LIAM

LEAH

ALEXIS

CHLOE

JENNIFER

BRAD

HOSTESS

RANDOM WOMAN

BACKGROUND CONVERSATIONS IN AN AUDITORIUM

LIAM: Can’t I just meet you back here when you’re done? There’s a pub around the corner.

LEAH: No, Liam! You have to do this too. My friend Lisa tried speed dating a few weeks ago and she met someone really interesting. An intellectual type!

LIAM: (MOCKING) Oooh!

LEAH: Come on. I won’t let my brother spend every weekend at home playing Madden alone in his underpants anymore.

(BEAT) It looks like the guys are sitting on the outside and girls are on the inside.

LIAM: Okay. But I’m gonna have to make it interesting.

1.

LEAH: You be nice and don’t lie too much. You never know: you might meet someone you’re interested in. I think it’s starting. Sit down!

BACKGROUND CONVERSATION QUIETS

THE HOSTESS SPEAKS INTO A

MICROPHONE

HOSTESS:  (D) Welcome, everyone, to this week’s session of Rapid Fire Dating!

CROWD CLAPS

(D) For y’all newcomers, this is how the night’s gonna work: the ladies will have a seat across from the gentlemen, and y’all can get to talkin’. But don’t get too attached, because after two minutes, the buzzer will go and the ladies will shift over to their right. So you gentlemen can just keep your butts planted where they are!  No need to worry about the men getting lost and needing to ask for directions, right ladies?

FEMALE LAUGHTER

LIAM: Christ.

HOSTESS: (D) All right, let’s begin!

2.

A BUZZER SOUNDS

ONGOING BACKGROUND CONVERSATION

ALEXIS: Hi! Alexis.

LIAM: Hey, there. Liam.

ALEXIS: Great name. Are you Irish?

LIAM: No, but I wish I had a Guinness right now.

ALEXIS: (LAUGHS) That’s funny. Well, I love ethnic names, anyway.

LIAM: Yeah, so Alexis… are you… American?

ALEXIS: No, but I’d love to move to L.A. some day!

(BEAT) So, what do you do?

LIAM: Oh, uh, I’m a… photographer. I graph photos. Of models.

ALEXIS: How perfect! I mean, as you can probably tell, I do a bit of modelling sometimes. What do you charge?

LIAM: Charge?

3.

ALEXIS: Your models? The last session I did was a semi-nude. The guy charged me 300 bucks for the session. They turned out super hot.

LIAM: (STIFLES LAUGH) He charged you, huh? I mean, yeah, sounds like my rate. So, you must be a professional model?

ALEXIS: I’m what they call a quintuple threat: actress, singer, model, dancer, and writer.

LIAM: That must be getting expensive for you.

ALEXIS: I get a lot of tips working days at Hooligan’s. But, it’s a struggling artist’s life, you know?

LIAM: Totally.

(BEAT) So, have you ever done this kind of thing before?

ALEXIS: Oh, yes. I have a few times now. I’m so busy with all of my projects that I barely have the time to eat let alone go on dates. Not that I need to eat much, you know? I eat like a bird.

LIAM: You don’t chew?

ALEXIS: What?

4.

LIAM: Nevermind.

ALEXIS: (LAUGHS) You’re random! You must be a real artistic type to be a photographer.

LIAM: Oh, yeah. It takes a real eye to get the right amount of… lady versus non- lady in the shot. And to make sure the models are not too shiny. Or maybe… not making stupid faces. They do that sometimes. Light and shadow. Posing. All that.

ALEXIS:  Well, maybe you and I could work together in the future!

LIAM: Oh, yeah? Um, sure.

ALEXIS: Here, take one of my cards.

LIAM: Great. Oh, look, it even says “quintuple threat” right on it. And with three exclamation marks. That’s really enthusiastic. And the pink card is very jarring to the eye. I mean, the good kind of jarring.

ALEXIS: Thank you. I wanted it to stand out and really show my natural energy. Like, my presence is just —  PINK —  you know?

BUZZER SOUNDS

5.

LIAM: (FEIGHNED DISAPPOINTMENT) Oh no.

ALEXIS: You hang onto that.

(LOUD WHISPER) I do total nude shoots, too.

Nice meeting you.

LIAM: You too.

CHAIR SCREECHES AS THE WOMEN SWITCH PLACES

CHLOE: (NERVOUS) Hello. Chloe.

LIAM: Hi. Liam.

CHLOE: Sorry, I’m a little nervous.

LIAM: I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m a pretty easy going guy.

CHLOE: I just got out of a long relationship and my friend brought me here. I’m slightly tempted to run for it.

LIAM: I hear that. My sister dragged me here, too. We can just try and get through this together. Well, for two minutes anyway.

6.

CHLOE: (SHY GIGGLE) Right.

(BEAT) (CONFIDENT) So, what do you do?

LIAM: I’m a lawyer.

CHLOE: Oh, wow. That’s impressive. My ex-boyfriend was in law school at one point. But, he dropped out so he could start a truck nuts business.

LIAM: A what?

CHLOE: (ANNOYED) Those plastic testicles guys hang from their trailer hitches. He calls his “Wrangler Danglers.” I told him that was far too specific a name. But, he never listened to me.

LIAM: Why limit yourself?

CHLOE: (CONFIDENT) That’s what I said! He’s also currently in the design phase for “Sideview Rears.”

LIAM: Is that exactly what it sounds like?

CHLOE: (SAD) Yes.

LIAM: So, what do you do?

7.

CHLOE: I’m in advertising and marketing.

LIAM: Interesting. What kind of companies do you work for?

CHLOE: (ANGRY) Well, I had been working on the promotional website for my ex’s company, “Butts and Nutts,” but now that’s all over with.

LIAM: I see.

CHLOE: I guess that’s what I get for mixing business and pleasure.

LIAM: And with this economy, who can really afford all of those butts and nuts, anyway?

CHLOE: It’s better to just move on.

LIAM: Yes. Moving on is a great idea.

CHLOE: (CHEERFUL) So, what kind of lawyer are you?

LIAM: A few kinds. I’m a defence lawyer, I guess you could say.

CHLOE: Oh. You defend criminals or something?

8.

LIAM: Uh, it’s complicated. It’s not your common criminal activity. I work with a lot of… astronauts. You know — space crime — and such.

CHLOE: I didn’t know that existed!

LIAM: Oh, yeah. There are different rules up there. It’s pretty wild.

CHLOE: That sounds fascinating!

(BEAT) (SUSPICIOUS) Are you really addicted to your job?

LIAM: I’m busy. Really busy.

CHLOE: (SAD) Oh. Yeah. My ex was a workaholic, too. He’d just spend hours in the basement on the computer designing those butts. It was sick, really.

BUZZER SOUNDS

LIAM: Wow. That was fast. Nice meeting you.

CHLOE: (SAD) What? Oh, yeah.

CHAIR SCREECHES AS THE WOMEN SWITCH PLACES

9.

JENNIFER: Hi. Jennifer.

LIAM: Yo. Liam.

JENNIFER: This is great. It’s so fast-paced!

LIAM: Yeah. It’s a magical whirlwind adventure.

JENNIFER: I find it’s best to just get it all out there in the open. Right to the point!

LIAM: Go for it.

JENNIFER: (LIKE BULLET POINTS) I’m 28. I’m an administrative assistant for an insurance company. I love to do yoga, scrapbooking, and I go running every morning. I just finished a marathon two weeks ago. I’m looking for someone who loves to work but who also loves to play. I want to get a bigger place I can decorate just the way I like it. And I love kids. Time’s ticking away, am I right? I’m definitely interested in someone who’s dedicated and as committed to the dream as I am!

(BEAT) So, what do you do? Tell me everything!

LIAM: (HESITANT) I’m in… food.

JENNIFER: Don’t be shy. Get it all out there on the table, like I did!

10.

LIAM: Yeah. Okay.

(BEAT)(CONFIDENT) I’m, let’s say, 34. I flip burgers and clean grease traps for a living. That is, when I am not trying to get my fantasy novel published.

(LOUD WHISPER) I think it’s really going to take off soon!

I just finished passing plastic cups of vodka from the sidelines to thirsty runners in the marathon two weeks ago. I want to stay in  the small place I’m living in because there’s a lot less surface area for things to rot on. And I hate kids. Unless I can get them to clean for me. Also,  if you stop by my work at close, I can hook you up with a load of free grease.

JENNIFER: All right. I’m going to go to the washroom for the rest of this round. Good luck, asshole.

LIAM: Cheers.

CHAIR QUICKLY PUSHED BACK

BRAD: (OFF) Fine. I’ll sit here.

CHAIR SQUEEK AS BRAD SITS

Oh.

11.

LIAM: Oh, hey, buddy. I think you uh—

BRAD: Screwed it up already.

(OFF) See, Brenda? I screwed it up already!

This is total BS.

LIAM: You could just move to the other side, over th—

BRAD: Man look at this place. Whew! It’s like Last Call at Hooligan’s in here. Speed Dating. Who the hell came up with that idea? I got tricked into coming here. All I heard was “lots of ladies in one night”!

LIAM: Fun-wise, it’s pretty much the opposite of that.

BRAD: Dude, I can imagine. Whew— look at that one!

BUZZER SOUNDS

LIAM: Oh, that’s the buzz—

BRAD: I don’t get the concept at all. I mean, we sit in this circle—

RANDOM WOMAN: Excuse me, I think you’re supposed to be over there.

12.

BRAD: Lady, I’m supposed to be a lot of things. You can just move on.

LIAM: (OFF) Sorry.

BRAD: Anyway. This speed dating. I get that it’s a new fad for Cosmo to feature in their next edition. But, how is this appealing, really? Corralling a bunch of people together and getting the quickest, lamest snapshot of a person possible.

BRAD CRACKS OPEN A CAN OF BEER

You want one? I’ve got like seven of these. I’m Brad, by the way.

LIAM: Liam. Sure, why not?

LIAM CRACKS OPEN A CAN OF BEER

I heard that women judge a guy’s potential in the first ten seconds of talking to him.

BRAD: Just long enough to check out what clothes he’s wearing and if he stutters. My sister Brenda dragged me here because she thinks I need a woman. But, really, she just wants me to stop hitting on her friends all the time.

13.

LIAM: Man, my sister brought me here, too.

BRAD: Your well o’ ladies been dry for awhile?

LIAM: Uh, I had a girlfriend about a year ago. But, you know.

BRAD: Yeah. I do feel sorry for the ladies here tonight. Sure, some of them think it’s just a laugh, but others, man, you can smell the desperation.

LIAM: It smells like this girl’s business card. Check it out.

BRAD: (READING) “Quintuple threat.”

I didn’t know glitter had a smell.

LIAM: My sister thinks I am lonely or something. She just wants me to be happy. I’m not really sure how being here leads to that.

BRAD: Dunno man.

LIAM: Well. Hey… there’s a pub around the corner. You feel like ditching this place and having a proper pitcher? The game’s gonna start in about fifteen minutes.

BRAD: Man! Now you’re cooking with class. Let’s go.

14.

TWO CHAIRS PUSHED OUT LOUDLY

BRAD (cont’d) I guess we’ll be screwing up the organization of this little event even further.

LIAM: Hey, maybe two ladies will strike up a conversation. They might find they have more fun.

BUZZER SOUNDS

END

I watch Mathilde watch herself in the long mirror. I watch her right leg, with concentrated strength, rise until her big toe slips past the frame of her reflection. With her body divided—one half reaching desperately for the ceiling, and the other half all too bound by its gravitational thoughts—I wait for Mathilde to choose. At the very moment that she looks most liable to leap, I watch her leg swing back down like the heavier side of a teeter totter. I hear the smack of her knee on the hardwood, and brace myself for the sound—the sound that is without language—that I know will immediately follow. By the time I’ve made it to her, she’s already wiping her tears and snot on the bubble-gum blue taffeta. It looks as though a slug has begun to traverse the circumference of her tutu. Upon seeing me, she wails louder. She didn’t know that I’d been watching.

“Maman!” she screams.

Silently, I make my exit.

***

November 2, 2009

I’m in the kitchen, slicing apples, when I hear Mathilde playing the piano. Her fingers are light and imprecise on the keys. I place the apples on a plate, and venture towards the sound. Standing a few feet behind her, I scarcely breathe for a moment or two. I stand listening, in silence, as she tries to make sense of the collage of notes in front of her.

She stops playing. Awkwardly, I begin to clap. She spins around on the seat, her hair whipping her features and momentarily slicing them in half. She reaches for the lid, and it falls with a heavy slam. A look of surprise at the noise she has just made flits across her face. It only takes a moment for it to fade, though—her face sharpens and contorts, and a grimace replaces it. She glares at me as though I’ve betrayed her. The crystal nicknacks on top of the piano faintly vibrate and hum.

“C’est une chanson en français,” she sneers.

I don’t respond. I simply place the plate next to the nicknacks, where it’s too high for her to reach, and walk away.

***

December 14, 2009 (Mathilde’s sixth birthday)

I’m twenty minutes late by the time I run through the brick gates of Mathilde’s school, a single blue helium balloon waving behind me. I don’t stop running until I reach the playground. I scan the area, but my eyes seem to still be moving at the speed that my legs were. Individual faces of the schoolchildren blur before me—what I see, instead of Mathilde, is the collective innocence of their round, pink mouths and heavy eye-lids. I take a deep breath, blink, and look again. I still don’t see her. I notice one of her friends, whom I rush towards. She stands in front of the swing-set with her hands on her hips, and her little black eyebrows raised like small, pointy arrows. She looks as though she’s been expecting me for a while. I ask her hurriedly, half in my fragmented French, and half in my frantic gestures, if she knows where Mathilde is. She shakes her head, but a smile gradually crawls to her lips. I ask her if she’s sure. Sil-tu-plaît? I’m pleading with her at this point. As most polite six-year-old girls would, she responds to the power of the word.

“Elle est…là.” She points in the general direction of a cluster of children rolling in the gravel and laughing maniacally, the creases of their jackets lined with dust.

“Ah…où?” I stammer, realizing that I sound more childish than her.

The answer becomes obvious: she’s hiding, and I’m supposed to find her.

I spot her under the yellow slide, with her body compressed in foetal position. She giggles, and I’m met with a certain degree of relief. I watch nervously as she untangles her limbs. I stand waiting, with my arms outstretched. She walks slowly towards me, her dark eyes narrow.

“Happy birthday…bonne anniversaire…” I stutter somewhere just past her ears, with my fingers entangling themselves in her fine, knotted hair.

Her body remains limp in my embrace. I release her, and pull the ring of ribbon from my wrist. I slip it onto hers. Before she even has a chance to thank me…before she even has a chance to smile, the balloon is above her head, and then above mine, squirming into the sky.

“I’ll get you another one, don’t worry.”

I realize how incomprehensible my promises, which I can only offer in English, are to her. I feel as though it’s my fault somehow.

***

January 17, 2010

I wake up to the sound of Mathilde’s cry. One floor down from me, her scream seems to have sliced the dense night air in two. I turn over instinctively to face the glow of my digital clock: 4:02 a.m. winks wearily in neon at me. I get out of bed, blackness flooding my vision. Stumbling blindly down the stairs, I make it to her room. I ask her what’s wrong, my voice still thick with sleep. I only half expect the shadowy void I face to respond. But then, all at once, I realize why she had made such a sound. The glow of her nightlight is nowhere to be seen. She had probably woken from another night terror. I head to the basement, in search of another bulb.

I find her out of bed and standing in the doorway as I near her room again. I only notice her there at the last minute—the slope of her shoulders subtly cutting through the thinning darkness gives her away. Upon seeing me, she ricochets back to the safety of her heavy comforter. I struggle clumsily, but eventually succeed in replacing the light. The soft curvature of her face, now illuminated, gives her presence away once more. She had been so silent, lying in the bed. She pulls her blanket up past her nose upon meeting my gaze, but her eyes are gentle. I pause, hovering over her momentarily.

“Merci.” Her tone is genuinely grateful, I think.

I smile briefly, and as I’m about to exit her room, I awkwardly blow her a kiss.

“Bisou,” she whispers cautiously but audibly, while pulling the fabric further over her nose.

Turning around, I boldly make my way over to her. I bow to press my lips to her forehead. It’s beaded in sweat, which I wipe with the back of my own clammy hand. She doesn’t turn away from me.

I leave, slowly closing the door. She asks me not to close it all the way. I don’t. The flow of light, leaking from within it, helps me to locate the staircase.

***

February 8, 2010

Mathilde is bent over numerous felt pens, which are pressed between her ink-stained fingers, when I enter the living room. I notice that they are all blue. It’s easy to see that the task of adding colour to whatever she has in front of her is an important one. I quietly seat myself next to her. I wait for her to protest my arrival. She remains silent, and I see that her head is bowed over a picture of a horse. The horse is fast becoming pastel-blue, fading into the backdrop of the sky.

“Très belle, Mathilde,” I offer bravely.

For another minute or so, she shows no sign of having heard my compliment. But just as I’m about to leave, she speaks.

“My favoreet coleur is blue,” she proclaims to me in her best English—stretching each foreign word out on her tongue until it’s taut and seems ready to break in multiple places, and then releasing it, allowing it to curl backwards and knot in whichever way it wishes.

I beam at her, and instinctively extend my arms to her in a hug. She dodges it. I begin to walk away, but glance once over my shoulder as I’m about to pass through the open door. Her body is essentially unmoved, but she has craned her neck towards me. Her eyes are round as she watches me go.

***

March 18, 2010

“Regarde! Regarde, regarde, regarde!”

Mathilde bounds over and peers up meaningfully at me. I have been watching her dig around in the garden for the past hour. I can scarcely tell if she’s excited or if she’s scared, because her eyes appear to be overflowing with both emotions. Her palms, caked in mud, are intricately creased over the handle of a hand-shovel—so tightly, and so purposefully, that her knuckles are bloodless. She looks at me expectantly. I really don’t know how to respond to the small brown slimy blob that is seated on the stainless steel. She becomes aware of the pause in my expression. She uses some French word that I’ve never heard before to provide an identity for this ‘thing’ that she presents to me.

***

April 22, 2010

With the ends of q-tips dipped in various shades of blue watercolour paints, I carefully decorate Mathilde’s face to match mine. The periwinkle and navy lines and dots that jump upon her smooth skin seem to throw her features off balance. I imagine that I look just as curious as she does. Suddenly, she tilts her head, and the line that I had half-completed runs stubbornly away from me. The left lean of her nose is greatly accentuated by this mistake. My canvas, having slipped from me, laughs—the wet regions of paint bleeding slightly, and the dry regions wrinkling. I laugh too—enjoying the splitting sensation taking place on my own face.

Then we’re in the backyard, and she’s on the swing. I’m not pushing her. She’s pumping her small legs faster and higher—the black leather of her shoes scratching the blue of the sky. She’s laughing again. So am I. And then she’s on the ground.

Her eyes expand and grow glossy, but she doesn’t cry. Without thinking twice, I take her in my arms and gently begin brushing the dirt from her pink elbows and knees. Her head finds my lap, and I sit there with her, in the middle of the backyard, for what feels like a long time. Apart from the few cars coming and going in the distance, and her breath, weighting and warming the fabric of my dress, all is quiet. We sit on the grass together, fluently, in silence.

On the steps of his front porch, resting his head against the top stoop, George Fenner smokes his last cigarette and marvels at the shifting shapes of passing clouds.  The early morning rain that came sluicing sideways out of the sky has given way to brief glimpses of rusty sunshine, but in the distance, far out over the lake, an immense wall of dark clouds pushes ever closer to shore, rumbling weirdly with thundersnow.  To George the soaring cloud tops look solid and muscular like figures masterfully crafted from massive sheets of steel, a three-headed hellhound, maybe, bounding toward heaven, eager to taste the tender flesh of angels’ wings.  The vision seems all the more real thanks to the mangy dogs that trot up and down the narrow brick lane in front of his house, lifting their hind legs to mark their territory, shitting on the sidewalk, pillaging trash cans, competing for non-existent scraps of food.  George feels no pity for them.  Like every creature condemned to live among these streets, the dogs must learn to accept suffering.  Winter is almost here, spring a million years off.  Soon there will be no escape from the punishing cold and constant hunger unless, of course, death whisks them all away to an even colder grave.

The change of weather doesn’t seem to trouble Billy.  In a red cape and blue tights, the boy runs back and forth across a muddy patch of lawn, chasing after the grackles that haunt the rotten windowsills and mossy roof peak of the vacant house next door.  At his approach the birds flutter away, easily evading his desperate lunges.  A few even make a game of it.  From the low branches of a stately maple at the center of the yard, the birds hop up and down and screech at the ungainly biped that comes stumbling through a swath of dead yellow grass.  Billy stops to study the birds, his eyes unblinking and inscrutable as a cat’s.  He bobs his head as they do, makes little chirping sounds, tries to find a way to ingratiate himself with them, but his efforts only make the birds squawk all the louder.  They run nimbly along the limbs of the tree and kick acorns on his head.  With a grunt of exasperation the boy adjusts his Halloween costume, yanking the tights from the crack of his ass, and suddenly charges, his arms pin-wheeling, his shiny black boots slipping sideways in the muck.

Sensing disaster, George sits up and shouts, “You goddamn birdbrain, watch where you’re going!”

But the warning comes too late.  The boy collides with a crooked fencepost, and for a long time he lies on the ground, his face buried deep in a pile of moldering leaves.  He might be unconscious, he might be dead.  George checks his watch and waits for a hopeful sign.

It’s only four o’clock.  His wife won’t be home from the foundry for at least another hour.  With a long yawn, he bundles the collar of his jacket around his throat and wonders how he will survive so many days tethered to this wretched madhouse.  Trying to find different ways to idle away the dwindling hours of October daylight has become his sole occupation, or perhaps preoccupation, since boredom has become a living thing in his life, a chittering, winged serpent that coils on his chest while he sleeps and waits for him to open his eyes each morning.  All day long it hovers over him, and because he has no hobbies, no skills, no friends to visit, he cannot defend himself against it or silence the sound of its flapping wings.

Now he opens the plastic bag at his feet and tosses a handful of candy near the boy’s inert body.  The birds ruffle their iridescent feathers but dare not swoop down to investigate.  After a few minutes Billy lifts his head and from his bruised face peels away a mask of wet leaves.  Had another child been injured–a normal child, thinks George–there would have been a high-pitched scream, inconsolable wailing and blubbering, but from his son there comes only a strangled, drawn-out hiss, the sound a vampire makes after it has been cornered in a crypt, its forehead seared by a crucifix, its glassy, black eyes maced with holy water.  In his four years of life Billy has never uttered a word, not a single one, and seldom moves his lips with make-believe speech.

Sometimes George actually pities the boy.  There are even moments when he wonders if he is personally responsible for Billy’s mysterious affliction, if he damaged the child during one of those infamous lost weekends–dropped him, shook him, put whiskey in his bottle instead of milk, vodka instead of formula.  Sobriety should help George remember these things, so say his fellow alcoholics during the weekly AA meetings in the smoky church basement, but the past will not give up its secrets so easily, and for that he is grateful.

His wife, however, is not the type to forgive and forget and is only too happy to remind him of the terrible things he has done.  A deeply religious woman, she believes in the redemptive power of shame and spends long hours recounting, often in meticulous detail, his innumerable failures as a father and husband.  Without asking his permission, she goes to the rectory where she consults the Jesuits about their son, but the priests only offer their usual crackpot diagnoses, use the cryptic words “solipsism syndrome,” and suggest that Billy is merely speech delayed, nothing more.  “Prayer will solve the problem, sure enough,” the priests tell her.  They lounge in an enormous parlor, shielded from reality by ornate tapestries and heavy brocade curtains, as Ms. Higginson, their surly housekeeper, serves tea, pours the cream, counts out the lumps of sugar, attends to their every need, all the while listening to the conversation with special interest.

George does not approve of these clandestine meetings, and he isn’t particularly interested in the Jesuits’ armchair psychology.  He believes the boy is disturbed, plain and simple, and he isn’t afraid to say so.  The neighborhood has a tendency to breed monsters.  Newspapers tell grisly tales of murder, incest, rape, a veritable decameron of horrors not to be believed.  The people here are diseased, their brains warped from breathing the poisoned air and drinking the tainted water.

“I should have a say in these matters,” he told his wife that morning at breakfast.  “I’m still the head of this household, and I believe the boy needs to see a proper physician.”

“Head of the household!”  His wife laughed bitterly.  “Well, aren’t you old-fashioned?”  She crushed out her cigarette in an egg yolk and then laced up her steel-toed boots.  “We can’t afford a doctor. We lost our medical insurance when you were fired, remember?”

“Laid off, you mean.”

“Right, laid off. Sorry.”

Trying to ignore his wife’s sarcasm, George focused on his plate, sopped up a pool of bacon grease with a triangle of burnt toast and crammed the whole thing into his mouth.  “Those priests are no better than witch doctors!”  He had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full and sprayed his words across the table.  “Mortal men claiming to speak for God. They can’t even look you in the eye and admit that the boy is daft, that he isn’t right in the head. Look at him. You’d think he was reared in the wild.”

Billy Fenner tugged violently on a scrap of overcooked sausage and slobbered down his chin but otherwise seemed to watch the scene with perfect indifference.

His wife tousled the boy’s hair.  “He’s fine. He knows when to keep his mouth shut. It’s a sign of intelligence. He’s a prodigy.”

“Oh, sure, a real fucking genius!”

George chuckled, busy mopping up more grease with a fresh piece of toast, but he should have known what was coming; marriage had conditioned him to be aware of the dangers, but he didn’t realize what was happening until he heard the crash of dishes and felt the fork pressed firmly against his neck, the dull prongs dripping with egg yolk and puncturing his flesh.

“Billy is a gifted boy,” she hissed, pushing the fork ever closer to his ceratoid artery.  “He’s smart. He knows a lot more than you give him credit for. Do you know what I think? I think with just a little more encouragement from his father, Billy can accomplish some extraordinary things.”

Billy gnawed at a leathery strip of bacon with great determination.

George nodded and, through clenched teeth, whispered, “Yes, dear, yes, you’re absolutely right…”

His wife seemed to be mulling over her options, contemplating the benefits and drawbacks of murder.  Her eyes twitched with something primordial, barely mammalian, as if one of the gray moles nesting in the tangled weeds around the front porch had scurried into the bedroom late at night and tunneled deep inside her brain, gobbling up every last morsel of her compassion and sanity.

The clock began to chime.

“Dammit, I’m going to be late for work.”  She threw the fork down on the table and then hurried to the closet to get her lunchbox and welding hood.

It took a few minutes before George realized he was bleeding.  With a paper napkin, he gently dabbed at the thin trails of blood trickling down his neck and pooling in the hollow around his collarbone.  He trembled at how very close he’d come to confessing everything, every terrible detail of the past few months.  From now on, he would have to proceed with caution.  He had no desire to be blinded or castrated.  There were women like that, women who were capable of maiming a man; he’d known a few in his time and had the scars to prove it. Concealing the truth from his wife had suddenly become a matter of life and death.  The risk was especially dangerous since it involved their son.  Still, he had no choice but to carry on.  The alternative was to remain completely dependent on her.  She held the purse strings and seemed more determined than ever to turn his existence into a grueling spiritual pilgrimage to the impossibly distant shrine of sobriety.

Before leaving the house, she kissed Billy on the cheek.  “I’ll see you tonight for trick-or-treat.”  Then without acknowledging her husband, she stormed out of the house and marched down the street to catch the bus.

II

The phone starts ringing (another creditor, more likely than not, calling to harass him), but George considers any phone call a welcome distraction.  Brushing cigarette ashes from his coat, he stands up and shouts to his son, “Hey, Superman, don’t fly off anywhere!”

He goes inside the house and picks up the phone.

“Hello.”

“That you, Fenner?”

He pauses a moment before responding.  “Ms. Higginson. How nice to hear from you. It’s been awhile.”

“You sound a little uneasy, Fenner. Something wrong?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“My wife. She’s not over there at the rectory, talking to those priests, is she?”

“Haven’t seen her since last week.”

“Well, then, everything is just fine.”

“Not quite everything.”

“What could possibly be wrong?”

“Don’t be dense, Fenner. You know.”

“Afraid I don’t, Ms. Higginson.”

There is a long pause before she finally says, “Boiler is on the fritz again.”

“Ah, so that’s it.”

“How soon can you be here?”

“Could it wait till tomorrow? I’m in charge of my boy today.”

“Poor child. He’s probably running wild in the streets.”

“Everything’s under control. Billy is always safe when his daddy is around.”

“Well, bring him with you. If he’s still in one piece.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. It’s Halloween. My wife wants us all to go trick-or-treating. It’ll be getting dark in another hour.”

“I’ll gladly call another repairman, if you’d like. Plenty of men looking for work these days.”

“Oh, don’t do that. Matter of fact, I was thinking of heading out the door anyway. Just finished my last cigarette. Gotta go to the corner store and stock up.”

“Better get a move on then. The priests will be back soon.”

“Must be a desperate situation, eh, Ms. Higginson? A real emergency.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Fenner. The boiler’s overheating. That’s all. It happens sometimes. You should be grateful.”

The line abruptly goes dead.

After hanging up the phone, George struts over to the mirror above the mantle.  Using his fingers he plucks the coarse black hairs sprouting from his nostrils.  He regrets not having showered or brushed his teeth that morning, but he never expected to leave the house.  Unemployment has turned him into a recluse.

He steps outside and walks over to the garage.  The place is a wreck, and in order to reach the makeshift shelves hammered into the back wall he must scale a treacherous deadfall of plywood and particleboard.  He has been meaning to build a tree house for Billy but hasn’t gotten around to it yet.  Under a pile of greasy rags, he finds the adjustable wrench, pliers, channel locks, a chisel, tools so old and rusted they can no longer serve any practical purpose, but he can’t very well show up at the rectory empty-handed.  A proper tool set, no matter its condition, makes a man look professional and gives him an air of authority.  People passing on the street are more likely to regard him as an honest tradesman, one who has fallen on hard times perhaps, but a tradesman nonetheless, a skilled laborer who is willing to work long hours for a day’s wages.

After securing the latches on the toolbox, George goes to the front yard and finds his son racing around the maple tree, the mud-splattered cape billowing up behind him.

“Hey, you, stop monkeying with them birds!”  With an impatient huff, George yanks the boy by the arm.  “Let’s go. We have a job.”

Father and son start the five-block journey to the rectory on Dickinson Street.  Billy struggles to keep up, his grunts becoming more pronounced with every step.  George turns to him and says, “Listen, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you, right? If you follow my directions, we should make out like bandits. This is going to be a lot more fun than trick-or-treat. Now here’s the plan…”

III

Standing behind the elaborate cast-iron gate, Ms. Higginson looks not unlike one of the statues in the overgrown cemetery across the street, an imposing monument of a middle-aged woman carved from an enormous block of gritty sandstone, perfect in her bleak solidity.  Broad shouldered and flinty-eyed, she watches over the rectory like a sentry guarding a house of the dead.  She seems so totally impervious to the world and its distractions, so rigid and immovable, that George is surprised a pigeon hasn’t fluttered down from one of the corbelled turrets to light on her head and drape her in flowing ribbons of white excrement.  Without saying hello or commenting on little Billy’s Halloween costume, she opens the gate and directs father and son through the shadowy courtyard and into the house.

“Hurry along,” she says.

George winces.  The rectory smells of incense, cheap aftershave, chicken broth, formaldehyde.  It has been a few weeks since his last visit (for some reason the word “reconnaissance” comes to mind), and as he passes through each of its enormous rooms, he lets his eyes linger over the curious relics prominently displayed in cabinets and pedestals–a triptych of martyred saints painted on three wooden panels; a crucified Jesus stretched across a cracked canvas, the savior’s bloody fingers struggling to pry loose the nails driven deep into his shattered palms; chalices of silver and gold etched with ancient symbols; an ivory cross; shiny amulets; ridiculous jujus.  Museum pieces of inestimable worth.

Upon reaching the end of a long hallway, Ms. Higginson calls to Billy.  “Over here, boy!”  She opens a door and points.  “Wait for your father down there. It shouldn’t take him long.”

George whistles.  “The basement, Ms. Higginson? Seems a bit spooky for a child, don’t you think?”

She puts her hands on her hips.  “I won’t have some rambunctious boy wandering around this house.”

“Aw, can’t he wait in the library?”

“Out of the question. He’ll make too much noise.”

George shakes his head.  “He won’t say a word, I promise you that.”

“Down he goes, Fenner, or I’ll call Malachy McSweeney and ask him to do the job.”

“Him!”  George shrugs.  “Alright, alright. You heard the lady, Billy. No time to waste.”

He shoves the toolbox into the boy’s hands and pushes him toward the stairs.  With a little yap of fear, Billy begins the steep descent.  In the darkness, the boiler skirls and screaks like a steel dragon chained to the floor of a steamy dungeon.  The galvanized pipes overhead cast ominous shadows across the boy’s face.  He stands against one of the sooty cinderblock walls and with imploring eyes looks up at his father.

Before slamming the door closed, Ms. Higginson hits a light switch and says, “If he knows what’s good for him, Fenner, he’ll stay right where he is.”

“Oh, yes, he’s a very meek child.”

“Alright then.”

She leads George into the kitchen where the table has been set for dinner, the white tablecloth and napkins neatly pressed, the silverware polished, the fine bone china dried by hand to avoid spots and streaks.  George marvels at this fancy presentation, a still life that could easily grace the cover of a magazine, and wonders what’s on the menu tonight.  A big pot of chicken soup simmers on the stovetop, but George knows that for an appetizer the priests always eat their God, served in the form of a small, white wafer of unleavened bread.  It is forbidden to chew him, but chew him they do.  This causes god to become wedged between their tobacco-stained teeth and cemented to the roofs of their mouths.  With palsied fingers, with toothpicks, with dental floss, the priests try to loosen their delicious deity, but this only complicates matters and creates a particularly thorny theological question.  As God hangs wetly from the floss in small beads, almost like some culinary rosary, the priests wonder if they should consume the remnants before discarding it.  Surely it’s an abomination, a sacrilege of the highest order to throw god into a garbage can or to dispose of him in a toilet bowl.  Since they aren’t in the habit of reading every papal encyclical, the priests aren’t sure what the Church teaches on this matter.  Even for staunch defenders of the faith, canon law can be a most troublesome thing.

Well, no one can follow all of the rules all of the time, as George Fenner can attest.  When he spots the bottle of red wine at the center of the table, for instance, he claps his hands and then reaches for one of the crystal glasses.

“Don’t!” Ms. Higginson says.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“The priests mark the bottle.”

George laughs.  “Those tight-sphinctered devils, they get plenty of this stuff every Sunday, I promise you that.  Blood of Christ, my foot.”

“I thought you gave up the booze.”

“Let’s just say there are occasions, Ms. Higginson, when I feel justified in taking a sip or two. It gives a man strength.”

“Is that what you tell your fellow drunks at the weekly AA meeting?”

“Everyone cheats now and then. Maybe you should have a little for yourself. Might help you to relax. It can hardly be paradise, working here for these curmudgeons.”

“They’re good men, Fenner. They do a lot for this community.”

“You’re starting to sound like my old lady. She has this crazy notion that the Jesuits are miracle workers who can cure our son. Laying of the hands and all that.”

Ms. Higginson huffs. “Is that what you think? That your wife comes here to consult the priests about your boy?”

“What other reason can she possibly have?”

“She comes here to give me the evil eye.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s no fool, Fenner. She knows what we’ve been up to, you and I.”

“Like hell she does.”

“Women can sniff out treachery. She’s toying with me, waiting for me to break down and confess my sins in front of the priests.”

George takes a step forward and whispers in her ear, “But you won’t confess, will you, Ms. Higginson?”

She uncrosses her arms and shoves him against the table.  With her calloused housekeeper’s hands, she unbuttons his flannel shirt and pulls it from his back.  He smiles, kisses her neck, lifts up her heavy wool skirt.  Physical intimacy transforms her from a cold statue into a scratching, writhing hellcat.  She pants and whimpers and grinds her powerful hips against his gyrating pelvis, but before things can really get started she digs her nails into his shoulders and gasps, “Dear God in heaven!”

“What’s wrong?” asks George.

“Your little boy…”

“Ha, he doesn’t mind.”

“But he’s watching us.”

George turns.

Standing in the doorway, clinging to his red cape and sucking his thumb, is little Billy Fenner.  He gazes with indifference at his father’s grizzly buttocks and Ms. Higginson’s muscular, white thighs.

“Get outta here, you!” George grabs his flannel shirt from the floor and lobs it at the boy’s head.  “Back into the basement!”

With a loud bellow and croak, the child scampers down the gloomy corridor.

Ms. Higginson says, “Maybe we should stop.”

But George pushes her down so she is sprawled across the kitchen table like a ritual sacrifice, and in no time at all the two of them fall into a mutually satisfying rhythm.  At the Jesuit school, the chapel bells begin to chime.  Soon the priests will say grace and break bread at this very table.  It’s an image that gives George Fenner such a perverse sense of pleasure that he nearly climaxes prematurely.

IV

Thirty minutes later, father and son hurry back home through streets teeming with groups of neighborhood children in their Halloween costumes.

When they are no longer within sight of the rectory, Billy nudges his father and places a small rectangular object in his hand.

George pats the boy’s head.  “Ah, the cat burglar strikes again.”

After several weeks of training, Billy has become a true master of deception, conveying to one and all an air of dim-witted innocence.  If he puts his mind to it, he can creep through any house virtually undetected, and over the past few months he has managed to pilfer numerous odds and ends from the homes of relatives and acquaintances.  Occasionally his work yields big dividends–prescription pills, bags of marijuana, a collection of rare coins, watches, credit cards, a book of blank checks.  The Tanzanian shopkeeper pays handsomely for the looted goods, tens and twenties are the standard rate of exchange, and he never asks questions.  With the proceeds from these sales, George is able to maintain some semblance of a social life, sneaking a few pints at the local brewery while his wife works at the foundry.

But now, after a string of successes, disaster suddenly strikes.

“What the hell is this!” George cries.  “No cash? No booze. No pills?”

Rather than find anything of real value, Billy has engaged in a sort of spiritual espionage.  While having no monetary value, the boy’s startling discovery does prove one thing: that the old men, stooped and bent with the unyielding cynicism they harbor for their fallen parishioners, are no better or worse than anyone else–they have their weaknesses, their secrets, their forbidden pleasures.  George considers turning around and confronting them, just for the small pleasure of watching the priests choke on their guilt and indignation.  “What sorts of disgusting things go on here?” he wants to ask them as they sit down to dinner.  “You monsters, you’re to blame for my boy’s troubles. It’s you who have traumatized him. I’ve known it all along, and now I have proof!”  At this point, George would step forward and hold up the deck of pornographic playing cards for all to see.

Billy lifts his head and growls at his father.

George stops, glances back at the rectory, pinches his chin.  “I dunno. We should probably get home. It’s getting pretty late. And your mother isn’t a very patient woman.”

He flips through the cards one last time and then tosses them to the ground.  Billy lets outs a high-pitched squeak and chases after them, an orgy of big-titted, suntanned harlots engaged in carnal acts with mustached kings, leering jacks, and a cross-eyed joker, his erect penis painted in motley and adorned in cap and bells.

When they finally get home, they see a figure sitting on the front steps.  George’s wife yanks the bandanna off her head, releasing a shower of graphite dust, and then crushes out her cigarette with the heel of a steel-toed boot.  She immediately lights another and exhales an iron spike of smoke.

George smoothes back his hair, searches his pockets for a stick of chewing gum.  He can still taste Ms. Higginson on his lips.  For the first time in months he looks at his wife with a tinge of remorse, with something that might even be described as old-fashioned Catholic guilt.  She’s a scarecrow of her former self, shockingly thin, with dark circles of exhaustion under her eyes.  She struggles every day to provide for the three of them, but somehow George suppresses this knowledge and has learned to live with his immaturity, his irresponsibility, his selfish pursuit of women and drink.  The trick, he finds, is to turn his sins into virtues.

“No overtime tonight?” he says with a timid wave of his hand.  He tries not to blink, not to turn away from his wife’s lethal stare.  “Ah, you bought some cigarettes, I see.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

He grins.  “Glad you asked. I was doing a good deed. For the Jesuits. The boiler sprung a leak. Over at the rectory.”

“The boiler?”

“Yes.”

“At the rectory?”

“That’s right.”

“Is this true?”

“Is what true?”

His wife glares at him.  “I wasn’t speaking to you. I was speaking to Billy. Well? Was your father fixing the boiler?”

George laughs.  “You know damn well the boy doesn’t talk. It’s your fault, if you ask me. You treat him like an infant.”

“He may not talk,” she says calmly, “but he tells me things, all sorts of things. Everything worth knowing, anyway. I’ve trained him, you see, trained him well. Didn’t I, Billy?”

George feels a small but noticeable change in the air.  His smile fades, his stomach tightens.  He wants to hurry down the street to the brewery, but since he is flat broke, he can only stand before his wife like the accused before a jury, helpless to defend himself against the trumped up charges.  With mounting horror, he watches Billy approach his mother.  He looks like a toy soldier on the march, chin held high, shoulders back.  A terrifying vision of precocity, a diabolical scourge.  Suddenly the boy whirls on his heels, points an accusatory finger at his father and, flashing a malevolent grin, holds up the deck of playing cards.

falling is love,
when she’s moving her arms
in a flash of explanations, 
hands forming every single feeling word,
he’s standing apart from her
two drags on his cigarette for every syllable 
and it’s not sad, it’s empty,
just empty, the emptiest thing I ever saw
with doc martin shoes and a ragged copy
of some forgotten detective novella
stashed in their pockets
outside the unnamed diner with the fourth letter burned out
in the middle of the afternoon sun
looking down at her empty eyes,
the tubes connecting her to the life-giving iphone-pod-slayer
playing the theme song of her life,
some lady-gaga dirty harry make believe empty dream,
and if he was listening he’d see its already dead
and black as his lungs and 50 years ago sad,
but now falling like love
as my car passes by and 
forces them off into the gray distance
the only word i can seem to find
in my hands is empty.

Behind the fruit salad a Simple Meaningful love

I’m translating directions
and you laugh
like they’re all a jumbled unpaved road,
or you hear and can’t understand, 
static sentences thrown together
from the seat of my car,
silent understanding
draped across that bay bridge
curving up into the sky
like a horseshoe buried in the sand,
and the sky is raspberry fire
breathing and burning and pop,
leaving the sweet smell of fruit and salty oxygen
heavy weaving behind your eyes,
sweet almond dark eyes,
bending the rail toward me
in the shallows with waves twisting over,
through the final verse of a late-afternoon song 
and a just empty bottle of nameless pink wine, 
we find our way in the sweet/sour dawn.

There are moments captured above the mantel;
a man thin with laughter,
an imp sprouting curls
who ricocheted from land to land,
province by province…

Now he’s a rounding mound –
his grey curls fall away in patches.
He’s parked
remote in hand,
tepid low-fat beer on the coffee table.
The whine of static saturates the air,
as I watch his empty stare.

I have found molding canvases, dusty guitars,
endless scribbles on parchment
tucked away beneath the communal staircase,
a garage filled with brittle physics lecture books
and a rainbow of pastels still shrink wrapped.
Demonstrations of a long-forgotten identity,
of a man:

thin with laughter,
an imp sprouting curls,
who ricocheted from land to lake,
province by province by province…

Eve

Deep down within the reef of
pure greens and Dante’s discourse
abstinence risks your sanity,
trying to peel away at your amnesty,
profanity marred with vanity,
you wander willingly and wanton.

Your chastity has atrophy,
and the agony is rapidly retaining.
Your innocence is frail and fleeting
you will never sever the beating
Need. Bursting with desire,
with passion, your backwards
factured innocence
urging this to pass –
Layers of windows upon windows
of to be broken glass.
No matter what you try –
Your numbness will be snaked away,
there is no niche to confide for
Abstinence has no sentimentality.
The lust learned in nature is combustible –
and you will never be untouchable.