Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
The three of us
went to a lot of gigs together in first year, before I moved in with Bastien,
but much fewer later on. Katie gets so hyper at concerts that she’s practically
a different person. She argues with security, dances like a maniac and has been
known to get carried away socializing with other fans of the band, giving her
cell number to one guy who stalked her over the phone for two months, and
making out with another who gave her a beard rash and then never called. It
seems like a lot to be up for and I carefully weigh my options—the concert will
be loud and high energy but is days away. If I say I’ll go I won’t have to do a
thing all day tomorrow.
“I guess I can
go,” I say. “It’d be good to catch up with Katie too—I haven’t seen her in
ages.” I can’t blame her for losing touch; not many people will continue
calling someone who doesn’t call them back. “I just hope she doesn’t get too
frenzied.”
“I don’t think
she’s a total diehard Vintage Savages fan or anything so she could be okay,”
Yunhee offers. “But we can always spike her drink with Valium.”
“Hmm, yeah.”
It’s generally true that the more excited about a band Katie is the wilder she
acts.
“Seriously,
though,” Yunhee says, “if you’re not into the gig idea we can always meet up
for lunch together tomorrow instead.”
I tell Yunhee
I’ll make Katie happy and hit the Vintage Savages concert with them both, and
Yunhee says I can sleep over at her place that night along with Katie, if I
like. Already I’m thinking that I’d prefer come to back here afterwards. I hope
the train to Oakville runs late.
With major
upcoming dental work, future shifts at O’Keefe’s and a rock concert in the
cards, I feel claustrophobic, like there’s not enough time to actively
concentrate on Bastien, despite having a full day to myself on Thursday. As a
result, I’m quiet at work on Friday and Marta asks if I’m all right.
“I’m fine,” I
say as I rip open a new box of Cadbury Flakes to put on the shelf. “Just tired.
I was at the endodontist earlier and had my jaw open for so long that I thought
it might lock.” A convenient lie. She has no way of knowing I went for the
consultation on Wednesday.
“Ah,” Marta
says. She’s standing behind the counter, next to the cash register, and I watch
her eyes drift over to the nook where I’ve laid
The Handmaid’s Tale
. “So
when are they doing your root canal?”
“Two weeks from
this past Wednesday.” I wander back to the counter, straightening packages and
boxes as I go. “Then I have to go back to the dentist and get a crown.”
Marta nods. “And
how’s it going with Margaret?” she asks thoughtfully.
I’m about to
explain the bizarrely random way I’ve been reading the book when Kevin saunters
into the store wearing his baseball hat cocked to one side. As far as I’m
concerned that looks even more ridiculous than wearing it backwards, but at
least Kevin is chatty, which means I don’t need to be. Today he tells me about
the holiday he had in England with his parents last year and gives a rundown of
the different lingo they use for things—
handbag
for purse,
chemist
for drugstore or pharmacy,
Sellotape
for Scotch tape,
car park
for parking lot and so on and so forth. His impression is that it’s a lot more
fun on the other side of the pond and that young people have more freedom, but
he doesn’t elaborate about that, possibly because Marta’s within earshot.
Mostly Kevin
reminds me how young fifteen really is. I sort of miss him the next day,
though. Marta says he’ll still be doing occasional shifts, probably once a week
or so, but not as many now that I’m here to take over. Simon and Louise, who I
remember from the day I spotted the help wanted sign, drop in to buy salmon
spread, mushy peas and something called ‘Chef Sauce.’ Simon seems to wants to
wrestle my life story out of me, asks what I did before, whether my parents are
from Britain or Ireland and what I do when I’m not at work.
Louise elbows
Simon, sensing my discomfort, and says, “Don’t mind him, he loves poking his
nose into other people’s business.”
I smile, glad to
have been saved, and drop Simon and Louise’s purchases into a paper bag. They
depart knowing only that my grandmother on my mother’s side was from Birmingham
but emigrated to Canada with her parents when she was six and that I’m “taking
a break” from school for a while. This is the line I’ll offer everyone who asks
from now on, I suppose. I don’t want Bastien’s death dragged into a
conversation with people I’ve just met. If customers want to talk to me they’ll
have to be content with the weather as our chief topic.
After tomorrow
I’ll be manning the store alone on Sundays and for several hours on Friday and
Saturday evenings, so during a lull in business Marta says she might as well
give me a chance to get used to it and disappears down to Second Cup for a
coffee break. While she’s gone a teenage couple meanders through the store
examining chocolate bars and crisps (the British and Irish version of potato
chips). After a few minutes the girl dumps a collection of chocolate bars—Curly
Wurly, Wispa, Lion, Double Decker—and three packages of Walker’s cheese and
onion crisps on the counter.
“I really have
to try these,” I comment as I slide the crisps into a bag for her. “They seem
pretty popular.”
“Are they?” the
girl asks in an accent as North American as mine. “That’s cool. My sister moved
back from London a couple of months ago and she keeps saying how much she
misses all the English junk food so, hey, is there anything else that’s really popular
I should get her?”
My eyes scan the
shelves as I try to recall items I’ve seen people buy. “Do you know if she
likes Penguins or Club Bars? They’re, like, crunchy biscuit things covered in
chocolate.”
I edge out from
behind the counter and pick a package of each of them up from the shelf so the
girl can do a visual comparison. She wants to know which of them are better and
I fib and say they’re both good, although I’ve never tried either of them.
Her boyfriend
says, “Get the orange ones. Orange and chocolate’s a good combo.”
She takes his
advice and buys the Club Orange bars along with the crisps and chocolate. Just
as they’re leaving, Liam strides in. I don’t know why it surprises me to see
him here; obviously he spends a lot of time in downtown Oakville and as an
Irish person he clearly fits the customer profile.
Liam’s wearing a
white shirt under an unzipped leather jacket, the blueness of his eyes muted by
O’Keefe’s bland lighting in combination with a cloudy sky which isn’t lending
the room much radiance, and when he notices me behind the counter I can tell
he’s taken aback too, probably because of his information overshare the last
time we ran into each other. He recovers quickly though—either flexing his
acting muscles or deciding the slip doesn’t matter in the scheme of
things—fixing a smile on his face as he approaches the counter.
“Hey, Liam,” I
say casually. I remember my promise not to bring up any of the details he
confided at the café and intend to stick with it. Hopefully he’ll be as
circumspect about what I told him.
“Hiya, Leah,” he
says in that lyrical voice of his. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Only for the
past week and a bit.”
He plants both
his hands on the counter and nods. “The foot’s grand, I see.”
“Totally fine.
But you wouldn’t believe it, now I need a root canal. So maybe the ankle
would’ve been better. Cheaper at least.”
Liam winces in
sympathy. “Are you in a lot of pain then?”
“Not since I
filled the prescription,” I joke.
“So The Verve
were wrong—the drugs do work,” he quips.
I smile.
“Temporarily, at least.” I really don’t know what else to say to him. The
weather seems like a disingenuous topic considering what we revealed of
ourselves last time.
“Anyway…” Liam
cocks his head at the shelves. “Better grab what I came for before I have to
head off to the theater.”
“The theater?” I
lean over the counter in the same moment that he pulls back.
“Ah, yeah, I’m
doing a play while I’m over here.” His hands dive into his jacket pockets.
“With a theater company in Toronto. An Irish play. It just opened this week.”
“That’s great.”
I nod approvingly. “Kind of a commute though.” Plenty of people travel to
Toronto for work every day and it’s not a long drive; just kind of strange that
after coming all the way from Ireland Liam would decide to stay in Oakville
while working in the city.
“It’s not too
bad, but you know…” He shrugs with his hands still buried in his pockets. “This
seemed like a better place to keep a low profile and a friend of a friend had a
place I could rent.”
“It’s quieter
than Toronto, that’s for sure. Definitely a good place to keep a low profile.”
I know that firsthand. “Anyway, I don’t want to make you late. Just let me know
if you need any help.”
I grab my copy
of
The Handmaid’s Tale
from the nook behind the counter and plop my ass
down onto the tall wooden stool Marta keeps back there. It’s uncomfortable but
better than standing for four or five hours at a time.
A couple of
minutes later Liam’s standing back in front of me, setting down a package each
of Bourbon cream cookies and Barry’s tea for me to ring up. I put Offred’s
story down and approach the counter.
“Is it better
than the tea we have over here?” I ask, holding up the package of Barry’s.
Liam flashes me
a comical
what do you think?
look. “I don’t want to mess with any of
your national delusions, Leah, but I’m Irish, we take our tea very seriously.
And these”—he scoops the cookies into his hand—“are the very best biscuits to
go with the tea. The perfect combination while you’re reading the newspaper or
sitting in front of the telly.”
“I’m not a big
tea person so I’ll have to take your word for it.” I ring up the items and
quote his total.
Liam hands me a
crisp twenty dollar bill. As I hand over his change he says, “All the best with
the root canal.” His eyes spark with a flash of inspiration. “Wait.” He turns,
zips back to the shelf and picks up a second package of Bourbon Creams. “Here.”
He sets them on the counter along with a five dollar bill. “For when you’re
better. Trust me, you’ll love them.”
“O-kay.” I
give Liam his change a second time, feeling oddly touched. Sure they’re only
cookies, but people don’t buy you cookies out of the blue every day. No wonder
his co-star and sister’s friend fell into bed with him. If he’s going to walk
around looking like that
and
buy cookies for girls, a high percentage of
them are bound to aspire to crawl between the sheets with him. An ocean away his
fiancée must be kicking herself. “Thanks,” I add. “I can’t wait to try them.”
At home later
I’m tempted to rip into the package and not wait for my root canal. What keeps
me from opening the cookies is that Liam said they were for when I was better.
If Bastien were here I’d let him have one now, though, to prove the cookies
don’t mean a thing…and they don’t. It’s only human to be happy when someone’s
nice to you, and only human to notice attractive people too.
I store the
cookies in the cupboard next to my ground coffee and I wait.
I haven’t been to Toronto in
three months but it feels like longer when I arrive in Union Station on the GO
Train late Tuesday afternoon to meet up with Yunhee and Katie. The crowd moves
at the speed of light.
Stand. Detrain. Downtairs. Left. Right. Full steam
ahead.
Everyone else seems as if they were born knowing which way to go,
but while I used to take the TTC almost every day, I never needed to jump on
the commuter train and feel like a novice amongst the suburban travelers who
morph into urbanites the second their soles hit Toronto concrete.
I feel more at
home as I leave the station and turn onto Front Street. I imagine Bastien’s
excitement at being back downtown, as though he’s been trapped in quiet, leafy
Oakville with me since the end of June. If he were here we’d hop on the subway
and get off at Bathurst station so he could stock up on graphic novels and
comic books at The Beguiling. All the staff there knew him by name and it
occurs to me, for the first time, that maybe they don’t know what happened to
him, why he stopped coming in. Knowing how fond Bastien was of the place, I’d
like to go there sometime, but I’m afraid. I don’t want to be the one to break
the bad news to the guys who work there.
In my alternate
universe day in the city with Bastien we’d probably wander through Honest Ed’s
together after we’d finished at The Beguiling. An entire city block devoted to
a single hulking discount shop, the mutant-sized Honest Ed’s horrified and
fascinated us in equal amounts. We could never resist stopping in to buy cheap
kitchen gadgets or packaged food from the basement level. Nearer to our old
apartment we’d be similarly helpless to resist the cupcake shop for a snack,
and later The Caribbean Bistro, where Bastien would devour the jerk chicken
with cooked cabbage plus rice and beans on the side and I would order the mixed
vegetable roti.
I’d taste the
flavor of his food on his tongue when we kissed, our mouths hot with spices.
Lately I dream about us like that in my sleep. Sweet dreams as well as raunchy
ones. I miss every inch of him but when I’m awake the longing’s more emotional
than physical. In my sleep I become a wild thing.
“I know what you
want,” Bastien whispers suggestively inside my head. And that’s how my
alternate universe day would end, with those words like sugar on his lips. Us
alone somewhere, Bastien nimbly unbuttoning my jeans, sliding them down my
legs. Panties too. Bastien burying his face in me as I spread my legs for him.
Bastien’s tongue filling me in. Bastien’s cock. His fingers in my mouth. Our
rhythm fast…or slow…whatever we wanted it to be.