Authors: Nicholson Gunn
He went to the railing of the deck and looked out past
the sloping backyards to the downtown skyline. That view again. He had seen it
a half-dozen times since he’d first come here with Pete more than a year ago.
It was even better at night than during the day, so perfect-seeming that it
appeared to be artificial. He could have been looking at a detailed scale
model, complete with thousands of little twinkling lights in white, red and
green, something lovingly crafted by a lone artisan rather than evolved over
decades through the interactions of countless developers, politicians and
citizens. It reminded him a little of the backdrop of a late-night talk show,
something Letterman or Conan might have made use of if they’d been local.
A female voice spoke to him, close enough that he jumped
a little.
“It looks fake, if you ask me,” the voice said. “Like the
backdrop of a late-night talk show.”
He whipped his head towards whomever it was – nearly
dislocating his neck in the process – and found himself face to face with a
woman he hadn’t met yet. She’d been part of a small group of people standing at
the far end of the deck, most of whom were now heading inside. Instead of
accompanying them, she’d hung back to join him in gazing out over the city. Her
skin was golden-brown, her hair the colour of chocolate cake, under the light
from the yellow windows at Stephan’s back. She smiled up at him, a hint of
mischief in her eyes.
“Sorry about that,” she said, laughing. “I see I
surprised you a little.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “It’s just funny what
you said, about the backdrop. It’s exactly what I was thinking just now. You’re
not some kind of mind reader, are you?”
“I wish,” she said. “That would be a useful skill. Fun,
too.”
She spoke with a slight accent – possibly Indian. There
was something fresh and calming about its cadence.
“But it’s not so surprising after all, is it?” she said.
“It really does look like that.”
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “If I ever have a
job shooting a talk-show backdrop, I’ll know exactly where to come.”
“Shooting a talk show backdrop… you’re a photographer!”
“Yes.”
“How cool. What kind of photographer? Not porno, I hope.”
She tsked at him in admonition, although it was obvious that she was just
kidding.
“Um, no. I work for magazines, mostly – not dirty ones,
unless you think that interior design stories and restaurant reviews are porn.
Which maybe they are in a way, come to think of it.”
“What a cool job! Do you love it? Is it your passion?”
Her tone was so enthusiastic that for a second he thought
she might still be teasing him. But no, she wasn’t. It was just her style, it
seemed.
“I guess you could say it is a passion, unfortunately,”
he said.
“Why unfortunately?”
“Well, because it makes you into a sucker. People can use
it against you. They know you’ll work hard, even if the money isn’t good. They
know you’d be doing it for free if they weren’t paying you.”
“Hmmm, I never thought of that.” Her brow furrowed, as if
what he had just said was very, very sad. Then she brightened. “Oh well, I
guess I’ll just have to stick with my point and shoot!”
She pulled a little metallic rectangle out of her hip
pocket and handed it to him. He took it from her, since it was offered, flipped
it around in his hands.
“God, they keep getting smaller and smaller, don’t they?”
“And cheaper,” she said, nodding. “And more powerful.
This one’s got three megapixels. Video capable, four-times optical zoom lens.”
He handed it back to her. “It’s nice.”
“They’re pretty to look at, aren’t they? Like jewellery.”
He nodded – she was right. “So what about you, what do
you do? Camera salesperson?”
She shook her head. “No, although I guess I’m a bit of an
electronics fan. I’m an urban planner, with the city.”
“Urban planner. Huh. Also a pretty cool job.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. You help make the city work for millions of
people. All of that –” He gestured towards the talk-show backdrop, its manifold
intricacies. “That’s much more useful than what I do. Do you have, like, a
special area of expertise?”
“Traffic flows. I help figure out where to put the
lights, and how they’re timed so you’re not stopping your car every ten
seconds. That kind of stuff. Unbearably boring, actually. Sorry if that’s
disappointing.”
“Brutally disappointing. I’m afraid we’re not going to be
friends after all.”
She giggled, punched him lightly on the arm, and they
kept talking.
* * * * *
The back door of the house creaked open, emitting a blast
of heat from inside, and a group of five or six new arrivals filed out onto the
deck – men and women, a couple of them with soon-to-be-lit cigarettes already
dangling from their lips. The sudden warmth, gone as soon as the door clicked
shut behind the last of the newcomers, made Stephan realize how chilly the
night had grown – unusually warm for the time of year, granted, but cold enough
that their words were written in the night air between them in faint white
puffs. He’d been so focused on their conversation that he hadn’t been conscious
of the temperature until now. Neither had she been, apparently. He took this as
a good sign, and forged ahead.
He knew her name now: Natacha with a “c,” the Portuguese
spelling, as she had informed him. “When people write it, they misspell it.
When they read it, they mispronounce it – drives me nutty.” Her family had come
here when she was a little girl, from the island of Mauritius, a place he’d
vaguely heard of but knew little about. It was an island in the Indian Ocean,
she’d helpfully reminded him, near Mozambique, but smaller and wealthier, a
former Portuguese colony, hence that troublesome “c.” She was an old friend of
Sally’s – they’d gone to high school together – and she knew Pete well too,
thought he was a great guy.
“I make dinner for them once in a while,” she said. “He
is a most appreciative eater.”
“That he is.”
She knew the new crowd on the deck, too – they were all
buddies, apparently, which Stephan found vaguely disconcerting. Now she was
bantering back and forth with one of the guys, a quick-tongued Asian dude with
a hip, spiky hairstyle. Maybe she and he were an item of some kind, it seemed
possible. Stephan was never at his best in boisterous groups, preferring the
intimacy of one-on-one, or the official observer status enjoyed by the working
photographer. He started to ease his way towards the back door, suddenly
deflated. And anyway, he was starting to feel the cold. It was time he got back
inside and chatted with a few of those other old school friends he hadn’t yet
connected with.
But just as he lifted a foot to step towards the door,
she placed a hand gently on his back, halting him in mid-stride.
“Guys, have you met Pete’s friend Stephan, the
photojournalist, yet?”
“Ooooh, Stephan the photojournalist.”
“Really just plain ‘Stephan’ is fine.”
They asked him a few questions about his work, and in his
answers he took care to avoid coming off as arrogant, as if he endorsed
Natacha’s implication that his job made him noteworthy or cool. A few minutes
later, he and she were off on their own again, having picked up where they had
left off when the group came outside. The guy she’d been bantering with had
retreated indoors, the others were staying out of the way, and Stephan had her
to himself again, amazed by his good fortune.
He didn’t want the conversation to end, but he also
didn’t want to come on too strong, or say something stupid. And it really was
getting cold, now.
“Well, I guess I’d better go in and check on Pete,” he
said, finally. “Make sure he’s not making an ass of himself. Should we go in?”
“I think I’ll stay out here and try getting a couple of
pictures of this view,” she said. “You go ahead and see to your friend, if you
really think he needs you.”
“We went to university together. I could tell you
stories.”
“Aha! I love a little dirt. You’ll have to fill me in
some time.”
“I’m sworn to secrecy, unfortunately.”
“A loyal friend, then. Well, if I ever see that view on
TV at three in the morning, I’ll know who’s responsible.”
At the door he paused, glanced back. She was standing by
the edge of the deck, looking away towards the skyline. Holding her tiny
point-and-shoot camera aloft, she snapped a couple of pictures with the flash
turned on. He hesitated for a moment, and then went back to her.
“I’m sorry to be an annoying know-it-all, but you’ll
never get a decent shot that way.”
She turned to him and smiled. “You’re right. See?”
She held up the camera so that he could see the display
screen. The yard in the foreground was overexposed, the skyline barely visible.
“I can show you a trick that might work, if you’d like.”
“Of course,” she said, handing over the camera.
He made a few adjustments, fumbling a little with the
unfamiliar digital controls, then placed the camera on the top of the deck
railing.
“When it’s night time, the shutter has to stay open for a
long time to let in enough light,” he explained. “But that’s way too long to
hold the camera still enough for the shot to be crisp. You don’t have a tripod,
obviously, but all you really need is a stable surface.”
He snapped the shot, the flash turned off this time. The
shutter stayed open so long that it seemed to have gone dead, but after several
seconds it closed with a soft click. He handed the camera back to her, and she
looked at the image, her eyes widening.
“Oh my god, it’s fantastic! Thank you!”
“No problem.”
She smiled up at him again in her grateful, open way,
seeming to promise that she had nothing to hide. He smiled back.
Out of practice at such things, he had failed to get her
cell number on the spot, but with Pete’s help the mistake was easily remedied.
Pete called him back within fifteen minutes of his request, reading the number
out and getting him to repeat it back. He even refrained from any teasing or
innuendo, which was kind. He simply noted that Natacha was a very cool person,
and that he thought Stephan was smart to want to get to know her better.
“If you ever need your garden weeded or your snow
shovelled, just let me know,” Stephan said, with gratitude.
“It’s a little early in the game for that,” Pete said.
“Just keep me posted on how it goes and we’ll discuss payment schedules later.”
Stephan gave her a call that afternoon, as soon as he
managed to psych himself up sufficiently to tap out her number. He didn’t want
to leave himself time to over-analyze. Such openings were not to be taken for
granted, and he was wary of blowing his chance.
He needn’t have worried.
“That photo you took for me – oh my god! It looks amaaaazing,”
she said, drawing out the last word until it seemed about to tear in half.
“I’m glad you like it.” He felt prouder than the accolade
warranted, as if he’d just won first place in a major photography contest.
“I’ve already had a print of it made. It’s up on my
fridge, in a place of honour next to some six-year-old’s off-kilter drawing of
a tractor.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t know the artist personally?
What’s that doing up there?”
“I bought it at a sidewalk art exhibition a few doors
down from my place. Apparently they’re the new lemonade stands.”
They made a date to go out for a coffee – a seemingly
safe bet – but the night before they were to meet, his sleep had been disturbed
by nightmares: the vampire baseball team chasing him around an empty de Chirico
stadium cackling “batter out, batter out” over and over again. It seemed like a
bad omen, but at the café everything went as smoothly as could be and she was
even lovelier and smarter then he’d remembered. They didn’t talk about big
ideas or grand schemes the way he and Jenny Wynne always had. But their
conversation flowed effortlessly, with nary a dull moment or awkward pause.
Physically, she was half a head shorter than Jenny Wynne, with curvy hips and
tiny hands that flitted above the table like birds. She gave him a hug as the
said goodbye, out on the street, her breasts pressing softly against him.
A week later, they went to see a movie at a rep cinema in
Yorkville. He liked the idea of going out to the movies on their first date. As
an activity, it seemed wholesome and reliable, something new couples had been
doing for decades. Afterwards, over drinks at a nearby rooftop lounge, they
gamely discussed the film’s merits, debating its themes and underlying message,
as he might have once done with Jenny Wynne. At the end of the night, he walked
her to the subway, where she lifter her face, eyes closed, and he leaned in for
a kiss.
Alone in his bed later that night, he reviewed the
evening in his head, noting with satisfaction that it seemed to have gone
without a hitch. He was determined to do things properly this time. He wasn’t
looking for a series of flings, or a friends-with-benefits arrangement, but a
real relationship, free of games.
Natacha was just the sort of person to be with in such a
relationship, he had sensed. She was fun and energetic, sure, but also reliable
and down-to-earth. While she had a good career, in a practical and well-paying
field, she wasn’t career-focused to a fault. It had occurred to him that when
he’d kissed her there hadn’t been fireworks. He didn’t feel lust for her the
way he had from the start with Jenny Wynne, but that didn’t matter to him. He
was sick and tired of lust. Obsession was for stalkers and department-store
perfumes. He wanted someone who would be there for him when it mattered, like
the next time he held an exhibition, lost a client, won an award. He wanted
someone who wouldn’t ditch him at the drop of a hat for the latest second-rate
American movie director lured within reach by the government’s program of
generous film production subsidies and tax breaks.
Soon he was taking her out to work-related events,
introducing her around. Jenny Wynne was not in attendance on any of these
occasions, which vaguely disappointed him. He wanted her to see that he’d moved
on.
A month or so into their relationship, Natacha invited
him to meet her parents, Navin and Monique, at their home in the city’s inner
suburbs. Her little brother – a surly teenager – treated him with suspicion,
but her parents were welcoming and kind. Her mother gave him a gift of some
delicious curries for his lunches. (She had learned from her daughter that he
had subsisted in recent years on takeout food and instant noodles.)
His one regret was that he’d taken so long to get to this
point. If he had only known how easy it was to do the thing that actually made
you happy – as opposed to the thing that was in keeping with your most abstract
yearnings – he could have spared himself vast amounts of pain and wasted time.
He had willingly subjected himself to so much punishment. He’d taken a beating
and gone back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. But all of that was behind him
now. For the first time in years, he was his own person.
On a cold, blustery night mid-way between Christmas and
New Year’s Eve, he took the subway up to Yonge and Eglinton for dinner at
Natacha’s apartment. In a couple of days, they’d celebrate New Year’s Eve
together at a party organized by a friend of Pete and Sally’s, but in the
meantime they wanted to have their own private get-together. The apartment was
located in an old brick low-rise on a curving side street. It was a two-bedroom
place, but Natacha had it to herself at the moment. Her roommate, a PhD
student, was away in Germany for several months conducting research.
He kissed her at the front door and handed over a small
bouquet of white, blue and yellowish flowers. They were winter colours, the
florist had said, but seemed bright and summery to his eye.
“Oh, look – they match my dress,” she said, indicating
the powder-blue blossoms.
She was gorgeous that night. Her velvet dress set off her
green eyes, and her hair was down, framing her face in thick, luxurious waves.
“You’re right!” he exclaimed, as if it was the most
incredible coincidence.
She leaned in to inhale the scent. “So nice! I’ll just
get them into a vase.”
For some reason, it pleased him that she had a vase on
hand. His own home inventory included various forms of ceramics and glassware,
from coffee mugs to beakers for developer chemicals, but nothing quite so
quintessentially domestic.
She led him through the living room to the kitchen. The
space was cozy and classic: hardwood floors, comfy couches, her roommate’s
paintings adorning the walls. There was even an old fireplace. It no longer
worked, at least not with real fire, but someone – perhaps during the late
seventies – had installed a fake fire in the grate. It consisted of a couple of
plastic logs, behind which there was a horizontal light bulb. The bulb was
enclosed in a translucent orange cylinder etched with curving patterns that
rotated when you flipped a light switch. Even this, he had to admit, was
charmingly kitschy.
In the kitchen, Natacha threw an apron on over her dress
and started in on dinner. Eager to oblige in his assigned role as sous chef, he
was soon busily at work chopping carrots, potatoes and onions, measuring out
spices and clarified butter. The apartment filled with complex flavours.
His eyes were tearing up from the onions. She glanced
over at him, opened a drawer, and thrust a pair of ski goggles into his hands.
“Put these on.”
“Ski goggles?”
“Trust me, it works.”
He laughed and pulled the goggles over his head. “What do
you think?” he asked. “Do they make me look sexy?”
He started dancing, as badly as possible, and she giggled
so hard that she teared up a little herself. “How seductive,” she said. “You
should try wearing them out to the clubs. The ladies will be all over you.”
“I don’t go to clubs,” he said, gathering her in his arms
and kissing her on the lips. “I don’t need to.”
He watched over her shoulder as she worked. Her arms
darted back and forth above the stove, stirring, mixing, seasoning, tasting.
Soon, dinner was ready. They laid it out on bone-white plates – three different
curries, basmati rice, and a green salad with slices of mango imported from far
away. He was normally a dedicated carnivore, but when it came to Natacha’s
cooking he was happy to go vegetarian, even if it sometimes left him just a
little bit hungry.
Over dinner, he asked her how her job was going.
“Oh, don’t get me started,” she said. “The people I work
with are super cool, but the government politics drive me so crazy.”
“How so?”
“Well, here’s a case we have right now. So this developer
wants to build a highrise in a nice residential part of town, mostly houses,
and the councillor for the ward decides to fight it.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“But here’s the thing: according to the law, the
developer is allowed to do this, and so the province gives them the go ahead.
Well, the councillor’s constituents are furious, and he wants to stay in their
good books, so he appeals. But the law is totally clear, and the province
almost always sides with the developers in these cases. There’s no way we can win,
and meanwhile the appeal is going to cost tens, even hundreds, of thousands of
dollars. So not only is the city guaranteed to lose the case, it’s going to
cost us all this extra money so this one councillor can pretend he’s the good
guy.”
“Wow. That’s... complicated.”
It was refreshing to hear about real-life, concrete
issues – even if the reality was a little depressing. He was used to a milieu
in which everything was theory or aesthetics. On shoots, you talked about how
an image looked. Was the lighting right? Did the colours pop? Was the shot
“cool” enough? Did it make the subject seem sexy or desirable? It was all
surface and no depth.
After dinner, they flopped on the couch with a last glass
of wine. They were both mellowed out by that point – Natacha had exhausted her
mild work rant. A compilation of Ella Fitzgerald songs played quietly on the
stereo. They were talking less and less, but the silences were comfortable and
intimate, not awkward. It occurred to him that his relationship with Natacha had
just reached a new stage. On the surface nothing was different, but the mood
between them had shifted, grown more relaxed and at the same time more focused.
He touched her arm and she turned, slowly, and looked at
him, her face calm but her eyes fierce. They leaned in and kissed, slow and
attentive. After a few minutes, they moved silently to her bedroom, where they
carefully undressed each other. She had worn lingerie for him. It was satiny
and white, bright against her brown skin. He stroked her cheek, then leaned in
and kissed her again, this time on the curve of her neck.
After finishing, they lay spooning in her bed, on the
threshold of sleep. He stroked her arm and she turned to kiss him on the wrist.
It amazed him how easy it had all been, how effortless. He’d been stuck in one
place for so long. Even when his life and career had been going well, he’d
always been just a little bit afraid, waiting for the next disaster. But now he
was on a different path, and all he had to do was relax and go with the flow of
things. It was so simple. He let his hand slide down around her waist, where it
found a natural place to rest, and drifted off to sleep.
* * * * *
The winter of 2004 seemed as if it would never end. It
snowed, endlessly – hard wet flurries that swam in front of your eyes like film
grains in a cheap blow-up. He hunkered down in the warm sanctuary of the
darkroom. Natacha hated the cold even more than he did. Her family was from the
tropics and weren’t built for such meteorological nonsense, she said.
On Friday nights he took the subway up to her place.
They’d cook dinner together – something hot and spicy, as a rule – then kick
back on the couch and watch a movie, often falling asleep half-way through. On
Saturday mornings they’d linger over eggs and toast, drinking pots of hot tea
and watching cartoons on television. They’d been revisiting the Roadrunner in
particular, for the parched desert landscapes and constant sunlight.
It was a dreary season, but in later years he would look
back fondly on those months. It was true that he occasionally caught himself
vaguely missing Jenny Wynne, despite all the misery she’d caused him – the
false hopes, the sudden disappearances, the casual cruelty – but he was
relieved to have finally moved on. It pained him now to think of the ways in
which he’d embarrassed himself while under her influence. He had never been a
drinker, had never even dabbled in drugs. aside from a little marijuana. The
feeling of being out of control had always unsettled him, so it was strange
that he’d allowed himself lose it so badly over a mere girlfriend.
He wondered what his life would have been like if he and
Jenny Wynne had never met – almost certainly it would have been better, he
decided. Not that he hated her. She had a special quality that in his eyes
exempted her from the normal rules of behaviour, and always would.
He knew a little of her exploits in the months since
they’d last been together. During the first weeks after it ended, people not
especially in the know had continued to ask him for updates about her, as if
that were all he was good for. That finally changed when he began to show up at
events with Natacha on his arm. Now it was the other way around. People didn’t
ask him about her any more – they told him about her. Sometimes it pained him
to hear about some outrageous comment she’d made or outlandish person she’d
been seen with. In some cases he wondered if the people who told him about her
were doing so out of spite, to remind him of what he had lost, of how she had
defeated him. As if they cared.