Blasted (45 page)

God, I was dry. I raced to get to the bar, to have a couple more drinks before my friends The Watchmen got there. The world tilted around me, my back prickled, my breath came short and fast. The bar was halfway across town. Streetlights blurred past me; cars swerved, the drivers full of the wildness of the night, just like me. The streets went on and on, endlessly stretching out before me, faces of pedestrians and drivers like ghosts in the seething night-riding light. Pale faces, holes for eyes and mouths. My palms were slick with sweat and I glanced down, adjusting my grip. My hands looked like grey claws on the handles of the motorcycle. I remembered Patrick, that boy of mine from so long ago, his dark hair and pale Irish skin. The way he drove. I remembered that, his hands careless on the blood-red wheel of his car. Not like my father's driving, always so careful, suspicious of the magic that made a mechanical thing run. My mother had driven that night, not him. So why had she been belted into the passenger seat when they found them, crushed where she sat? The driver's seat empty; he'd been thrown from the car, quite a long way, I think, hardly a blemish on him, one shoe missing. They never found it. A car blared its horn, swerving, and I just managed to miss it, the hot breath of it on my body where I'd almost drifted into the oncoming lane. Even the roar of the engine wasn't enough; voices filled my ears, thousands, millions, all around me, invisible twiggy hands clutching and pulling at me, light grey streaking past my face. The fighting had gotten worse and worse leading up to it. I remembered my mother sobbing,
You're not the man I married
, and my father just looking at her, hands dangling at his sides like he'd forgotten the use of them; then, when she ran at him (to hit or shake or simply cry) he'd grip her body, throwing her from him, just as impersonally. Like he didn't own those hands, like his whole body was a stranger to him.

I almost rode past the bar without seeing it, then swerved so sharply I nearly went over, screeching up an alley lined by abandoned warehouses. As I killed the engine a flock of pigeons startled from under me, their wings snapping in my face like old bones. They clustered back around my feet and I lashed out at them with my foot, kicking the bundles of feathers away from me, something light tossing up under my boot. In the flurry of wings I almost dropped the bike. Getting her upright and the kickstand under her, my foot crunched on something soft and crackling. I slipped, I looked down. A pigeon. I'd crushed a bloody pigeon.

The wings spread on either side of its broken body, darkness of sticky gore oozing out. Why the hell did it get under my fucking foot? It was an omen. I threw my helmet down into the shadows, my cheeks were wet. Save it? Save the gore in a jar, coming out in a dirty porcelain bathtub, someone's hands. Save it. There was a dumpster in the alley; I reeled down and tore at a garbage bag, its stinking contents falling away. I took the bag back to the murdered bird. It wasn't easy, it was crushed, I couldn't get it all, the wings flailed and hung, broken, I didn't want its blood on my fingers. I took it back to the dumpster and tossed it inside, then leaned over and threw up.

The bar for the after-party was around the corner. I told the door guy my name, he checked me off a list, I slid inside. Something about the crowd, the noise wasn't right, but I didn't stop to wonder at it. I slammed straight through the bathroom door and almost took out two giggling girls. “Sorry!” one of them said sarcastically, but I ploughed on through, shoved my head into the rusty sink, rinsed my mouth under the tap. The water tasted sweet on my acrid tongue. I could hear Tad's band playing. Sonic Rival was a punk-Celtic fusion, been at it for years and achieved something of cult status in the city. It didn't hurt that the three guys and two women in the band were gorgeous. Tad was the singer, taking his turn at mandolin, electric guitar. Somebody or something was wailing tonight, ululating grief even through the bathroom door. Another chick burst through, catching me standing there with the tap going full blast and the water dripping off my chin. The wailing pierced the echoing room. I looked in the mirror. My eyes were so black they reflected nothing, obsidian pools in the greyness of my face. My hair twisted into braids. I bared my teeth at my reflection, then left to get a beer.

Only after downing half a pint did I look around the seething bar for my friends. It was too packed, people too wild, it was only about eight or nine o'clock for Christ's sake. And the band – I could see them up on the little stage, sweating and playing like madmen – drunk, climaxed, ecstatic. The floor before the stage blocked with dancers. Tad was bent over a mic and blowing into something – and that was the wailing noise, a pitched keening that went right through me – a strange small clay blob with little holes, like a squat and ancient god. It responded to his breath almost like a human voice, haunted – a woman sobbing, a flute in a marble courtyard, a bird, a piercing shriek. Sometimes he blew into it, sometimes he struck it over the finger holes like a percussion instrument. I squinted through smoke and bodies and red light until I spotted the table with my crowd at it: Blue was there, and Gil, Judith, Brendan, Steve with Honey draped over his arm. I shoved my way through people to the table, and squeezed in next to Steve.

“Not like you to get to a party early,” I said; Steve was famous for arriving just as the host was hoping to go to bed.

He gestured at my pint, scowling. “What's that?”

“This, my tar-bending friend, is a BEER,” I shouted over the noise. “Beer, meet Steve. Steve, beer.” I toasted him and swallowed some more. Honey shrank away from me, and Steve crossed his muscled arms over his chest. “So, why are you here so early?” I persisted. Fuck Steve and his moralizing anyway.

He leaned back, shaking his head. “Ruby, it's almost last call.”

“Fuck off.”

“Scout's honour.”

I grabbed Gil's arm, seeing a watch on his pale wrist. It was ten to two. I had apparently taken hours to ride from Christie Pits, a distance of maybe five miles.

I got up to get another drink, leaving the table of my friends like they burned me. I leaned against the bar and drank. A stand-up bass was thrumming like a slow heartbeat through the room. The dancers swayed like grass. Tad was singing a fucked-up version of one of the band's best-loved songs. It took me a while to recognize it, and when I did my guts went cold; it was a song of obsession, possession, and Tad sang it slow.

When you told me that you had to leave the house Well I thought that I was over, I thought that I was over Never mind the years spent loving all these things My heart was sinking down in my red shoes.

And you...

The
you
was a long, descending cry, a wail. It came from the raw places of the heart. Tad's voice was hoarse, his throat, his face streaming sweat. His guitar wailed, the drums beat, the band screamed the lyrics like they were going to swallow the mics.
And you...
I felt as though my heart was breaking.
And you.

…
And the stars were singing out in the darkness like they often do My heart was sinking down in my red shoes.

Simple words as though taken from the pages of a journal, a scribbled cry made flesh, a heart throbbing in front of us.
You told me that you had to leave
, like my father, my father.

And you, and you, and you, and you...

The song ended. I was in a drunken miasma, surrounded by drunks.

The band was leaving the stage, the party was over. Harsh overhead lights. Someone was shouting at me, grinning, pulling me by my arm, and I followed – it was Gil, taking me back to the table. A round of shots. People talking like they were underwater, Judith saying something about the wedding, she was smiling. I was supposed to apologize to her for something but I couldn't remember what. There was blood on my boots. I looked down and hoisted my leg up onto the table. Into the light. Yes, blood on my boot, wasn't it? A gory blob, two pathetic bloodied feathers.

“I've always hated them,” my voice clear in sudden quiet. “Goddamn. On the Arterial. Roosting over the house, on that bridge. Killed my parents.” “You killed your
parents
?” Honey said.

“Killed a pigeon.” She didn't look like she understood, so I took my smeared boot off the table and leaned close to her face. I stomped my foot on the floor. “Killed a
pigeon
. A
bird
. Crushed it with my
foot
, you stupid little thing.”

Someone was talking, someone else was talking, and Brendan leaned into me, in my face, one hand gripping my shoulder, saying didn't I want to leave now?

“No, I do not want to fucking leave now. I want another fucking beer.” But still he was there, trying to haul me up onto my feet. Rage filled me. I stood, lurched, nearly knocking the table over – Blue stopped the whole thing from toppling – and I fell against Brendan.

“Come on, sweet, let's go home,” he said in my ear. I spun around, shoving him away from me, as hard as I could.

He staggered back, his face suddenly old, surprise written all over him. And then they were all leaving – Judith, looking sad in a way that made me want to slap her, Tad. Brendan, I couldn't see his face. I told the rest of them – Blue, Gil – to fuck off. Told them until they did.

I was still sitting alone at the table, staring at my boot, when a bartender told me the place was closed. He was shaking my shoulder, actually. “Hey, time to leave. Closing time. Good-bye.”

“Time to leave?” I looked around. “Where're my friends?”

“They left you here, baby. Time to go home.”

I started to stand, supporting myself on the table with one hand in what I hoped was a surreptitious manner. “Where I come from,” I informed him, “last call is last call.”

“And in this bar,” he replied, “last call was an hour ago. It's three a.m., baby.”

“Don' call me baby.”

“Out. Now.”

“Where I come from...”

He called to the bar. “I need a hand here.”

I raised my voice. “Where I come from...”

“Yeah, yeah, where are you from?” I was moving toward the door suspended between two bartenders, my feet barely touching the floor.

“I am,” I informed them both, “a Newfoundlander.”

“Oh, a Newfie!” He dropped into the Lucky Charms shout that seems to afflict certain mainlanders when confronted with someone from the Island. “A Newfie, eh? We got ourselves a Newfie! Now how are we today, eh, b'y?”

We'd reached the doors, and I realized they were speeding up, going to use my body as a battering ram to open the door. I went limp in their arms, and just as we reached the doors I reared up. “I'll give you a fucking Newfie!” I wrenched out of their hold and punched the talker in his face with all the force of my body.

He reeled around. I smashed out the door and fell onto my hands and knees on the sidewalk. I scrambled to my feet, feeling rather than hearing the men coming after me, their anger, my fear. I ran. I heard the feet behind me, then a voice, “Aw, let her go,” and, yelled after me, “Fuckin' bitch!”

I found my bike. “I did it for you, baby, I did it for you,” I murmured. I had trouble getting on her and then when I tried to start her, she stalled. She stalled again. “Go!” I screamed, and she did.

Wind roared and rushed in my ears. The wind stretched my face, streaming past me like cold water. The screaming, angry voices and rough hands, a woman's sobbing more vivid than the streets over which I rode. Shadows flickered all through my translucent, flimsy body, dark fingers reached from earth for me, raking through me.

I left King Street behind. Streets with yellow branches of chestnut trees dripping down, lit by electric lamps within the leaves, glowing obscenely like yellow pods, swollen chrysali. My father took off his ring to go, to
go
. They don't have children, not like us, they build them or make them or invoke them. That body with its one shoe, his body in the coffin himself again, but so young they all said, look how young Neil looks, he's happy now. Black spots blanked out parts of my vision and then swam away; arcs of light and sparkle shot and burst from behind my eyes, my breath came shallow. Rain was pelting down, hitting my face, the wind in my hair, painful, dangerous. Rain making the streets slick.

I knew this, had known it all my life, surrounded by wings and gibbering voices I couldn't get clear of. They showed me what was in my blood, powerfully pulsing in my body. The lost one. My grandfather's towering rage, my grandmother small and round and immovable, round squat woman, cool as clay, standing between the child and the door. Isn't that what you do? To test them. They'll come and take one of theirs home, changeling, double, if you threaten to drown or burn its life away. Rain stung my face like silver arrows, mingling with the hot tears that trekked back into my ears with the force of my riding. Grandpa and his sister, forcing his son off the bridge into the cold water, half-salt, half-fresh.
As long as you leave her with us, we'll pull you in...
Somewhere underground a horrible half-thing, my father made of straw, of clay, playing at being human but old now, coming apart at the seams, and next to it a girl, but I couldn't see who she was. And behind them an old woman, who? like me, maybe, like me?
As long as you leave them with us, we'll pull you in.
If I rode fast enough I could push through. Light flickered around the edges of my vision, red. If I rode fast enough ——

CHAPTER 33