How to Get Along with Women (12 page)

Drink this, he said.

I stopped. I drank it.

I know what you're thinking. What if the drink was drugs? Is this Marathon Girl crazy? What if it was poison?

It wasn't. It was carrot juice.

Carrot and celery, the man said. Celery juice, too. That's why it doesn't taste too strong. Do you like it? he said. Why do you run up the mountain?

I still hadn't said a word. I pressed the glass against my lips and teeth.

You must like the view, the man said. We should move your house, he said. We should move your house to the top of the mountain. Then you wouldn't have to run all day.

What are you, I thought, a real estate agent? I didn't say it out loud because I never talk to strangers. Even though in those days I was running up a mountain, I had grown up in a big city where they taught us about strangers.

The man said: I want to run.

I handed him back his glass. He took it from me and his sleeve touched my sleeve. My sleeve was cool and black. It was made of 88% polyester and 12% spandex, which is what we call “technical”. Runner's clothes are always made of technical. It wicks.

His sleeve was red and loose, like cinnamon that's been ironed out and stitched into a flag. I thought for a second that if he were cooking in that shirt, leaning over a stove, the loose sleeve might touch the burner and catch fire. For a second I saw his sleeve all kindled and brilliant and my heart started beating. He was on fire and I reached out to touch him and then I was on fire. We were two combustible bodies running through the woods, igniting everything. A jet holocaust. A wheel of flames.

He shifted his feet and put the glass away in his Lewis and Clark backpack. He screwed the top back on the thermos. I bent down and picked up his binoculars and handed them over. They made a nice clicking sound when they closed up tight. The man attached the binoculars to his belt.

He said, You must be awful afraid to stand still.

I backed up and leaned against the two-headed oak. It was the first really hot day of summer. I wasn't used to stopping halfway: the muscles in my legs felt heavy and worn. Pins and needles in my hands and in my forehead. What I wanted to do was lie down.

I circled the tree. Then I ran back down the mountain.

The next day I woke up and put on my running shoes. I went out in the backyard. The man was there, waiting for me. He was wearing shoes, too: his shoes were black and hard-soled with a thick, silver heel.

Are we going to run up the mountain? he said. I looked at him with just my eyes. I didn't turn my head.

The man lifted his pant legs a little. I twisted my body toward him in case what he was showing me was something dirty. I wouldn't want to miss that. But what he was showing me was his feet and legs. The legs ended underneath the knees and instead of ankles he had metal sticks that sliced down into his shoes. Where his feet should have been curved up nice and flat like ski tips. The sticks were sturdily bolted in.

Have you always had no feet? I said.

Always, the man said. He said his name was Emanuel Brown. He said his mother named him Emanuel because it was like a miracle that he had no feet, especially since his hands were so well formed. Emanuel Brown lifted up a hand and let me take a good look at it. It was soft and pale.

I don't work at the factory, he said. I don't even drive a car.

I don't know about running with no feet, I said.

I think if I ran, Emanuel Brown said, I might start to feel where my feet should be.

I hopped up and down from one foot to the other. It was part of my pre-run ritual.

Do you feel hot where your feet should be? I said. I was thinking of the burning I had inside my body. Maybe soon I would be missing something like Emanuel Brown was missing feet.

No, he said. I feel clean where my feet should be. What I feel where my feet should be is plain white.

I stopped hopping and rubbed my legs a little.

I run up the mountain to get warm, I said.

Are you warm now, Emanuel said, but he wasn't looking at me at all. His eyes were closed. I looked at his red hair and his wet-clean cheeks. I thought he was wearing an earring, but it was a lick of hair that curled under his ear. He wasn't smiling or frowning. His face was nothing. He had a few freckles. You could count them and I did.

I'm so tired, I said.

Okay, I said. Let's run.

We started up the mountain. Emanuel Brown wasn't as slow as I thought he would be. His metal ankles made a clickity-click noise as we ran. We went single file through the bush with me leading. After a while he pushed in front of me. His right arm swung out and held me back at the waist. Everything he did was wrong. He ran with his head down and his fists tight, and he used his shoulders to beat back the overgrowth. He could really move.

It was strange to run with my hands at my sides. I didn't need to protect my face when Emanuel was in front of me. It almost didn't feel like running. I yelled out instructions from behind.

Turn! I shouted. Left!

I shouted the instructions like he couldn't see the path in front of him. I shouted them loud in case he couldn't hear me in the wind. We got to the top and he didn't stop running. The sky opened up nice and wide over us. The sun was at our backs and burned our shoulders. It made us into stilty, loping shadow runners on the ground. We circled the tree and started back down.

Faster! Emanuel Brown yelled. His head whipped back toward me.

We went faster. Gravity pulled us along. Our feet barely touched the earth. We ran like a rope was pulling us. Skinny branches ripped at our shins. I kept my eyes open and everything in front of me bled together and made me dizzy, rock-leaf-root-dirt. We came out through the trees. We'd been gone since the morning and now there wasn't much light left. The whole town was waiting for us. They wanted to see who the Marathon Girl was running with.

Race! Race! Race! they yelled. They pumped their fists at the sky. They pumped their fists at the mountain.

No no! we yelled. No thank you! We elbowed away their cups of water. The crumpled cups fell around our feet. Cold water splashed our ankles and got into the toe boxes of our shoes.

What if your feet get rusty? I yelled, but Emanuel didn't hear me. Click click clickity click clickity click click, went his metal ankles, faster and faster.

What if we never stop running? I yelled. He brought his knees up and down, higher and higher. We were running past my house.

I live there! I yelled and Emanuel Brown ran up my steps and jumped off my porch. He didn't seem worried about his feet at all.

We ran past all the people and the corner and the gas station with my car still on the lot. We ran past the downtown. There was a sale on macaroni. The sign winked at me from the grocery store window. We were running like two people falling out of a car, our arms and legs travelling at different speeds and in different directions. Emanuel Brown made big circles with his arms as he ran. I hopped up and down and sang to make my heart go slower. I sang Froggy Went A Courtin' and a Spanish song about a travelling salesman who carries the world in his bag. I sang until I was out of breath.

On our way out of town, we ran by the tire fire. The two guys in brown overalls put down their shovels and watched us go. I think they were in shock. They didn't even call us sluts.

We ran between the piles of tires and let our arms trail behind us. Sparks landed on our clothes and burned there until they exhausted themselves.

Watch your sleeve, I said to Emanuel and he said, What?

I reached out and grabbed at his hand. The whole hand was warm, even the fingers. His wrist flexed and for a second I could feel all the veins stand out straight, with Emanuel's blood inside them.

We ran until we were on a dirt road with no trees or bushes to slow us down. I couldn't remember ever feeling cold. We ran like a hot gust. If we ran by you, all you would feel was the spray of sand kicking up against your cheekbones. If you were behind us, all you would see was ash.

Super Carnicería

They floated into the morning on their backs, back and forth in the cloverleaf outdoor hot tub at the Water Tower Hotel. It was June 16. Anna had her eyes closed and when she squinted up it wasn't night anymore. The sky flipped open. They weren't floating: Aubrey had pulled two deck loungers off the side and set them up in the shallow water so they could lie there in the froth with less risk of drowning.

He was her captain. He took responsibilities seriously. They'd landed at two on a Saturday afternoon—forty-two passengers, one baby, no wheelchairs—but wouldn't be out again until four on the Sunday. The cloverleaf hot tub in Sault Ste. Marie.

The thing about twenty-six hours on the ground is you have to do something. You can't do nothing. They hadn't done a fucking thing in New York, but the potential is there in a big city and the potential fills you up. Northern Ontario, you need something else to do that.

Anna's brother was Zoran. She'd pulled a booklet of photographs out of her wallet the night before, hand-stapled and ordinary. Primary colours for background. Zoran, black-haired and with a cockeyed look, mouth open as though speaking to the camera, his grade one school picture. Happy-looking, but not smiling.

Loud-looking.

What do you mean? Anna said.

Looks like one of those kids who never shuts up, Aubrey said.

One photo a year for ten years. He always wore a red shirt for picture day. He couldn't wear a collar, or shirts with tags. He couldn't wear shoes without socks. If he didn't wear socks he'd spend all day yelling about his feet, how bad they felt with no socks on them.

Sort of a retard? Aubrey said, but kindly. He meant no harm. A loud retard he could understand.

Sort of, Anna said, lying back on the hotel carpet. They were in his room, waiting for another flight crew to get in from the airport so the night could start up for real. The ceiling stucco-painted white, the curtains brown, the bedding burgundy, the carpet dry-feeling on the backs of her arms and neck. The kind of carpet that's just for show: easy-clean, sanitized to prickling.

He was missing an enzyme, she said, and swooshed her arms and legs together and apart, together and apart. Making a carpet angel.

What's that? Aubrey said, dropping to the floor with a bottle in one hand. He had a couple of cheap glasses from the bathroom, plastic-wrapped against dirt, and he tried to get his thumbs inside the plastic to break it off.

Pretty strong wrap. The wrangling just cracked the cups and Aubrey smiling like Fuck you motherfucker.

This was Anna's first layover since the funeral.

They could have watched the Sault Aurora but instead they got drunk. They drank cheap beers and ate chicken and baked potatoes without sour cream but with salt and so much pepper the skins crackled in their teeth. In the Husky restaurant, ten minutes down the road from the hotel. After dinner she'd wanted to find the other crew but back in his room Aubrey pulled the forty of vodka out of a dresser drawer.

The second crew came in at nine. Anna lay down and made the angels until they showed up, her bare arms raw against the blue carpet. Aubrey and Anna, and then the Captain and First Officer and Purser plus two more girls off the other pairing. Anna's girl Jeannie also sitting in the room but not drinking, polishing her nails on the bed.

Where's your FO all this time? The other captain was Karol. Or Pavel. She wasn't listening.

Pavel lined up two sets of disposable plastic drinking cups. He had long fingers with long bones in them. He slit the plastic wrap and skinned the cups like a hunter.

Beating off to porn, Aubrey said. What the fuck do I know?

Between the seven of them they drank the vodka in little waves. They took a cab down to the Docks and thought about shooting pool but didn't and went back to drinking beer. The girls all sitting in a row on the high bank and three pitchers between them on tall bar tables. The other Purser was new, or new enough that Anna had never flown with her before, never even seen her in the crew lounge: black hair and eyes and the faintest, delicate-bleached moustache. She turned to Anna.

I'm not even supposed to be here, she said. I'm supposed to be at home. I just got back from vacation, and Harold calls me in at four in the morning. I haven't been home! I just sat on my bed and cried.

Where you went on vacation? Pavel said.

Curaçao. Oh my God, you have to go. Wait. Look at these. She reached down and dug into her purse for her phone.

Aubrey leaned across the table and pushed a pint of amber at Anna. Emergency situation, he said.

Anna: I know this one. There's a couple fornicating in the lav, and you've already called Cabin Secure. What do you do?

You're using that one tomorrow. There's your brief.

Sober Jeannie laughing with all her blonde hair, her feet and shoes tucked up under her on the bench. Pregnant, Anna happened to know, but not showing yet and this was important since she'd taken off her ring sometime between the hotel and the bar. Anna looked at the curve of Jeannie's legs on the high bench, her tiny feet in their black shoes. No belly yet, not even if you squinted.

You'd call the guys, right? Jeannie said.

What?

About the couple in the lav. That's what you'd do, right? Call the guys? And then you'd have to do your Secure all over again.

See? Aubrey said. It's a real situation. It could happen.

Yeah, I'd call you and tell you all about it, Anna said. Real slow.

Pavel bought a round of shots, and then another. Then a free round from the bartender.

My friend! Pavel said, when the girl brought the newest round on a tray.

The black-haired Purser now happy to be out. She swirled the shot glass in one hand and watched the liquid spin, then put it back quick and returned to her vacation slideshow. Okay, so this was the beach restaurant, right?

Her thumb scrolling down the screen. You have to see this lobster we ate. They put a little hat on him.