Confidence Read online

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was awful in there. And there was a weird energy.”

  “There was an aggression. It’s true. It was weird. Girls were being super weird in the bathroom.”

  “Really?”

  “They were pounding on the door of the stall when I was just hanging on in there, I thought I would puke, and they were banging and yelling.”

  “I saw that one girl push you when you came out. Who the hell were those people?”

  “They were all dressed funny. It was some promotion.”

  He closed his eyes so as to not see the gathering light. It was definitely grey in the room now. He said, “It was beer, I think. Or some kind of cooler. They had bright green shorts and tank tops.

  She said, “The tank tops were white.”

  “Their skin was all dark and orange. And the boys with them, the boys were like club boys from Richmond Street, they were huge and had big shirts and gold chains. I don’t know what the fuck they were doing in there.”

  She said, “It was like some massive don’t.”

  He laughed. “There were some really bad don’ts in there. Did you see the little guy with a straw hat? A little straw hat, a boater, like an impressionist painting.”

  “I saw him. That was a girl.”

  “I know. That’s what I was going to tell you.”

  She placed a hand flat on the bottom of his belly, her fingers on the crease of his thigh. He tensed his stomach. She played with his curls and he pushed against her. She said, “That kind of makes it a do.”

  “I know. It’s totally different. It’s hard to tell. There’s such a fine line.”

  “The caption would read, ‘You know how sometimes you see a little guy all brazen with a cool hat like this in the wrong place and you say good for you? And then you realize it’s a chunky chick and you think, oh, that’s totally different, but you don’t know if it’s good or bad?’”

  He rolled over and buried his face in her hair. The room was not dark any more. The blind glowed.

  He said, “It’s too bad we had already dropped the pills. We could have slept.”

  “It was fun in the park, though, no?”

  “It was. It was super fun. It was lovely. I liked just walking with you on the grass. All those kids hiding in the bushes, kissing.”

  “The swings were fun.”

  “And the light was so weird. That fluorescent light that made the leaves so green and unnatural. It was like a magic park. It felt secret. I guess we were high.”

  She said, “That was a good thing to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are we going to do today?

  He rolled onto his back. “You want to spend the day with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  She said, “Are you sick of me?”

  And this gave him a paroxysm of the physical tension that was like a pain in him, a rush of blood to the groin and an ache in the prostate. He couldn’t not grab her; it was like glue, he wanted to stick to her, be in her, to be her. He was stiff and pushing against her.

  She pushed against him too. They kissed but their mouths were dry. So it faded. It had been coming and going like this.

  He said, “We have to go somewhere quiet and calm, like nature.”

  “Nature?”

  And then they laughed at the idea of nature, of finding nature there. He thought of Southern Florida. He imagined her when she lived there, walking on barbed wire to get to school, hitchhiking in trucks, being pulled on a skateboard by sportscars: her life had been a movie. He had not been there; he could not imagine it.

  He said, “I know. It will have to be a park or something. Or we could leave the city.”

  “Like where?”

  “We could go to, I don’t know, a place with a lake, or a beach or something.”

  “They’re all far. You mean rent a car?”

  “What time do you have to be home.”

  She hesitated a moment before saying, “Around six.”

  He too was silent for a moment before saying, “Okay, that’s plenty of time. We could go.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know nature.”

  “Maybe it’s too far.”

  He said, “High Park?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s a holiday today. It will be full of families.”

  “It’s a holiday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “What about the lake? Just walk along the lake.”

  “Okay.”

  She grabbed his hand and their noses touched. And then they were just staring into each other’s eyes in the stuffy dawn light of the room, like some kind of movie, and they both knew it was silly and a cliché, but because of the drugs—and they knew this, they knew it was because of the drugs—it wasn’t silly. He also knew that it was different because of the drugs, because something had happened; it meant something now. He wondered if she knew this too.

  She said, in a very small voice, “We’re going to do this?”

  “We’re going to. We’re going to walk along the lake together.”

  Her eyes were shiny. She turned away and rubbed her face.

  He said, very quietly, almost in a whisper, “We’re in trouble now, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  She was leaning over the edge of the bed. She found a tissue and blew her nose. She said, “You say I’m in trouble?”

  “No. We’re in trouble.”

  “I thought that’s what you said. What do you mean?”

  “I mean. This is bonding. This isn’t just a fling any more.”

  She lay very still. Then she picked up the Winnie-the-Pooh and started turning the pages. He knew she wasn’t reading it.

  She said, “What’s the holiday?”

  “It’s Canada Day. I think.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a holiday. I don’t know.”

  “I hate holidays. Everything’s closed.”

  He said, “I know. It’s weird. You go out and you’re walking along and you realize something is weird. And then you figure out it’s a holiday and everyone knew about it and how did they know about it? Do they announce it in the paper or something?”

  “It’s in calendars.”

  “Who reads calendars?”

  “They have jobs.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Jobs. Right.”

  She put the book away and lay her head on his chest. And for some reason in the light they felt they could sleep again and they drifted off, probably only for a few minutes. He had a brief dream about his former high school: the images were transparent, as if bleached, lit from behind. He woke; it was the daylight coming in.

  They woke together and fell apart. It was getting hot in the room. There was a bird outside. He pushed the covers off her. Her body was long and white. The black rivers on her back didn’t extend to her front. There was only the winged thing in the centre of her chest (which she said she hated now and which she wanted to get rid of, but which he thought was thrilling and beautiful), and the ring of flames or leaves around her ankle. The tattoos were exactly the same black as her pubic hair. Her hipbones jutted like tent poles. He put a hand on one, felt its edge. He said, “You have to eat more.”

  She put a pillow over her head.

  He closed his eyes and felt sleep drifting near and far again. When he opened his eyes he didn’t know if he had been asleep, or how long they had been lying this way. He said, “Are you hungry yet?”

  “No.”

  “We should try to eat something.”

  “Why?”

  “Or have juice, anyway. Juice is good.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s get up and have juice.”

  “No. Not yet.” She grabbed him and held on, her head on his chest.

  He played with the black hair snaking over his skin. He said, “We have to get up at some po
int. It’s starting to get hot.”

  “Okay.”

  She kicked the sheet off her ankles and stood, long and wavy, then tottered for a second, as if dizzy. She held on to the dresser. He watched her, ready to get up. Then she straightened and glided soundlessly out the door, down the corridor.

  He listened to the silver sound of her peeing and he loved even that. He loved that she was peeing in his toilet; he felt proud about it. He loved even more the fact that she had walked naked down the corridor; he had hoped for a second that his roommate would see her, how tall she was, and the tattoos cut out of her whiteness, but his roommate wasn’t home, of course; he and Nula weren’t back from the show yet, or perhaps they were at Nula’s, or perhaps they had overheated and died in the crush. Perhaps they were dead.

  He rose to his knees and parted the tattered venetian blind to look out the window: the fire escape, the alley, the bottles on the deck, the ashtray. They must have sat out there for an hour after they got back from the park. It looked like a different place entirely.

  The sun was still buttery, but there was haze over the rooftops. He felt dry just looking at the light.

  She was back in the room. She folded herself into the bed. They rolled and gripped each other, didn’t move. Their hearts were still beating a little too fast.

  They got up. They got dressed. They drank some juice but they couldn’t eat either of the muffins that were in a cardboard box with a plastic top in the fridge.

  They rode their bikes down to the lake.

  They walked along the lake, sweating. The sky was yellow-grey, the air was steam. They were jostled by fat cyclists and rollerbladers in pads and helmets. She was wearing his T-shirt. Her feet were blistered from the stupid shoes she thought would be fun for dancing, blunt platform boots that went right up her calf, wrapped her in straps.

  They wanted to hold hands but even their hands were too hot. They sat under a tree and drank water.

  She said, “Maybe we’re ready to sleep again.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

  “I can’t face the thought of cycling back.”

  “I know,” he said, “Maybe we could leave our bikes here and take a cab.”

  “No.”

  They watched a couple lumber past, a man and a woman in tight cycling shorts. They both had fat white legs and little white socks, and wore sweatshirts that said things. One of the sweatshirts had a wolf’s face screened on it.

  “Lots of don’ts,” he murmured.

  “Like can you even tell how old those people are? Are they twenty-five or forty-five? I have no idea.”

  “It’s cool when you see old people together though.”

  “Not them though.” There was a skinny guy in white pants. He was with a small Asian woman. He had his shirt open to show white chest hair. He wore white shoes made of woven leather. He was taking her picture in the grass.

  “He got her mail-order. That’s like a serious don’t.”

  “There’s a do.” A roller-girl in small red shorts with a blue stripe up the side and a spandex crop-top. Her hair was in a long braid. She was moving fast.

  “She’s hot.”

  She said, “I always want to see what kind of guy they’re with.”

  A big tanned guy with a shaved head came fast behind. “Okay,” he said. “You like that?”

  “Sure,” she said. “For one night. But not really. He shaves his chest. I hate that.”

  “He must be gay.”

  “Gay might be a do, though.”

  “Gay might make him a do. Indeed.”

  “I’d prefer that to the long shorts guys called Dave and Todd and Mike.”

  “Hey Dave,” he said, “We got tickets to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Awesome. Outstanding. Hey Mike. Get you a frosty?”

  “You’re too good at that. Oh look.”

  A family of people who were definitely foreign, probably Eastern European, ushered children along the path. The older women had tight hairdos and smoked as they walked. One of them had stretchy pants that displayed the underwear cutting into her flesh. You could see the flowers on the underwear through the pants.

  She said, “Wow.”

  He could say nothing else to this.

  The youngest woman, who was pushing a pram, was tall and thin and had a pretty summer dress but wore knee-high flesh coloured stockings and plastic sandals.

  “Wow,” he said. “How can she ruin that dress with those stockings? That’s so odd.”

  “Maybe it’s cool. Like she doesn’t care. I bet she doesn’t shave her armpits.”

  “Oh,” he said, “yeah, that is sexy. Smoky, sweaty Czechs with hairy armpits. That is kind of sexy.”

  Then they were sick and quiet. His mouth felt like sand.

  She said, “Are you going to work today?”

  He put his head on his knees. “No. No. I couldn’t read. I don’t even know if the library’s open.”

  “What chapter are you working on?”

  “Oh Christ. Is there any more water?”

  She gave him the bottle and he finished it.

  He said, “ Something about mediation. It’s about McLuhan, really, and Benjamin. I’m talking about early photography. But I’m not. I’ve been stuck on this chapter for months. Okay, that’s really enough of that. I’m exhausted.”

  She said, “You want to watch Until the End of the World tonight?

  “I thought you’d already seen it.”

  “I can watch it a million times. I want you to see it.”

  He was silent a long time. Then he said, “What time is Bob coming back?”

  She sighed. “Some time today. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I thought you said six.”

  “I have to go home for a bit. But I could come over later. I want to see this with you.”

  “Who’s managing tonight?”

  “Jerry. I don’t know. Not me.”

  “When do you work next?”

  “Tomorrow. Evening. I have nothing to do.”

  “But he’ll be home tonight.”

  She shrugged. She put her head on her knees.

  He said, “Don’t you have to rejoin your real life at a certain point?”

  She did not move, did not twitch. But after a time there were tears brimming in her eyes and falling out. Then she put her face in her hands.

  “So,” he said. “I said the wrong thing.”

  She got up. She walked briskly away.

  He caught up with her at a railing on the lake. The water was flat and turgid. You could smell sewage. There were ducks just beneath them, swimming in floating oil. They were pecking at the cartons of food that had become stuck along the dock. One had a cigarette stuck in its feathers.

  He said, “I’m sorry.”

  She said, “This water is just sludge. I can’t believe they’re swimming in it.”

  “Don’t look down. Look out at the island.”

  She said, “Why did you have to say that?”

  He said, “I don’t know. To be mean, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I got mad for a second. That we were pretending.”

  She let out a long shaky breath. “Okay.”

  “Sorry.”

  She said, “If you don’t want to do this, if you can’t handle it, we can stop. I’ve always said this. I’ve always said it would be difficult.”

  “I know. I can do this. I said I could do it.”

  She said, “What the hell are we going to do?” Her voice was wavering again.

  He said, very low and calmly, “We’re just going to wait until you’ve saved enough to move out.”

  “That’s not till September.”

  “I can wait. It will be shitty until then.”

  She turned and kissed him quickly, then took his hand, and they walked towards their bikes.

  They passed a guy wearing a shiny track suit that hung loosely on him; it looked like silk. He was Turkish or something. He looked like a sultan i
n a harem, except that his silks had meaningless words written on them, words in no language. Perhaps they were the name of a soccer team, or perhaps the name of the company that had made the clothes.

  They both said “Do” at the same time.

  He said, “Do you ever think about yours?”

  “About my what?”

  “About your thesis.”

  She shook her head. “I think that’s. I’m not going to think about it any more.”

  She had studied pharmacology. That’s why she had ended up in this city. But they had met at the Hound Bar, which Bob owned.

  He thought of Bob, his moustache, his long hair, how on earth she had ever ended up with him. She had never explained. And what she was doing in that shitty restaurant. It was such a waste of her.

  He decided he had to try to go to the library that afternoon, if only to sit in the coolness for a while, to tell himself he was there.

  And back at his house, after the tears and the kisses and the promises, she rode off on her bicycle, in her big dancing boots, and he was relieved to be alone. He sat for a while and thought about watching a movie, but he was too hot, so he packed—trying to do it fast, without thinking, trying not to think about how little was left in the afternoon and how sleepy he would soon be—his laptop and some paper and his own copies of McLuhan and Benjamin, which he had not actually looked at for some weeks, and he got on his bike and rode in the haze to the library.

  On Harbord Street he saw a middle aged guy with grey hair who was probably some computer game developer or TV guy, and this guy was wearing huge skater shorts that went down to his calf and exposed his birdy little ankles. He laughed, it was such a fantastic don’t—this guy’s name was probably Morton Feinbaum and he stayed home every night and watched American Idol and took notes on it with a dry seriousness and drove an Audi to his loft-like office every day—because he imagined telling all this to her, but then he was relieved that she wasn’t there to see it and to hear him, because it had become kind of an addiction, this game, and it was all he thought about, and he had to think about something else. He couldn’t stop it though: all he saw were don’ts. There was a girl in a kind of Laura Ashley sack dress, carrying books to the library. There was nothing but don’ts around him.

  He found a post for his bike and had to take off his heavy knapsack to get his lock out. His T-shirt was already soaked. His knapsack was heavy because of the books he carried around, had been carrying around for several months now, like talismans, without reading them (although he had read them before, some passages several times, and already written essays about them). He felt sick lifting the bag off the ground and walking towards the library. He wondered if he would ever be rid of it. For a second he thought that the only thing worth doing with the books was to read them aloud to her, as she had read him Winnie-the-Pooh; they were a kind of prayer.