When Fox Is a Thousand Page 20

  “Another fucking photographer! I can never get away from them.”

  “She likes me.”

  “Of course she does. Why shouldn’t she?”

  “When I’m with her the nightmares go away.”

  “What nightmares?”

  “The ones where I’m trapped in my parents’ basement and there are no windows –”

  “You’ve never mentioned them before.”

  “Haven’t I? I have them all the time.”

  “You never said. I would remember.”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t always remember things I tell you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the birthday gift you were supposed to pick up for my mother last week.”

  “I’m sorry. I had a lot on my mind.”

  “You always have a lot on your mind. You always forget things or break things. You’re not reliable.”

  “Well, maybe Rachel Evans would be more reliable.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “No. I’m not. I’m just tired.”

  “You’re reminding me more and more of my mother.”

  “She probably shops at Leone’s! She probably does sex tours of Thailand! It’s disgusting, how can you let her touch you! “ Artemis yelled out the back door of her apartment at Claude’s small figure growing smaller as she vanished up the other side of the alley.

  The nosy neighbour across the alley and one house down stuck her too-Romanesque nose out the back door. Artemis didn’t care.

  “I hope you get the yeasties! I hope you get crabs! I hope you vomit blood and shrivel up and die! “

  Claude had long since disappeared. Down the street, an engine started and a car screeched away. Artemis thought she smelled exhaust and burning oil. The screen door rattled against her hand as she closed it and then she realized it was she who was rattling.

  In the quiet golden light of this late October afternoon, she sat down at the kitchen table and abandoned herself to an old habit, imagining the livid details of her own insults. She’d done this ever since she was a child: wondered where insults came from and what it was that might have made the insult true in some way. It had started as a way of allowing herself some subjectivity when she felt she had none, of having a presence that didn’t disappear.

  “Chinky chonky chinaman sitting on a fence/Making a dollar out of fifteen cents.” And she would imagine the father she had never met sitting on the clapboard fence that surrounded his house, dignified in his simple, tasteful suit, trying to sell cheap tin whistles or rubber balls for more than they were worth. The image, of course, was ridiculous, and so she would laugh to herself. She didn’t consider herself any more frugal than anyone else she knew, but maybe she was, only they knew it and she didn’t.

  Today she was left with insults of her own imagining. She imagined Claude’s new girlfriend, Rachel, stepping through the wide glass double doors at Leone’s and feeling perfectly at home in a way that neither she nor Claude ever would. She imagined her shopping for crisp white shirts and linen pants and leather in expensive but tacky colours like rose-petal pink or muted cherry red. She wondered if the red curls were dyed, thinking red hair with red clothes looks tawdry, even if they are as costly as she is sure Rachel’s clothes and hair are. She imagined Rachel conversing with snub-nosed women in their fifties wearing twinsets and Chanel No. 5 or browsing through silk scarves printed with geometric flowers or trying on lace-up boots lined with calfskin.

  She thought of Rachel touching Claude, and felt her own belly buck to the remembered touch of Claude’s lazy hand on a liquid afternoon before there was any such thing as Rachel. She remembered that hand, warm and heavy as the sun that pressed through the bedroom windows, drenching them in light. It was a hand that could find sex in every crevice of her body, the crooks of her knees, the dip of her collarbone, the base of her spine just before her bum turned out and curved in again to the quiet, pulsing place where she waited for that hand. Afterwards, Claude would talk.

  “Alexa wasn’t soft like you. She had goosebumps all over her legs.”

  Alexa was Claude’s most recent ex. Artemis giggled. “Goose-bumps. Ugh.”

  “I’m so mean.” Claude stroked the backs of Artemis’s thighs. “It’s hard not to be, you know. Especially since she ran off with a guy the same week we broke up. I swear she did it just to get to me. I told her she needed to see someone else so she could forget about me, but she started sleeping with this man. I should have known because she used to really get off on het porn. It was the one thing that would drive her crazy! All those big, juicy penises.…”

  “Claude! God! That is so ungracious!” Artemis sputtered, choking on laughter in spite of herself. “What if she knew you were telling me this?”

  “Men and white women,” said Claude. “Two things not to be forgiven.”

  Now she wondered what Claude would tell Rachel about her. There is nothing worse than knowing that your enemy knows the most intimate things about you.

  The light coming in through the window diminished and the sound of that engine revving in the back alley had its final echo in her mind. Artemis got up from the table and dragged herself to the sink overflowing with dishes from their last meal together. Lunch, not dinner. Less of a chance of sentimentality. She pulled on the too-tight pink rubber gloves as though to shield her dry hands from the emotional outpourings of that last meal, the accusations and recriminations veiled in coconut milk and lemongrass, soy sauce and garlic. The stretched rubber tugged uncomfortably at the wide base of her palm as though it wanted a share of the blood that fed her fingers. As she ran water over the dishes, all the complicated scents and flavours of that meal rushed into her head, mixed with the smell of rubber, chlorine, and fake lemon scent from the detergent. They had had all afternoon to pull on that creeping smell of staleness and decay. Squirting more dish soap onto a rough green pad, she began to scrub. Artemis was afraid she was going to cry, but the image of Rachel came back, glaring at her from the curved bottom of a bowl the way only a witch’s can.

  She scrubbed and scrubbed at the face in the bottom of the bowl, squeezed in more dish soap, perhaps a shake or two of some cheap abrasive cleaner, but the face wouldn’t come out. Instead it began to laugh at her, or giggle, rather, insipidly, the way schoolgirls giggle at things they don’t understand, the laugh of self-assuredness about one’s place in the world without the need to articulate it. The more Artemis scrubbed, the more the smooth fresh skin positively glistened. It was the sexy innocent face of the Noxema girl, the kind of face that inspired men in aftershave ads to lust, or at least to awkward phone calls that led to candle-lit pasta dinners and patriotic movies.

  The bowl was not fancy. It was made of simple eggshell-white china with a blue band around the rim. It was one of a set of eight soup bowls that her mother had sent her when she moved into this apartment. Rachel was staring at her from the bottom of only one bowl. The others came clean when washed and dried evenly on the rack after a good hot-water rinse. She tried turning the bowl upside down, but the face still shone through the bowl’s upturned bottom, gazing at her in perfect symmetry.

  It wasn’t because she thought she might be going crazy that she stopped. She stopped because she couldn’t stand that face looking at her. She pulled off the gloves and stepped away from the sink. As she did so, a whole scene gathered in front of her eyes, offering a small revelation. The cluttered counter, the sink still overflowing with dishes. A few clean ones steaming on the rack. Claude went home to such a kitchen except that in hers Rachel was already waiting. Dogs slept under the table. On the fridge, perhaps a shopping list: tea, rice, milk, soap.… No need to do anything but keep going.

  She sat down at the table again and rested her head in her arms. Without quite falling asleep, she had a dream. It started with wings flapping, t
housands of them, so many of them that they created a massive wind that blew leaves around the yard and in through her window, followed by an army of birds the size of cats with wingspans as wide as human arms outstretched. Through her eyes she could hear claws scraping, closer and closer, and from her sockets came a piercing scream as the eyes were plucked from them and the world went as black as the flapping of wings and then she was crying. She was crying with new eyes made of brown glass, beautiful and smooth as polished wood, so perfect that she almost believed she had her own eyes back. Then she could see again, and far in the distance a cloud of birds was rising over the mountains. And with those eyes she saw Claude moving towards her without ever coming closer. It was Claude and it was not Claude. The woman so identically reflected her own image she was no longer sure whether she was walking towards a woman sitting in her kitchen, or sitting in her kitchen watching a woman walk towards her. The woman recognized her too and was also puzzled and confused. They were both drawn to each other and terrified of each other at the same time. The forward motion continued, but they never got any closer.

  When she lifted her head again, the sky was dark and quiet as an empty bed. She got up and went to the sink, where the hot suds had become a cold scum sitting on top of dirty water, and the eighth bowl was just a bowl, and she was alone with it in her own familiar kitchen and there were no birds outside the window.

  The scholar’s study at the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Gardens in Chinatown was much too quiet. Artemis had chosen it on purpose, a subtle political statement, a many-layered dig at Rachel. But now she was sorry, because the quietness seemed to emphasize the strain between them, and there was nowhere to hide.

  “It was not my intention to hurt you,” Claude said.

  “Big difference that makes. I don’t place much stake in people’s stated intentions.”

  “Is there anything specific you want to say to me?”

  “No.”

  “I brought some things you left at my place.” Claude reached into her knapsack and drew the items out one by one, placing them in a line on the long wood bench – a pair of jeans, carefully washed and folded, three pairs of clean underwear, a bottle of orange-scented bath oil, two paperback mystery novels, and a powder-blue cookie tin decorated with Roman statuettes surrounded by white wreaths.

  “The tin isn’t mine.”

  “It’s not? I wondered. I found it in a strange place, in behind the laundry soap. I thought it was yours because of the style. You always liked all that Greek crap.”

  “It isn’t mine. I don’t want it.”

  “Well, it’s not mine either. Let’s look inside.” She pried off the lid without waiting for a response. On top were two photographs of a young man, or rather, a teenage boy. In one he stood beside a shiny green MG parked in front of a Vancouver Special, grinning his face off. In the other, he must have been sitting in front of the TV or something because an odd blue light flickered across his face. He seemed oblivious to whoever was taking the picture, lost in concentration. Underneath the photographs was a little stack of envelopes with the address typed neatly and no return address. At the bottom, on yellowed index cards with battered corners, were drawings of space-age killing machines with turrets and guns pointing off at every angle. On the flip side of each was a short typed message.

  “Very interesting,” said Claude.

  “That’s someone’s private stuff. You should leave it alone.”

  “Don’t be such a prude.” She shuffled through the pile and took one card out at random. In a low voice she read:

  Dear Diane,

  I’m scared. Two men followed me home from the bar last night. I heard them behind me but didn’t realize they were following me until I turned down my own street. I hurried home as quickly as possible without looking at them.

  Hope you haven’t told Mom and Dad about the other letters, but whatever you do, don’t tell them this news. It will make them worry.

  She pulled out another one.

  Dear Diane,

  I really don’t think I’m being paranoid. I was followed again. One of the guys has dark hair, the other, red. I don’t know if they’re the same ones as before or not. Do you think I should call the cops? Or would that just make things worse?

  “We shouldn’t be looking at this,” said Claude.

  “So put it back.”

  “It doesn’t make much difference, now that we’ve seen it.”

  “She didn’t tell me this part of the story. Did she tell you?”

  “I got some kind of story about her brother. But the way she told me, her brother’s letters just stopped coming after a while, and then she found out he’d been killed.”

  “Do you think she had something to do with it?”

  “No, I don’t. But I think she must feel terribly guilty. Responsible, even. For not acting. Why else would she make such a big secret of it?”

  “You’d think she would have come after you for the tin.”

  “She might have. After I gave back what I thought was all her stuff, I refused to take her calls.”

  “But you’ve seen her since.”

  “You’re not going to let me forget, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe she forgot I had it. Maybe she meant to ask, but didn’t know how to without bringing up the past. I insisted that she not bring up the past.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t plan on talking to her anytime soon. Do you want it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “I guess I’ll just hang on to it, then.”

  They had almost forgotten to be bitter and distant with each other. But now there was a long moment of silence. Artemis swept up her stuff and shoved it into her shoulder bag.

  My thousandth birthday is coming sooner than I thought. A week tomorrow, to be precise. I had not forgotten, it’s just that I was having trouble calculating the exact date. I’ve become much too westernized. I’ve relied on the solar calendar for the last three hundred solar years. I have entirely lost track of the moon. My cousins would laugh at me if they could see. My grandmother would flick her left ear and turn away in annoyance if she were still alive, but she never made it past the first stages of immortality, bless her sleeping soul. It was not for lack of potential, but rather the iron fist of her own mother-in-law, who kept her night and day on all four paws tending to the sickly fox she married. I suppose we must take our fates as they are meted out by those silly sages in their palaces of the distant and as yet undiscovered Western Heaven. Who needs them anyway, with their stupid trailing beards?

  The math was tough, I can tell you that. I’m no reader of almanacs. All those columns, teeny numbers, and strange symbols, half of which are circles with something or other sticking off them. I can never keep them straight. Especially not, as I’ve said, after having become accustomed to the easy Roman calendars you can buy for $15.99 at Book Warehouse. This year I got one with glossy colour photographs of foxes in their various habitats all over North America. My gentle cousins caught in the act of their daily ablutions, here scratching a flea bite, there licking clean that unmentionable place beneath the tail. Or scavenging bear leavings. Or rolling over each other in play or aggression. They’re a mite intimate, these photographs. If it were me, I’d find it intrusive – some long-lensed photography hack hiding in the grass ready to catch me stretching out of a good nap. But on the other hand, they’re glamorous, and as we all know, glamour can go a long way in glossing over things we would otherwise find quite repulsive. I like the calendar. It keeps loneliness at bay.

  So I worked out the exact date. The columns gave it up after an afternoon of wrangling. I got started just in time. If I’d decided to take a fishing trip up the coast as I’d vaguely been planning, it would have been over before I got back. Which would have been all right, I suppose, although I would really rather celebrate at home. One’s thousandth birthday is no small matter.

  I’m not entirely sure
what to expect, not having had anyone to instruct or support me since shortly after my arrival in Canada. But this is it, the stage beyond which there are no other stages. I imagine it will be something less vulgar, less visceral than the bodily transformation I experienced on my fiftieth and hundredth birthdays. Something more elevated, more sublime. Not that there is anything not-sublime about transformations of the body, mind you. I didn’t mean to suggest that.

  There’s a tree in Stanley Park I would like to visit, hollow inside and full of ancient, untouched spirits. The perfect place for a first lesson in twentieth-century haunting. It is history I’m interested in. History, and, I suppose, the future. If I’m to receive a birthday gift, I think that’s what I’d like. The ability to read from the air who has breathed it in the past, and who will in the future. The accumulated emotions of any point in space.

  The earmuffs that Ming handed Artemis had a hard plastic casing on the outside. They squeezed her head uncomfortably, but blocked all sound except the sound of gunshots, which cracked as though from a long distance off. She pulled them down around her neck like a collar.

  “I can’t believe you’ve brought me here.”

  Ming nudged her gently into the booth and pressed the pistol into her hand, instructively folding the reluctant fingers into the correct position. The grip was cold. As soon as Ming let go, Artemis opened her hand and stared at the smooth dead metal.

  “Don’t point it at yourself, whatever you do. Or anyone else,” Ming warned.

  It was a dull grey colour, except for the six-inch barrel of shiny steel. Its angles were smooth and efficient, without any unnecessary curves or ornamentation. Is this what death has become, she wondered, so efficient and technological? She had seen photographs in one of the many coffee-table books Eden owned, of the .38 Colt through history, with triumphant soldiers or ancient, muscular warriors engraved into the ivory or mahogany stock or the base of the sleek steel barrel. Guns for known and respected enemies, not this bleak if elegant thing with its lean impersonal lines. And then, she thought, closing her fingers around the grip again, a gun is a gun.