Lost Between Houses (7 page)

She rolled over and looked at me. Very pretty. Didn’t say anything, just looked at me.

“What?” I said, suddenly very self-conscious.

“In the dark, you’re very handsome.”

She rolled back over again. I lay there, looking at the back of her neck. You could see where her hair had been chopped; it was thick and then nothing, just her neck. From that angle, I was thinking you couldn’t tell if she was a boy or a girl. Except for the smell, of course. No guy ever smells like that. Or should anyway. So I lay there for awhile longer, thinking about this and that, the way you do, but really thinking about one thing, the other stuff just jumping along the surface like grasshoppers. I put my hand on her shoulder, really softly, so it was hardly there. But she didn’t move or twist around, didn’t do anything that told me to move it. So I let it rest there, the full weight of my hand, this ache in my arm, I realized, from the tension of holding it there, a very unnatural position. But she didn’t move
away. And then I moved my face right close to the back of her neck and I kissed her hair. But I could tell by her breathing that she wasn’t quite asleep yet. There’s a way people breathe when they sleep and a way they breathe when they’re waiting for something. I didn’t really know her well enough to be sticking my tongue in her mouth and besides I wasn’t sure I tasted too good, so I sort of hugged her. But really gently. I had the feeling, you know, that I was a safe-cracker, I was opening a very, very expensive safe, one false move would set off the alarms and release the dogs. So I proceeded very carefully. Very carefully, I pulled her shoulder toward me. It gave a little. I tugged a little harder and she just rolled over, her eyes still shut and her face in my armpit now. All warm and sleepy but not quite asleep. I started moving my hips a little bit, they just started moving themselves actually until I felt myself being drawn toward this giant, black planet. I could feel it drawing me toward its surface until gradually it seemed sort of inevitable that I’d go there; suddenly all the nerves in my body switched direction and I could feel myself arrive somewhere that was absolutely
me
.

S
LEEPING
in the same bed with somebody ain’t all it’s cracked up to be though. I mean you want it to be nice for them, you know, not breathing all over them or lying on your back snoring like something that’s been washed up on a beach. You can’t really relax, just let one go like you might in your own bed; on top of which I’d taken my shirt off, it always makes me sweat wearing clothes when I sleep, but I was having a little breakout on my back, too many chocolates, and so I was self-conscious about turning over. In case she could see. So the ideal position was me lying with my arm over her, her facing the wall, which was fine but I like to flip around a lot, not to mention go to the bathroom a half-dozen times, so all in all I didn’t have the world’s best sleep. At one point I rolled over and I felt this thing under my hip. I reached down and pulled it out; it was a stuffed animal, a skunk I think, it was in the bed with her like she was a little girl. I looked at it for a second. I almost laughed but then I had second thoughts. So I slipped it back under the covers and the three of us sailed off to sleep again, me, Scarlet and the little skunk.

Sometime around eight, I remember because I looked at the clock in the hall on the way back from the can, I lay down on the floor beside the bed. Scarlet was sound asleep, and I didn’t
want to wake her. I wasn’t quite ready for everything to start up. I closed my eyes and boy, did I go under fast. Wow. Like I’d been crowbarred.

Next thing I knew, something moved in the room. I opened my peepers; there was Scarlet stepping over top of me, a sheet wrapped around her, like an Italian movie star or something.

I woke up God knows how much later. I lay there for awhile on the floor, looking around the room, feeling pretty pleased with myself, I have to tell you. I mean, like, I did it. I actually fucking did it. Just imagine what my little audience on the highway would have made of this, me making it all the way down here and then spending the night with a girl.

I scrambled into my jeans and shirt and came out in the living room, the sun blazing down, me doing up my shirt pretty fast on account of my chicken chest. Sometimes in the shower I imagine people staring at me because I’m so skinny. Sometimes I tell them I’ve been sick recently. Ill, that’s the word I use. Sounds more tragic.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said. “It sure is bright out here. Man, I can hardly see.”

Scarlet was sitting in a big chair with her legs draped over the side; wearing a white T-shirt and blue shorts. And glasses with big brown frames.

She whipped them off.

“About time,” she said.

I didn’t want to get too near her on account of not having brushed my teeth.

“Great view,” I said, standing in front of the window. “You must never feel like you’re missing anything. Nothing going on out there without your permission.”

“God you talk a lot.”

“Is it too much?”

“What?”

“The talking.”

“No, I like it.”

“Can I borrow a toothbrush?”

“Use mine, it’s the one with the blue handle.”

“I’ll wash it off with soap when I’m done.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll survive.”

I went into the bathroom. I found the brush in a plastic glass with a few others. I ran my thumb along the bristles. I could feel a small spray of water; I didn’t rinse it off; call me a pervert, whatever, I just liked the idea of putting it in my mouth when it was still wet from hers.

I came out of the bathroom, brush in my mouth, lather all over the place, scrubbing away like mad. I started to say something.

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” she said.

“What?”

“I can’t make out what you’re saying.”

I pulled the brush out of my mouth. I sounded like those deaf guys you see in the subway, flapping their hands about and making funny noises.

“I was saying that I have a clock in my head. It’s the strangest thing. Day or night, I know exactly what time it is. Like not sort of, or approximately. I mean right on the buzzer.”

“What time is it now?”

“Well, I can’t do it when I’m self-conscious. I’ve got to sort of sneak up on it. I’ll tell you later. When I’m not trying.”

She made me a piece of toast and buttered it. I don’t generally eat around girls. Too many opportunities to be unattractive. Scarlet, I noticed, ate with her mouth open, just a bit, not gross,
but you’d have thought her parents would have jumped on that one. I can’t even say “anyways” without my mother making a fuss. It may seem mean but it sort of relaxed me seeing Scarlet do stuff wrong.

“Start,” she said, pointing to the toast.

“I can also tell the future,” I said.

“Like, for example, what?”

“Well, for example, sometimes I know the phone’s going to ring. So I pick it up. I even know who it is. I inherited it from my mother, she’s psychic. I called her once from Vancouver. She picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello, Simon,’ just like that. She hadn’t seen me for three weeks.”

“So do you know what’s going to happen to you and me?”

“No. But I knew you’d call.”

“Liar.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t even know.”

“Well, I did. I wasn’t surprised at all. Couldn’t you hear that, me not being surprised?”

“You sounded pretty excited.”

“Well, I’m always like that. But that’s not the same as surprised.”

“So when you know what’s going to happen to you and me, will you tell me?”

“Sure.”

“Even if it’s bad?”

“Especially if it’s bad.”

I figured it was time to quit while I was ahead and stop talking. So I did. And ate my toast.

“I don’t usually eat in the morning,” I said, which was a king-size whopper, I eat like a wolf all the time. Even more than my brother, which makes my skinniness something of a mystery.

Scarlet lit a cigarette. You could see by the way she held it, hardly noticing, that she’d had a cigarette before in the morning. The smoke floated across the room to me. I liked the way it smelt. This is a different league, I thought. People smoking in their house like it’s no big deal.

“Do your parents let you smoke in the house?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what kind of mood they’re in.”

“My mother gets me to light her cigarettes for her when she’s driving.”

“Do you want one?”

“Sure.”

She watched me light up.

She sort of grinned and looked out the window.

“What?” I said.

“You look like you don’t smoke. The way you hold it.”

“How does it look?”

“Sort of
feminine.”

“Really?”

A bit later, I called my brother.

“Hey, Harper,” I said, “it’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Scarlet’s.”

“Fuck man, you got to get back here. The old lady called this morning. She wanted to fucking talk to you.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said you were down at the dock. But she’s coming home tomorrow. So you better get back here.”

“I’m coming.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“For sure?”

“For sure.”

There was a pause and I heard him take a bite of apple.

“So you guys up all night?”

“I got a bit of sleep.”

“Her parents still away?”

“Yep.”

“She there?”

“Yep.”

“Like right beside you?”

“Yep.”

He hung it there for a moment, then he changed gears.

“Cool. But don’t fuck me on this one.”

“No sweat,” I said.

I was feeling a whole lot better, relieved really, when I put down the phone. I don’t like people being pissed off with me, even if I’m in the right. It nags at me. Anyway. We set out for downtown. It was pretty lively outside. Warm breeze, people walking around. Saturday is always a great day in the city. A subway train roared by above ground, I looked over, and I had one of those funny feelings that I was going to remember that moment for the rest of my life. Weird, those times, they just stick in your bean like a photograph, not the moment before, just that one, and not always because something’s going on. Sometimes it’s nothing at all, like a train roaring by, and Scarlet just standing there, her hair not quite touching her shirt collar.

We walked along Eglinton Avenue, past the bike shop where the old man bought me my first gear bike. Me talking away, I mean just incapable of shutting the fuck up. On the other side of
the street, just down a bit, was the Apple Paradise. I used to go there with my neighbour Kenny Withers on a Saturday night and get a great big gooey dessert, one of those apple monsters with maple syrup and whipped cream, the kind of shit kids like. Funny to think we were happy doing nothing more than going out and getting a fancy apple and then going home and watching the hockey game. Hard to imagine something like that could make anybody happy. No girls, nothing. Just an apple.

I pointed out a couple of these historical landmarks to Scarlet, like they were famous battlefields or something. Even the giant rock in the little parkette where Daphne Gunn dumped me. I told her about how she took me out there one night right after dinner—instead of inviting me into her house, always a bad sign—sat me down on this big rock, and gave me the old axeroo. I walked home like a zombie, it was like I was marching to my death, up the street, in the door, up the stairs, into my bedroom, flopped onto my bed, eyes staring at the ceiling, waiting for something to happen. For it all to end I suppose. Like one of those deer shot in the heart that keeps running, doesn’t know it’s dead yet. Yikes. Not a place I’m keen on returning to. But the funny thing was that if I’d only known that down the road things’d turn out all right, you know, me here with a beautiful girl, all that back there, so far back it was fun to think about, even the grisliest part, well if I’d only known all that, I wouldn’t have been so upset. Man, that sure would have blown Daphne’s mind, her giving me the axe and me popping up like a piece of fresh toast, saying sure, I understand, you’re right, and wandering off home, hands in my pockets, even whistling a tune. Boy, that would have surprised her. But I didn’t know enough. I just walked on home with my head in my hands like a basketball and cringed for the next three months every time
somebody brought up her name. Yeah, I sure handled that one. Next time, I thought to myself, I’ll know better, I’ll just remember today, how everything worked out in the end and I won’t have to go through that bullshit again.

“Do you think I’m beautiful?” Scarlet said all of a sudden.

“What? Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you sure are. You make guys nervous. I mean I didn’t even want to
think
about talking to you at my party.”

“What’d you think I’d do?”

“Tell me to buzz off or something. Wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. Some girls, when they’re really pretty, it’s the weirdest thing. They make me feel like I’m
shorter
than they are. You were scary, man.”

“Yeah?”

“And I’m not just saying that.”

“Am I less scary now?”

I could see we were headed for possible trouble here.

“Well it’s not like I got you or anything. If that’s what you mean.”

“No, I knew I liked you right away. The second I saw you. You sort of reminded me of myself.”

“I remind you of yourself? Jesus, this I got to hear.”

“I’d probably be like you if I was a boy.”

“Gee, I don’t think so, Scarlet. I think you’d be like one of those guys in the hallways, you know, in the coolest clothes, button-down shirts and continental pants. There’s a whole cluster of them hang out in front of prayers every morning.”

“No, I’m not like that at all. You don’t know me very well.”

She stopped in front of an ice cream store and peeked in the window.

“Do you want an ice cream cone?” I said.

“My mother thinks my nose is too blunt.”

“Your mother told you that? That’s a weird thing for a mother to do. They’re only supposed to tell you the good stuff.”