The Chrome Suite (3 page)

They sat looking up at the sky, pink with the reflection of city lights. They heard a squeal of tires echo in the street and it was quiet once again. Then Amy began to hear a rumbling sound, the sound of snoring in the room above their heads. Daria glanced up at the window and grinned. “Oh, you have company. I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.” They were silent for several moments, listening as the snoring grew louder, a ragged guttural sound.

“It doesn’t sound like anyone I know,” Daria said, and laughed. She leaned forward and patted Amy on the knee. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask who. But I am curious.”

Amy knew she was expected to say who it was, but she remained silent. She’d aroused Daria’s interest with her reticence, she realized, as she sensed the tension in the woman’s posture, her surreptitious search of Amy’s face, eyes glancing away to sweep across the yard. Light dawned in her face as she noted the presence of his car. “Amy,” she exclaimed, “not the L.B.T.! Don’t tell me that you and the L.B.T.?” She began to laugh, her laughter saying that she was tickled by the idea. “I’m sorry,” she said as she dabbed at her eyes with the belt of her housecoat. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I thought you two didn’t even
like
one another.” She chuckled as she drew a package of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one. “My, my, you are full of surprises,” she said. She leaned back into the chair and studied Amy.
“But you know,” she said carefully, searching for the right tone, “I’m really not. Surprised. I’ve always thought that there’s something quite charming about that man. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s that he’s so civilized.”

“So, what else don’t I know about you?” Amy had asked Piotr the following morning. “You snore like a chain-saw.” He was standing in the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, holding a basket filled with the usual paraphernalia – various cosmetics, creams, colognes. He picked through the items, his expression one of bewilderment. “Amy, what are all these things for?”

In the months following he began to tell stories about himself. The scar beside his eye wasn’t really a duelling scar but the result of a skiing accident, a pole-tip glancing the corner of his eye. He told her about growing up in Kraków. How he’d fantasized about being a North American Indian and that his favourite toy had been a tomahawk, which a friend of his father’s had sent as a gift from France. She was intrigued by his stories, especially the legends. The legend of Boruta, for example, the Prince of Polish devils, who had attempted to grab hold of the corner-stone of a church, to shake loose its walls and bring it down. Piotr had been to the Romanesque cathedral at Tum, the church where the devil had been, and had placed his hand into the imprint of Boruta’s hand. As she listened to his stories she grew aware of the paucity of her own, that she had nothing better or even of equal value to give him. And so she kept her history where it belonged. In the journals in a trunk upstairs in a closet.

At the end of the first year, he told her that he loved her. He was drunk when he said it. They had just finished shooting a film and it was during the wrap party. She rode the handlebars of a child’s bicycle, a prop, and they weaved among the pillars of a cavernous warehouse, away from the echo of rock music, the smell of dope, a wild, fast ride down a tunnel-like corridor into a dark room. There they danced with their foreheads touching, mind mining mind. “I’m
so tired of fighting with you,” she said. He picked her up and swung her around, his laughter on the edge of hysteria breaking in the back of his throat. When he set her down he licked her cheeks, slathering her face like a dog with his hot saliva. “Yes, Aimless Amy. No more fighting. I love you.”

He was sober the following morning when he stood in the doorway watching her bathe. He was fascinated by all things female. “I do love you,” he said. Well, she thought, so this is it, then. This will be the end. Now he will lose his shine, his sex appeal. “But there’s no future in it,” he went on to say. “This doesn’t change anything. It’s what we agreed. I just wanted you to know that. I do love you.” He would tell her that often. It was as though once he learned to say the word “love,” he must use it over and over.

“I understand,” Amy said. She grew shaky and her scalp tingled. Love, a transient wanting to stay for a time. But she was certain it was love because she hadn’t asked him to say it and he hadn’t asked for anything in return.

They begin to catch glimpses of the sun on water on both sides of the highway as they head up the strand of the Bruce Peninsula. The air changes. It becomes lighter, moist, and as she relaxes her grip on the steering wheel the knot of tension between her shoulders begins to loosen. Sunlight flashes in the windshields of several vehicles approaching in the distance, and as the cars sweep around a curve towards them the angle of light changes for a moment and the vehicles become scintillating silver balls, shimmering balls of light which seem to bounce down the highway towards them. The angle of light changes once again and the vehicles suddenly become solid. Then the traffic grows heavier, a stream of cars travelling slowly, almost bumper to bumper. “I don’t like the looks of this,” she says.

As they pull up beside the toll booth at the gates, the sound of the ferry’s horn quivers in the air as the vessel moves away from the loading dock. Amy swears silently as the attendant guides her into
the outside lane. She’s thinking of the room she reserved in Thessalon at the Maranatha Motel and its kitchen closing down at eight o’clock.

“Well, at least we’ll be first on the next one,” Piotr says. His dark eyes stare at her from behind his glasses, steady and unblinking. He grabs her hand, squeezes. “Thank you. You’re a good driver.”

His formality is irritating. “Oh, I see. We’re practising at being friends.”

They walk to loosen stiff muscles and enter almost deserted shops and poke about the displays of souvenirs. Piotr drops a Mountie hat onto her head and places a Maple Leaf flag in each hand and snaps a picture. What will he do with the hundreds of photographs he has taken? Will he find some way to edit her out of them?

When they step out of the store they both notice the iridescent flash of colour, a hummingbird darting among flowers bordering the walk. They pause, Amy silently amazed, feeling that its presence has been arranged for their benefit, as have all the sightings of wildlife they have encountered during their six years of travels, the deer, the turtles, the beaver, the bears, a fox loping alongside a runway as their plane landed; animals stepping out from their natural habitat to view Piotr and Amy passing by. Raising their heads to greet the special children, eyes meeting eyes. They once saw a great egret gliding low above the marshes just outside of Winnipeg. Its presence was a rarity for Manitoba, a wildlife expert assured them. It had appeared, a white ghostly bird, its graceful wings unfolding against the emerald cloth of the marsh, just like that. For them. The egret was herself, Amy had fantasized, hovering above the marsh of Piotr’s body, touching, breathing her love into him, sweeping down the breadth of him until he rose up and cried out.

They find their usual grassy knoll facing the water. The ferry’s stacks are two sticks disappearing over the horizon. They sit in silence as
they eat the bread and cheese they had bought. Later, Piotr succumbs to the warmth of the sun and stretches out on the grass, head cradled in Amy’s lap. He dozes while she browses through his newspaper. She reads that a “professional, employed gentleman, early 50s, 6’, who enjoys the arts, is seeking a vivacious, slender, attractive, refined lady with integrity.” Forget it, Amy thinks. Six feet is too tall. Hank was six feet and all she ever got from him was a stiff neck from looking up. She reads that the Roman Catholic Church in Poland is winning the right to teach its religion to atheists. Power lines must be protected in Manitoba. They don’t say against what, but the inference is there. Protection against a group of people who might sabotage power lines in the middle of winter to make a point. The Tories seek billions for farmers, she reads, and thinks of the town where she grew up, how it has become reduced, looks so worn out and abandoned. She reads for almost an hour, all the bits and pieces of information that make up the world today. But not her world. It’s as though the events happen on another planet and don’t affect her. She reads to keep from thinking about Piotr, who is leaving her. When she closes the newspaper, the events vanish.

Piotr shifts in sleep and settles down once again into her lap, his mouth slack, fists curled. She watches as his chest rises and falls in a deep sigh. “You will always be special to me,” he’d said last night. He had been sitting on the bed across from her, leaning forward, hands resting on his knees. He had been silent for almost half an hour, forehead slick and body shivering. Frightened, Amy thought. Shivering with fear. “This is not easy,” he said, he kept saying. “I’m still very fond of you.”

“Then why leave?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He stared at the floor, silent again for long moments, and Amy couldn’t bear the tension. She went to the window, which overlooked an alley below. She’d heard voices out there earlier, the sound of vehicles. When she looked down, she saw
what was to be a scene for a film. Two H.M.I. lights at the entrance of the alley beamed eerily through heavy fog steaming from machines. “They’re shooting something,” she said but Piotr gave no indication that he’d heard. The fog thinned and Amy saw several people emerge at the entrance of the alley and gather around a camera. A pick-up shot, because of the absence of a full crew. “Action!” a voice called and a slight figure darted across the alley and disappeared into the shadows of a darkened doorway. A fugitive, likely, she thought. She watched several takes. She would have liked to drop something down into the middle of their scene, a bottle or the glass of Scotch she held. Just as Piotr had done. He’d dropped a bomb into her scene.

“Why?”

His shoulders sagged beneath his tan shirt. He had a closet full of identical tan and brown shirts and pants. “L.B.T.,” “The Little Brown Tub.” The tag, a jealousy-induced one, had been pinned on him at the film institute where she met him. “Oh, you mean the little brown tub in baggy pants who pretends he can’t speak the language? You mean him?” She’d told Piotr about it and he had laughed wryly, shrugging it off, saying that he was used to being disliked, and immediately he became interesting. She never told him, though, that it was she who had invented the label.

“Why?” she persisted. “If you’re still so fond of me, why leave?” She winced inwardly at the word “fond.”

“It’s too difficult to explain,” he said. “Even I’m not sure I understand.”

“Try,” she said, her voice taut with anger.

“All right,” he said. “It’s because I think that perhaps I no longer love you.”

Contrary to Piotr’s prediction they’re not among the first to board the ferry. The line of cars farthest away is loaded first and then the
attendant signals for them to move forward. They drop in behind the traffic streaming on towards the gaping mouth of the vessel. Tires meet the metal ramp at the entrance with a steady rhythmic clank. They’ll be on the upper level, Amy realizes. Piotr guides the car up the steep grade, but just as they are about to reach the top of it, the car in front of them stops and they’re left hanging at almost a ninety-degree angle. Piotr turns to her in panic. She yanks on the emergency brake. The attendant below is preoccupied with directing the car behind them onto the bottom level. “Hey, you, come on!” Piotr yells from the window and the attendant turns quickly, sees their predicament, grabs a lever, and they feel the car rise and level off. Their ears pop as car doors slam shut and people begin moving towards the stairs. “Hey, it’s okay now,” Amy says and rubs his knee. He takes these happenstances personally. He is constantly suspicious that the country is one big trap-line set to snare its immigrants and keep them in their place. Amy believes he’s right. She takes on his anger directed at the attendant. She had come to believe that she was an immigrant, too, cut off from her country at an early age. It’s this ability to identify, she will later come to realize, her ability to take on his skin, to see through his eyes, that caught her.

They find the lounge and a quiet corner and share a beer. Piotr unzips his leather folder and spreads pages across the table. Amy watches a group of teenagers mill about on the deck outside the window. They look out of place, California, in their muted pastel colours. They begin throwing pieces of hot dog to the wind and are rewarded by seagulls treading air, sometimes flying backwards in order to snatch a scrap of bun. A man stands off to one side, watching. He leans against the railing, a sharp visual contrast to the younger people and their exuberant playing at feeding the gulls. A Charles Manson look-alike, Amy thinks. He laughs as a seagull swoops down from nowhere and plucks a piece of bun off a young man’s head. He’s thin, a bony man, probably undernourished as a child. He digs
about in his shirt pocket and then stuffs wads of something in each ear. Licks of dark hair flip in the wind. Most likely doesn’t have any money and is reluctant to come in where he can smell the food, she thinks. A rousing cheer rises over a near in-flight collision of several birds snatching at the last bit of food. Then the pastel-coloured young people drift away and the unkempt-looking man watches them.

The squeak of Piotr’s fine-tip felt marker sets Amy on edge. He’s crossing out line after line of dialogue of a stage play, the work of a Polish playwright, which he hopes to co-produce with his new partner, Elizabeth. Angst-ridden hyperbole. Amy wonders what Eastern European writers will have to write about now. Piotr dislikes what he has read of Canadian literature. Too much kitchen sink, he says. People falling in and out of love with themselves or writers playing around with style and form because they have nothing to say. Huh, Amy thinks, as she searches through her bag for the novel she’s been reading at his request. Talk about self-indulgent, getting off on the smell-of-your-own-armpit kind of love. She thumps the book down onto the table. “Huh!” she says aloud. Piotr doesn’t look up. The book is
Tristan
. A translation of a novel by Maria Kuncewiczowa. She picks up the book, rests her feet on the chair beside her, and begins to read.