Deluded Your Sailors (11 page)

—
My
past!

—I know, ducky. And he fucked with it. Not just your past, either.

Another silence.

—I'm sorry, Gabriel. You need to get back to work. I can see the clay under your nails.

—I looked into the whole St Raphael's record a while ago. Brother who fucked with me?

—Yeah?

—Never charged. Should be dead by now, though.

They both got to their feet.

—Chin up, ducky. You'll make somethin of this yet. Somethin beautiful. Reach deep down inside ya and haul it out.

Gabriel kissed Nichole on the cheek and hurried out to the street.

Hungry for supper, Nichole strode east on Water Street as though heading into a storm. She caught her reflection in a bank's window – not hard to tell she'd been crying. Taking her tiny iPod Shuffle from the neckline of her dress, she thumbed through her playlist, stopping when the driver of a car which had right-of-way barmped. There she stood, middle of the crosswalk at McBride's Hill, against the light. She darted to the sidewalk, twisting her ankle slightly on her heeled sandals, and decided to accept whatever tune came next: Laurie Anderson, ‘One Beautiful Evening.' Eyes down, she resumed her stride, noticing she'd only polished the toenails of her left foot. Sparkling silver, hardly a summer colour; go for a peach or a coral, her mother had advised, something neutral, something nice.
Nice
, like the hazardous sandals, a birthday gift from her mother.

Looking up from her feet, Nichole caught sight of a sandwich board sign with photocopied posters for upcoming concerts. A little higher: a greasy doorway, through which Seth Seabright fell arse-first onto the sidewalk, long beard and hair stuck off like the birch broom, the one in the fits. Just beyond Seth, outside a café: bikers in their fifties and sixties, all denim, new leather chaps, beer guts, sugar-free skim lattés and gold credit cards. A few glanced over at Seth but said nothing.

As Nichole took her earbuds out and slung them round her neck, the wind carried scraps of sound off from the Tattoo's extra evening performance on Signal Hill: Evan Rideout bawling orders, gunfire. —Seth, you all right?

Seth blinked, bit off a fingernail so hard the quick bled, got to his feet with vicious speed and shouted at the pub. —You can't fuckin treat me like that!

A badly-toupéed man, Seth's height in his platform shoes, stuck his face through the doorway. —Seabright, you got thirty seconds to get out of my sight before I call the Constab. Jesus, b'y, you could crawl to the lockup faster than the coppers could get here, but the lockup's where you're headed, guaranteed.

Though she'd later question the wisdom of it, Nichole spoke up. —Excuse me. Yes, hello, I am addressing you. Mr Seabright is with me. Is there a problem?

The toupéed man – a dreadful hairpiece, hybrid of a Beatles moptop and that Three Stooges bowl cut – tilted his head back to view Nichole. Grey hairs, long and coarse, poked out his ears and nose. His down-townie voice, vague belligerence and vaguer Irish, knotted up in Nichole's head. The latté bikers all watched now, enjoying this bit of dinner theatre.

—The problem, Miss, is that young Seabright is drunk and disorderly.

Seth wiped spittle from his mouth, but most of it frothed and stuck to his beard. —Begged ya to cut me off, ya scabby cunt.

—Nothin I'd like better some days, my son, though I expect there ain't much there.

—No fuckin son of yours.

—Well, thank Christ for small mercies. And if he's with you, Miss – it is ‘Miss,' right? – then where might you have been for the last few hours while your date got shitfaced?

—He's not my date.

Seth noticed Nichole. —Do I know you?

—Then how is he with you? Answer me that.

Letting the family manner infest her face and voice, Nichole burnt her ancestors for fuel.
Damn, this is too easy some days
. Shoulders back, tits out, hips even, she hurled stretched-out vowels like a mace and chain. She did not shout; she projected and enunciated like a stage actor, a radio announcer, a discreetly-beaten upper-class wife in turn berating a servant.

—Perhaps you are hard of hearing, my man, or perhaps I have not made myself clear. Seth Seabright is with me, so there is certainly no need to bother the Constabulary. We will leave your establishment, as, for the life of me, I cannot see any reason to step inside. My feet would stick to the floor and so rend me Daphne and tree. Seth, let's go.

Bikers chuckled.
Missus is the feisty one, all dolled up.
Toupée Man withered, confused.

Seth followed Nichole up the first few steps of Rendell's Lane, steps that led up towards Duckworth Street. —Bet ya I can climb these faster than you.

—Seth, listen –

He somehow raced up the crumbling steps, knocking into an old steel-banded trash basket and setting yellowjacket wasps to angry defence. Ducking the wasps, he tripped in an empty India Ale box rotting quietly outside a dark little pub, a literal hole in the wall – and Official Historic Site – called The Wrecking Ball. Crumpling the picture of the Newfoundland dog as he squat the beer box in his fall, Seth cursed indecipherably, picked up the box and pitched it back down towards Water Street. It clocked Nichole upside the head. Seth, horrified in the manner of a tiny schoolboy who's just talked back to a nun, stared at Nichole for maybe half a second and bolted. Yellowjackets hissed over to Nichole, drawn by the sweet scent of the beer box.

Nichole stood on blackened stone, steady, still, and quite thoroughly ticked.

Enough of this.

—Seabright!

She chased him – not that she knew what she'd do if she caught him – finding him on Duckworth, hands crammed in his pockets, staring across the street at the boarded-up Hall.

Seth spoke first. —I can't believe that's still closed. Here we are, whorin out our culture, pitcher plant, I spose, drown the tourists and eat them, and TCR won't pony up their share of the fundin to refurbish the Hall. We got no theatre space, except what we keeps rentin from the fuckin schools. Have we met?

—You just threw a box at me.

Seth bolted across the street this time, enjoying the long honks on the horn from drivers. He stood now at the base of the barricaded and condemned wooden steps leading up to the Hall, raised his arms and shouted to the sky. —We got no fuckin theatre!

Checking traffic first, Nichole jaywalked safely across Duckworth and touched Seth's shoulder. —You might need to lie down.

—I prefers to stand. But not tonight, I'll never get it up. Got no money left, anyway.

—Charming. How did I get tangled up with you?

—And you are?

—Nichole Wright. We met out in Port au Mal for that Settlement 250 play. I was getting ready to drive you to Harbour Grace for a drink before going back to town, but then you hooked up with the skank with the green and blue hair.

—I remembers that. You fucked off and abandoned me out in some rancid bedroom with, Jesus, what was her name – Frangina Murphy. Not dry at her place. And me after thinkin we were in Harbour Grace.

—I did not abandon you! You slithered off with that woman of your own free will.

—I slithered, did I? She tasted some good. I remembers that much. Fuckin bedbugs, though.

—Seth!

—Wha?

He staggered and fell, landing once more on his arse. For just a moment, his eyes reminded Nichole of Gabriel's, but that sudden hell-flame of self-knowledge and recognition sputtered out. He ignored Nichole's offer to help him up and once more stood with speed and grace.

—I gotta git. But we've met. I know we've met.

He walked away from her slowly, backwards. Then he ran across Duckworth again and ducked behind a brick outcrop. Angry drivers accelerated, running the red light. Nichole walked quickly to the intersection, waited half of forever for the light to change, crossed legally and still nearly got hit by a car, then made it to the brick outcrop.

No Seth. Just yellowjackets and garbage bins.

Fine.

Nichole continued east on Duckworth Street. She wanted to look at the old house on Prescott Street where Claire's apartment had been, wanted to see the house one last time before it got torn down.

A knocked-down wall: tar paper, floorboards.
Already?
Claire's apartment exposed to winter and rough weather, to the heat of the sun. The cramped afterthought of a bathroom and its stained clawfoot tub designed for much shorter ancestors or perhaps hobbits. The dark kitchenette. The front room where she'd painted and sketched, kneeling sometimes on the hardwood floor.

Seth, meantime, took stock. Satched cigarette butts and rotten fruit, cups from smoothies and iced coffees, cans from cola and energy drinks, and six, count em, six used condoms, wasps everywhere, all of it sticky, all of it sweet, rotting, but sweet: good enough. Squatting down on some bare ground behind garbage bins, Seth decided to take a short nap. Consciousness and time departed. A wharf rat, a good eighteen inches, peeked round a bin, sat upright and sniffed the slumped human: harmless, for now. As Seth's body relaxed, his feet lolled. He immediately dreamt of the hanging net and kicked, disturbing an underground wasps' nest. His patched canvas sneakers gave no defence against the first few stings. He kicked again, then jumped up, wide awake now, backing awkwardly against the bins, desperate to stand and run. A cloud of wasps, hundreds he thought, stung him, up his jeans and down his shirt, crisscrossing his hair and beard and nearly every centimetre of exposed skin. He lurched out to the sidewalk and straight into a strip club poster taped to a utility pole. The wasps stung and stung. Ready to spew, Seth fell to his bad knees, suddenly remembering how they'd ached earlier in the day, and cursed himself for his clumsiness – now he'd need to patch the jeans. He tried to call for help, but, as he inhaled, wasps flew into his mouth. Prying and spitting some out, he got one good breath and bellowed the first word that came to him.

—Nichole!

Nichole, coming out of the coffee shop on the opposite corner, ran over the crosswalk to the convulsing Seth. Seeing the wasps, she poured her bottle of water over Seth's head. Then she called on her cell phone for an ambulance, getting stung on her hands and arms. No drivers stopped. A pedestrian, a man in his fifties – bitter and grey and squint-eyed, one fight-damaged ear pierced, disgusted that God had not seen fit to propel him to fame, money and easy lays – offered Nichole some advice.

—Nice girl like you, with them gold earrings and fancy sandals: young Seabright isn't worth your time. Leave that little alkie to sleep it off, me trout.

—I'm no ‘girl.'

—Fuck you, then. Only tryna help. Jesus, where are all the wasps comin from?

—I fell on the stairs!

—Ms Masterson –

—
Dr
Masterson.

—Sorry.

—I teach English, Cultural Studies and Women's Studies at the university. You're a resident, right?

The young ER doc brushed a loose spiral of red hair out of her blue eyes and tucked it back into her purple headband. Dorinda scowled, but not with pain. Fair skin, blue eyes, red hair: Dorinda used to pray every night from ages six to twelve to wake up the next morning with blue eyes and red hair. The skin she'd leave up to God. Today, complexion mottled by tans and cigarettes, coarse hair fried by colours and bleaches, breasts sagging and belly soft, Dorinda felt ugly, deeply ugly, before the younger woman. So, her father's warning had come true? Her father the stevedore and carpenter who'd rather take a nap than pick up a book, what did he know about justice and hard work, she'd thought.
Now Dory, no
good can come of you screamin and whinin about this women's lib
foolishness. Full-on anger never changed nothin for the better. It's a
start, but even the unions can't work on just anger. And on top of
that, anger makes you ugly on the inside, darlin. No man wants to
marry that kind of ugly
. And now, her father long dead and suddenly missed, she sat on a hospital cot, battered by accident and nauseous on painkillers, too damn tired for anger, just empty, hollow, anger having sustained her so long.

—That morphine didn't last.

—I can't give you any more yet. You're still full of ketamine from where we re-set your ankle.

—Oh my God, there's a wasp in here. I can't stand wasps.

—We've got a patient down the hall who fell onto a nest. We put him in isolation, but some wasps got through. We'll be killing wasps all night.

—Jesus, Jesus! Is it on me?

—No, it flew off. Are you allergic to stings, Dr Masterson?

Dorinda shut her eyes hard enough to scrunch up her face.

—Just afraid.

—About your injuries. I know the nurses have already asked you. But –

—I fell on the stairs.

—Yes, it says so here in the notes. Do you know why I decided to become a doctor? Because of all the nights I sat in the emergency room down at St Clare's with my mother after Dad had taken his fists to her.

—Look, I –

—Do you know how many doctors asked my mother if someone had beaten her? Guess. None. Not a single one even asked.

—I'm very sorry.

—Who beat you?

—No one.

—My mother said she walked into doors or fell down stairs. I tried launching myself down the stairs once, so I could get bruises in my face like hers, and then we could both say we fell down the stairs.

—Technically, I fell up the stairs.

—Were you pushed?

—No. Gabriel had just left.

—Who's Gabriel?

—The man who – my tenant.

—Are you in a relationship?

—Now listen –

—Did Gabriel beat you or push you down the stairs?

—No!

The resident thought a moment, then told Dorinda she had a visitor waiting, a Mr Furey.