bed and went to find my cigarettes. I lit one up, sat down, and looked at her.

  When Stephie had first given herself to me, it had not felt like this. She had acted as if she needed it. Whereas Julianne had acted as if she wanted it. And now, having gotten what she wanted, you could tell she was having happy dreams.

  My smoke circled languorously in the air. Every muscle in my body was relaxed. I couldn’t recall having felt so content in months. The night’s drinking seemed to have done nothing to diminish me.

  The phone rang. Julianne’s eyes opened.

  “Are you going to get that?” she said, sleepily.

  “No,” I said.

  I let the phone ring and ring. It seemed to go on forever. There was no answering machine. I knew it was Stephie. I felt some satisfaction knowing that this was the point of no return. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was only nine. She would be convinced something was going on. She had never had a legitimate reason to doubt me before.

  “Why do they have to call so early?” said Julianne.

  “Disturbed your beauty sleep?”

  “Yes, they did. I’m awake now. Come here.”

  We lay in bed for hours. She was due for a meeting with a professor, but she skipped it.
She was his favourite, and he had missed several appointments himself; she would easily get away with it.

  “I’ll just look at him like this.” She made an imploring face. “‘Can you please forgive me, Dr. Harsh?’”

  “Harsh? That’s his name?”

  “Yes. But he is not in the slightest bit harsh. I can get away with anything.”

  I gave her a jab in the ribs with my finger.

  “He probably has a crush on you.”

  “He’s a brilliant man, but a very lonely one.”

  “You can use that to your advantage.”

  “I do my work like anyone else. I don’t expect favours.”

  “But you get them anyway.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “My body won’t look like this forever,” she said, smiling, with no shame whatsoever.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means while you have it, use it.”

  “And how do you use it?”

  “I’m just saying, I flirt with the old man a little bit to make him feel good. It helps things.”

  “It helps your grade point average.”

  “Luke, I’m a Ph.D. We’re beyond grade point averages at this stage in the game.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You’re hardly one to talk. Who flaunted everything they had for the almighty dollar, Mr. Manspray?”

  “Oh, Christ. Give it up. I had no choice. I needed work.”

  “You probably enjoyed being half naked in front of millions of TV watchers.”

  “You’re obsessed with my Mr. Manspray days.”

  “I find it funny. That’s all.”

  “I’ll never live down that commercial. It will haunt me to my dying breath.”

  “You don’t look very haunted.”

  “I am. I’m traumatized. Having been so exploited.”

  “Exploited? The exploitation has hardly started.”

  23

  Julianne invited me to a gathering of her friends at the Faculty Club. I was happy to know that she saw me as more than just someone to share a bed with. The morning after our first night together, she had introduced me to her roommates. There was Vicki, the plump one, whose child lived elsewhere but visited on occasion (that’s whose tricycle I’d seen in the backyard) and Rory, who was an obsessive athlete and was either sweaty and spandex-clad, or wrapped in a towel, coming out of the shower yet again. Now I was to be further integrated into her life. I was well aware of what an important step this was. Julianne had not been with anyone in over a year.