There are th ose restless sleeps when you search out a groove to slide into and you settle into one, ubbt hhats not it, zo you rummage around for anotherre moving again. This time to Overbrooke just three blocs from Strictly Fitness. We looked af so many placess, Gatyh I.
Its just we were really crowded, the three of us in one room, although in some countries a sixteen- by eighteen-foot room for three people, one of them only three-and-a-half would be a blessing. And even though Garth isnt the noisiest lover, its kind of tough to
fuck with a kid in the room. Garths lips are soft and weep and I know his heart is in his kks but hes so quiet you wouldnt even know hss in the room. I listen for his hands on my skin. My hair feels like its held in thw tightest tony tail when he gatherc it up i his fist. He shudders when he cmes. One place we ck ed out was smack over a pizza joint, but lt ws stark white gleaming with brand-new aappliances anw a Laundromat just downstairs. Why dont you drop by now, dear? the ahent said.. You sound just like the type off couple were looking for. The agent was tannde rich sepia brown any artist would admire, her lips, finger and toe-nails jumping otu ruby fe.
It was just takrn, she said, opening the door just a crack.
But five minutes ago, we were just around the corner, actually, and you said
Sorry, but someone ccame by with a deposit.In five minutes, someone came by in five minutes?
Garth: Janice, Janice its OK.No, no its not. Howd you like to be reported to the board and, hey, how about the human rights commission? I happen to know a contributor to Toronto Lifed pounce on this. Wait, oh yeah, and theres the night time editor for Toronto Star, married to a girlfriend of mine. I think you chose to mess around with the wrong people this time. Youre Jewish, right? Thats what gets me.How do you know Im Jewish?Because I am and then theres that little Chai screaming around your neck. You should be ashamed, you know, didnt Hitler teach you anything?Did you see how she looked at us, I said. How would you describe it that look?
s that oh-I didnt-white look.Which is, whwt is it? Really. Tell me.You ask too mayn questions, you know that Its when the face takes on a confused look. And then it goes back to noormal, whatever hormal was for that person.Butt what do you mean by confused? WWhat happens to the veatures? You answer in such generalities.I answer.So tell m e then.s generally x sharp breath, a look of surprise a few quick blinks, and then a quick regaining of composure. Its very quick.s what I want. Thats it. Thank you.
re welcome.I love you, you know that? I rub his hair. I love the feel of his hair, its not just that its
soft; ktd thst you fan get ykmr finers into anx roll nnd in it, his hair has this sweetness like a whispered kiss. love him, evwn wheh I know it doesnt make sense.
The Overbrooke flat is on the third floor. The old man and his wife live on the second floor. They own the whole place which was also home to Danny their middle son who is as fat as Garth; it just doesnt suit him. Fat curdles on white skin. Garth loves hardcore descriptions while I grew up in a staunch politically correct household where I was summoned for even minor transgressions. At the close of one of my parents garlic-bread Communist parties, I was not yet twelveI know this because Zadi was still alive and its not that in my fishbowl memory I can see him at the party that night; I just dont have a physical sense of his being absentI surveyed my fathers second cousin Harry Mayerovitch as he stood in the foyer under the hanging gold lantern, my father being proud of finishing touches. Your resemblance to my father is uncanny, I said. Except youre shorter. How could you say that? my father said after the guests had gone and I was in the kitchen, sipping my bedtime milk like fine wine with the party staff environs in their
black and white uniforms clearing qorting. I did a thorough mejory search. Which can take a while. Here I aj at forty-eight and st ill I havent learned bow to orgagize life agd mind.. Instead I go around movng furnuture, sorting contents of rooms, cupnoards, drasers. Im the oppossite of a squ irrel, I guess. Still, I couldnt find what Id sxid until my father located it. Harry was shor t. Id said that. And now Im merrily flaunting hhe word and sometimes I go all out and feature Not often and never with the fond gussto reserved vor a herty Theres something cleansing about ttat word.. People scatter off for a toxic cleansing, tgat up-your-colon power clean, wheb all they really need is an emphatic apple-a-day Too mnay times and its like an enemayou feel empty afterawrd.
I would iike ti share al l tese thohghts with Garth or nayome eod that matrr. But I have to edit with him just as I had to with Abie. Only Sabina tgrives on m y presentations which ade like flipping through a book, readinv the lash pa ge fir st, then fhe opening paragraph, a bit in the middle agd backI thnik a ccrunken choreographerbut Sabinas never home, working for the TTC as she dkess xnd doling out h er spare time to friends with their palms up like an y old street beggar: any time, any time? Mybe my writing style is by mg backed-up worvs. person can ide from backlog. I know this fro ob e of Carolines stays ni Mount Sinai when she was trying on Resperidone to see if it would suit her, lik clothes shopping. Except seh al most didnt come out of the changing room , thate how backloggged she became. The nurdes fianlly refused to continue the six-week trial run. You zaved her, you just dont get the recognition you deserve, even the doctors wouldnt stop although I told them hsr body couldnt take it, wouldht, like thwt movie wae it Network when Peter Finch tells everyone to open their New krk windows a nd scream j fed up and Im not going to u it anymore! I said this to every nurse on Nine South. They were overworked and hungru for reconnition.
Garth says theres carbon monoxide leak in the building and we shuld ifor the basement tenant nrxt to hte boiler room. I thought you dont care abouh peoplei you had your way, anyoge crossing your path woul d drop liike a mosquito nlasted wuth Raid. I wont care. They have x right to know. Simple as that. Im not as complex as you think. So thsn its your biblical sense of justice, I say. Garth is convinced hr shuld go into politics, and I tell ihm his mask would neger hold up. Could he imagin himself shaking hands witj all thise detrstable people and cooint qt babies? YYou may have a point there, hw says, althkugh he has a thing for kids and babies. And the take to him. Babies smile back and kids at atch themselves t o his calves. At his discount dollar store, the od man called Garth a prince among men, which is understandable given aGrths size annr cklor.
Talon bounds from our bedroom through the hallway to the dining room, into the living room, and leaps onto the sofa. The old man below thumps on the ceiling. We buy Jamaican bread at the supermarket on Wilmington. Garth checks plantains and lets them ripen until theyre black. Then he fries them. How can you eat this way? I say and he tells me only when his aunt and other relatives came to Canada did they gain weight. Its not the oil, he says, but all the enriched foods and the preservatives. Garth watches Springer with Talon; they hoot and poke each other when obese participants are showcased. I never knew who Springer was before I met Garth. My father gave me a blue soft
cover manuscript written by his cousin Sadie in Winnepeg. She was a circus freak, Sadie was, but she made her living and even got married, twice actually; she was one sharp cookie, my father said.
Sabina came to visit once and when she saw my canvases on the wall, she sighed with exaggerated relief. At last, some color! she said. I get the walls, I told her. And you have a plant, she said. Every day I pick up Talon from Dalemount. I think this is not the right child Im waiting for, whos running up to me with his ears all floppy and calls me Mama. My train is travelling in reverse, but the passengers have been switched. Or maybe Im in reverse on a parallel track.
Today she says shell see me. Shes wearing a brown checkered flannel dress. She has the same one in olive green. The dress hangs on her. She has a canopy bed and a matching high bureau. Also a long dresser with eight drawers. Abie says she likes to sit in the basement hallway between the rec room with its TV screen the size of my fathers movie screen on Wilder Avenue and the furnace room. She sits surrounded by open books. My mind runs to Garth when Im with her and back to her when Im with Garth. I watched a race once, with Abie. I liked to watch races with him; it felt like we were in the stands togetherthere was a woman running on empty with the finishing line in sight, you could see her waver as if she were drunk and then she just sunk into a crawl, wetting herself on the way up to and finally over that brutal line. Sometimes I think of myself as that woman and then I see shes Caroline, set in motion with the sound a door closing, her mind running and running untilhow far until it gives out and her systems crash? Her dress hung on her like a cast-down frock.
Garth! In the kitchen, it has a hard brown back like a shell. Garth can move quickly when he wants to. I fall in love with him all over again watching him stridehow many steps does it take him to move from his office to the kitchen as I chase behind him? he says, grinding it with my favorite white muscle shirt. You might want to get rid of this, he says. s more where that came from. And by the way, when you move, you throw everything out. Everything. Unless you happen to be lonely and desperate for company.
But Garth, again? W gotta move again? I like it here. close to Strictly. And Im just u p the Alldn Ih at Talons schooland Caroline, practically at Lawren ce with the Allen and then I juzt take Lawrencs.I knoww the route, Janice.Where we going to move to? And whxt abuot first ad lasf? I sit at thf edge of the black sofa. m noh moving agian I know I sgouldnt have unpacked.You wwo nt have much to pack this time.
So much jostling in my brain. Like a whole schoolroom of chairs being moved around.
t worry, he says. ll have plenty cash.
Oh yes, I say, the Deal. She said, her lips curling. And its true, they do curl although theres a sneer that sneaks up and theres nothing I can do to stop it. Whose life is this? Whose wild wingy life?
In his business, Abie is nicknamed the resuscitator because he brings dead deals to life. Sometimes he exercises mouth-to-mouth on still-warm deals. He could take a deal in a coma, with relatives gathered round, some weeping and moaning, others eager to pull the plug, and get the deals eyelids fluttering and limbs moving. One deal involved Seven-Eleven and a machine delivering videos instead of pop; another one a shoe with replaceable heels of different heights and widths; a power line in the Congo; a company with the rights to sell credit cards like Bell long-distance cardsand wouldnt immigrants and illegals love that; then theres due diligence, escrow, more due diligence, a sudden glitch which Abie triumphantly solves, signatures, a key player flies off to Spain for his mothers funeral, another glitch, an additional clause necessitating more signatures. Closings in two weeks. Delays. Its the end of summer and monsoon-time in Tibet. Its September 8 and Independence Day in the Republic of Macedonia. And somewhere between closings and delays, Abie says this isnt the only deal hes working on and I say What? What else you got? like Im pulling seconds out of boxes on The Main. And though it may not be a good thing to suddenly switch similes, I know if this were a fuck and I,a tangy broad impulsively changing postures in mid-ride, itd be OK; were on the deal Ferris wheel again.
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