Cathy sat on the hood of the car. She looked out over Lake Ontario, her hair waving in the light breeze that blew off the cold gray water.
Johnny leaned against the side door of the Mazda, his back sheltering a match as he lit up a cigarette.
“You want to get back in the car?” he asked, flipping a used match in-to the sand and making a second attempt, this time successfully, to light his cigarette. Weren’t they down here to get some things straightened out between them? I hate this melodrama. Flowers, sunsets, waves crashing on the shore. Let’s just get in the car and do it.
“Doesn’t the water look like molten steel?” she asked, smiling and shaking the wind from her hair. “It looks solid. I can almost imagine walking across it. It’s looked this way for hundreds, even thousands of years. Isn’t that mind-boggling?”
“Fascinating,”
Johnny muttered, spitting out smoke.
Fucking fascinating!
Cathy turned and gestured to Johnny for a cigarette. He took one out of his package, lit it off his, and still leaning across the hood of the car, handed it to Cathy.
“It’s like time traveling when you look out into a body of water,” she said, turning back to the lake.
“Time traveling,” Johnny muttered. He turned and looked back over the sight of the now defunct psychiatric hospital. All boarded up.
Where’d they put all the loonies? The hospital was being transformed into a community college. Better dressed inmates. How was he going to tell his parents that he’d been kicked out of university? The best thing would be to take the Mazda and disappear. Go to California. Make a life someplace warm. But he didn’t have enough money for that. Cathy must have some dough.
Cathy turned to Johnny. “Don’t mope. I told you that we weren’t going to mess around when you asked me to go for a ride.”
“Why’d you come then?” Johnny demanded, his petulant voice beginning to irritate her.
“I wanted to talk. You’ve been gone a long time and I think there are issues we should address.” She was careful with each word. She didn’t want her voice to slip into the southern belle accent she fell into when she was anxious.
“Well, you didn’t have that attitude the other night.” Johnny shot the words out of his mouth like he was a gun. Giving me a hard-on thinking about it.
“That was a mistake.” Cathy slipped off the hood and onto the beach, her arms crossed. She stepped toward the lake. “I had the nightmare again last night.”
“What?” Smoke came out of Johnny’s nose and tossed and twisted in the wind off the lake. He added with a shrug, “Maybe you should see a shrink.”
Cathy stepped back and leaned on the car. She sucked on her cigarette.
Smoke seeped through her clenched teeth, softly swirling, framing her face. Johnny reached into the car and turned on the radio. I can’t stand this shit. Better to listen to some tunes.
“Everything seems quite lovely at first,” she began. The Beach Boys song “Good Vibrations” drifted out of the car. “The long grass is waving back and forth. Butterflies are slow dancing in the wild flowers. It’s dark but the full moon is creamy soft. I am holding someone’s hand. I can’t see who it is but I feel so happy. And then I trip. The hand releases me.
As I fall to the ground, the earth opens up and I begin to fall down this dark hole. Falling slowly back and forth like a leaf floating from a tree. I try to scream but instead of my cry coming from my throat it rises from deep inside the hole. It’s as if I am falling into myself. I fall and fall.”
“And then you wake up,” Johnny added impatiently as he climbed onto the hood of the car, his legs dangling over the edge. How many times do I have to listen to this shit? He slid off the car and attempted to put his arm around Cathy but she shrugged it off, continuing to stare out at the water.
“I was scared,” Cathy said, her shoulders trembling.
Johnny smacked his hand on the hood of the car. The sounded jolted Cathy as if she’d been slapped on the back of the head.
“The dream doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “Dreams never do. It’s what happens when your eyes are open that counts. When I was at university there were all these inbreeds walking around analyzing each other.” He grabbed Cathy’s chin and turned it to his face. “Everyone is a fucking cripple, they’d cry. She blames her mother. He blames his father.
Everyone’s got to find someone to blame. We’re all damaged goods. So what! Let’s just get on with what’s left of our lives. Who knows when the expiry date will appear? Let the party begin.” He kissed her hard on the lips.
Cathy pushed Johnny away. “I can’t be that way.” She turned her back on the car. The Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun” began to play.
“What way?” Johnny grabbed her arm and twisted Cathy around.
“Look at life honestly. Look at it right straight in the eye. We’re all living 84 on the Titanic. This time, there are no survivors. No time left for mourning.”
Cathy pulled Johnny’s hand off her arm and glared at him.
“Honesty! What do you know about being honest?”
“So this is the way it’s going to be?” he asked, biting down angrily on his lip.
“Did you get a job yet?” Cathy shot back.
“I’m trying,” he responded defensively, his eyes dropping momentarily. “It isn’t as easy as you think. Just because you’ve got that shit job at Apache Burger, you think anyone can get a job. And look at your parents. If you were stuck, they’d give you anything. My folks are counting the days until they can get rid of me.”
“You’re not trying hard enough,” Cathy screeched. “And it’s not a shit job. I like it. People come from all over the city to eat the onion rings at Apache’s. Last week a couple of players from the Maple Leafs showed up. We took pictures of them with the staff.”
“Losers,” Johnny muttered. This isn’t working! He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “Ah, shit, Cathy, what am I going to do? When my parents find out that I screwed up, they are going to go ballistic. It was just so boring. I had a psych class in this auditorium with a thousand other students. I could never stay awake. Half the class was dozing off. You should see the number of essays they expected. I had this philosophy prof who gave us an assignment the second day of class. What is the meaning of nothing? That’s what he wanted and he wanted it in less than thirty words. What are you going to say in thirty words about nothing? I could have said it in one word.”
“You’ve got an excuse for everything.” Cathy flicked the ashes off her cigarette then drew smoke deep into her lungs. Terry was right.
Johnny flicked the ashes of his cigarette into the air. The breeze blew it back at him.
“Shit!” Johnny swept the ashes off his trousers.
Cathy laughed. “You’re such an idiot.”
Johnny smiled sheepishly, then climbed back onto the car. Cathy loved Johnny when he didn’t try so hard to be cool. She loved the little boy in him. She wasn’t so sure about the man he was becoming. Maybe he will never become one.
“Sometimes I wish there was just you and me and the highway,” Cathy said wistfully.
Johnny was about to respond but did not. Somewhere inside him he knew that Cathy would not be going with him down the highway.
Something told him he didn’t want her in his future. He wanted her now, on her back.
“Everything is too complicated,” Cathy continued, the southern belle accent slipping into her voice. “You, and me, and school, and my family, and the whole fucking world. Stop. I want everything to stop for a few moments so I can catch my breath.”
Cathy sucked on her cigarette. She looked into the sky.
“Are you going back to school next year?” Johnny asked.
Cathy shrugged her shoulders. “My parents want me to graduate from high school, but I don’t know. What’s the point? The cook at Apache’s is this Egyptian guy. He’s got a degree in Engineering. He went to school in Moscow. He says the people there are lonely. Drowning their emptiness in vodka. The women laughed hysterically when he touched them.
The children bruised their knees on the cobblestone. Every night the men were passed out in the streets. He told me that you could hardly breathe with the desperation”
What the fuck does that mean? He drew on his cigarette. “I heard that you and Terry were an item after I left for college.” Cathy turned away. “Who told you that?”
“I just heard it. Well, is it true?”
Cathy bowed her head and moved slowly away from the car toward the edge of the lake. “What if it is? It’s not like we’re married.”
“I thought we had an arrangement.”
“You’re the one who said we could see other people,” Cathy responded, turning sharply around and looking at Johnny.
“Then it’s true,” Johnny cried.
“And you didn’t see anyone?” Cathy replied, her shoulders stiffening.
“That kid is such a slug,” Johnny said, his jaw clenching like a fist. “I’ll deal with that little motherfucker.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Cathy screamed at Johnny. “You will not touch Terry and he’s no slug. He’s real smart. He’s on the honor roll at Michael Power, which you never were and he writes stories. Interesting stories.” Cathy turned back to the lake. “He wrote this story about meeting God when he was a little kid.”
Johnny fell back on the hood of the car laughing. “God!”
“I liked it,” Cathy said.
“He’s just trying to get into your pants.”
“He doesn’t have to try,” Cathy responded angrily, walking down the beach toward the water.
“Wait a minute!” Johnny cried, following behind her. Grabbing Cathy’s arm, he swung her around.
“That hurts!” she cried.
“Have you been doing that little slug?”
Cathy pulled away.
“That’s my business,” she said, sucked deeply on her cigarette before flicking it into the water.
“You slut!” Johnny cried. He threw her onto the sand and began to undo his jeans. “You’re my girl!” I’m taking what’s mine.
Ginger Cookies
Detective Kelly knocked on the back door of the house at 36 Botfield Avenue. He waited. A moment later a middle-aged woman in a brown smock answered the door. He introduced himself and showed his badge.
“I rang the front buzzer,” he said.
“Oh.” The woman smiled. “That hasn’t worked for years. I keep telling Frank that we should get it fixed but he keeps putting me off. Something about a box being hidden behind the walls of our basement.” The woman explained that she was doing housework and invited the detective in for a cup of tea if he didn’t mind a little mess. He stepped inside the house and was escorted to a small kitchen. The woman put a kettle on the stove.
“Mrs. Gray,” the detective began. She insisted that he call her Ruth.
“I’m Sam,” he added.
Ruth smiled. “Sam. That’s a lovely name. We had a dog once named Sam. A collie.”
“I was hoping that I could talk to your husband.” Mrs. Gray explained that her husband was visiting their daughter that afternoon. He cut her grass. It kept him busy now that he was retired.
“Do you have any other children?” he asked.
“A son. We lost him when he was a child.”
“I’m sorry, Ruth.”
“That was a long time ago, Sam.” She smiled, though he detected a break in her voice as she spoke. “He was always rebellious. The police said that he would return but he never did. I know that we weren’t to blame but I can’t help wondering if there wasn’t something I could have done, something I could have said. You don’t have any word on him, do you, Sam?”
The detective shook his head. “How old was your son when he disappeared?”
“Nineteen.”
The kettle whistled. Ruth got up and filled the teapot. She placed two cups on the table and then brought out a plate of cookies. Kelly took one of the cookies. It was stale.
“I hope they’re not stale. Frank buys them. Always trying to cut corners. It’s not easy since Frank retired, making ends meet. Thirty years as an accountant. Most of our savings were used up trying to find Johnny. He would be in his forties now. It’s hard to believe.”
“You must have married young,” the detective said with a smile.
Ruth blushed. “Yes, I was. Eighteen years old when Johnny was born.
We had to get married. Nothing to be proud of, but I never regretted it. If only we could live those days again. I would have done things differently.”
The detective nodded. “I guess we all would.”
“Frank’s not in any trouble, is he?” Ruth asked.
“No, Ruth,” the detective responded, shaking his head. He sipped at his tea then took another bite of his cookie. “I love stale cookies.” The woman smiled apprehensively.
The detective spoke. “We have a report, actually it’s quite an old report, about a man dying up the street. Heart attack. He was discovered by someone named Gray. The writing was pretty messy so I think it was Gray. Couldn’t make out the first name. I’m checking out all the Grays in the neighborhood.”
Ruth shook her head. “I can’t remember Frank mentioning anything.
But then he’s pretty quiet. Doesn’t tell me everything. I wish he told me more. Men keep too much inside. I read that in a magazine at the doctor’s office. The article said that it shortened their lives, keeping everything inside. Do you believe that, Sam?” Sam took out his pad and scribbled something down.
He looked up. “I don’t know, Ruth.”
“Do you talk to your wife about your work?” Ruth asked, then apologized. “I hope I’m not being too personal, Sam.” Sam smiled. “Not married.”
“Oh,” Ruth responded. “My, Sam, you don’t look like a bachelor.” Sam laughed.
“Frank and I were downtown on Saturday if that helps.” Ruth looked across the table at the detective.
“This happened years ago, Ruth,” Sam said.
“If this death happened so long ago, why are you looking into it now?”
“Doing it for a friend.” He smiled. “We like to think that every case can be solved.”
“I see. Does that mean that our Johnny’s file could be reopened?”
“Would you like me to look into it, Ruth? It’s not likely that I could find anything but I’ll have a look if you want.” Ruth shook her head. “No. I mean it’s terrible to say, but we went through so much at the time and over the years, I don’t think we could take that again. I pray that he’ll come home again some day on his own.” Ruth smiled, her voice weakening. “He’d just finished his first year of college. We had such plans for him. Frank was hoping that he’d get his CA and join him in the firm. Frank was working with a partner then. But Johnny hated school. I warned Frank about pushing him too hard. A boy needs time to sow his wild oats. Sometimes there would be fights.
Johnny always threatened to run off to California. He was going to be some Hollywood star. We looked there. Had a detective on the case for over a year. He didn’t find anything. I can never watch movies. I keep looking at the extras hoping to see Johnny’s face in a crowd. It’s put a hole in my heart. Do you know what that’s like, Sam? To have a void inside you that can never be filled?”
Gin
Jack leaned over the bar. “How are things going with your fella?” Mary smiled and flicked an ash off the cigarette that dangled in her fingers into the ashtray on the bar.
“Do I have mat written on my forehead?” Mary asked.
“That bad?” Jack emptied Mary’s ashtray and replaced it with a clean one.
Mary continued, “If I could write a book about everything I’ve learned about men over the years, I wouldn’t have a thing to say. You’d think some lesson would sink into my thick skull, but every time I meet a new guy, it’s like I’m falling in love with a new species. Hank must be the coldest fish in the sea. A girl likes to be romanced. A candlelight dinner.
Soft music. Slow dancing. Hank told me that modern romance was an industry. That’s what he called it-an industry. From movies to lipstick, restaurants to lingerie, chocolates to diet pills, the whole thing is about capital venture. What the hell is capital venture? Hank says that women have a fatalistic obsession with romantic delusions. What the hell does 89 that mean, Jack? The other night I made this pork tenderloin meal. It’s a recipe I learned from an Italian girlfriend. I have everything set up to se-duce him-soft music, good food, an expensive bottle of French wine, and candlelight. Hank arrives and the first thing he does is turn on the light. Tells me that he can’t enjoy his food unless he can see it. I’m in the mood for an evening of long caresses, wine, and passion. Once we’re in bed, it’s slam, bang, thank you ma’am, and he’s asleep. It’s the middle of the night and I’m left wide awake with nothing to do but watch television. Do you know how boring those infomercials are? I think I’ve seen every piece of exercise equipment in existence. Last night I watched the shopping network, women’s answer to pornography. I ended up spending fifty dollars on skin cream. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic.”
“You actually phoned in to one of those commercials?” Jack asked.
“I needed to talk to someone,” Mary responded, picking up her drink again and swallowing the remainder. She put down the glass and tapped the brim with her finger. Jack produced another gin and tonic.
“Do you know why I order gin?” Mary asked. “I probably told you but I’m going to tell you again because it always brings a smile to my face. I went to college. You didn’t know that, did you, Jack?” Jack shook his head.
“I had to quit after the first year. I was on probation and I just partied my way right out of school. I had this boyfriend and we broke up. Well, I’m never long without some man. I met this lovely long-haired red-headed guy. My ex labeled him puppy dog. He was like that, very sweet, following me around everywhere I went. He adored me. You can only take so much adoration. So I dumped him and went back to my old boyfriend. We were at a basketball game when my boyfriend spotted the red-head across the court. ‘There’s your puppy dog,’ he laughed. The red-head was sitting with a couple of his friends. He could hardly keep his head up he was so drunk. And then he looked up and our eyes met.
He stands up, and right in the middle of the game, he staggers across the court. The players all stop. The referee blows his whistle. Still, my puppy dog keeps advancing toward me. At the last moment, he passes out at my feet. You could smell the gin off him like it was a fellow traveler.” Mary took a sip of her drink and laughed.
“What happened to Puppy Dog, Mary?” Jack asked.
Mary shrugged. “Never heard from him again. But gin always reminds me of him. Every time I walk into a party and smell gin, I look around for him. God, he was a sweet guy. But that was a long time ago.
He’s probably bald, fat, married with kids, and incredibly happy. Or maybe he’s dead. Funny how people that were so important in your life just disappear.”
“You ever think of looking him up, Mary?”
Mary shook her head.
“Why not?” Jack asked.
Mary looked up at Jack and smiled. “What if he still adored me? What would I do with him? Or worse, what if he didn’t remember me? What if I no longer existed in his memories?”
Mary took a tissue out of her purse and wiped her eyes. She looked up at Jack. There were tears in her eyes. “What happens to us, Jack? Why do we end up so fucked up? What happened to all the sweetness in life?” There was silence for some time. Jack polished the top of the bar. Mary sat staring into her drink, smoke from her cigarette curling up toward the ceiling.
“Maybe you should go home, Mary,” Jack said kindly.
Mary looked up at Jack, her makeup streaked with tears.
“Home? A tiny little hole in the wall with a kid that hates me. Jack, sometimes I feel as if I don’t exist. Like the young girl that was me, filled with promise and dreams, walked out of my life one evening and never returned, leaving a lonely middle-aged woman behind…I hate feeling like this. I watched a show the other night, when Hank passed out on me, on black holes. You ever heard of them, Jack?” Jack shook his head. The door of the bar opened and a couple stepped in. Jack moved off to serve them. Staring into her drink, Mary didn’t notice his absence.
“There are these holes in space that suck everything in. Nothing escapes them. I got one of those black holes inside me. It’s sucking my life away.”
Mary looked up and then around the bar. Jack was in the corner serving his new customers.
“God, I hate gin,” she muttered, dropped her cigarette in the glass, and left.
Montgomery Inn
Hank looked around the old inn, now preserved for future generations as a museum.
“Can I help you, sir?” a young woman asked.
Hank looked down at the young girl, her long red hair framing a generous smile.
“A beer?” he said.
Before the girl could explain that the inn was no longer an operating tavern, Hank asked, “So this is where the Rebellion of 1837 began?”
“Yes, sir.” The girl nodded.
“Hard to imagine that this neighborhood gave birth to revolution,” Hank said.
The girl looked puzzled.
“The Kingsway being rich and privileged,” Hank explained. “Not exactly a womb of discontent.”
The girl shuffled uncomfortably. Hank grinned. Don’t they teach history in school anymore?
“I’m looking for some records,” he said. “Births, deaths, crimes. That sort of thing.”
“I don’t think we have anything like that,” the girl responded. “I could ask Mr. Grant. He’s sort of an amateur historian. Maybe he could help you. Was there something in particular you were interested in?”
“Missing persons,” Hank said with a smile. “I’m looking for stories about citizens who have disappeared.”
“I don’t understand, sir. Why would you be looking for missing persons?”
“Don’t you think it’s about time someone found them?” The girl smiled, puzzled.
“Can I speak to Mr. Grant?”
“He’s not in.”
“When will he be in?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s on holidays.”
“Will he ever return?”
The girl laughed. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he return?”