Uncontrolled flight, p.20
Uncontrolled Flight, page 20
Sharon’s eyes fill. Rachel is right, she should have come clean ages ago. Even knowing this, she cannot reveal the rest. Not here, in a Starbucks. She cannot tell Rachel about the day in the park, cannot admit the rush of hope it brought her, or how that hope had shattered along with Rafe’s plane.
Get a grip, she thinks. She forces herself to hear the clatter and conversation, to wonder whether the pink-haired girl hunched over an iPad next to them, immense frozen coffee at her elbow, is mesmerized by her studies or YouTube. She wills herself to skim over the river of hurt inside her, which springs from more sources than she can divine.
The opening notes of Pachelbel’s Canon escape Rachel’s handbag. For the first time Sharon can remember, her friend ignores the phone.
“He loved you. You know that, right?”
Sharon nods, not trusting herself to speak.
“Whatever happened between you, that man adored you. He would move the earth for you. Anyone could see it.” Rachel picks up her ceramic mug, then sets it carefully back down. “I always wished someone would love me that way.”
It is an unlikely confession from one who samples men as if they were hors d’oeuvres, yet Sharon has guessed it all along. Her friend’s cool exterior masks a deep capacity for emotion.
“It’s complicated.” Sharon casts for the right words. “Being loved like that, it’s a powerful thing. But it’s not always easy. It comes with … expectations.”
“How do you mean?” Rachel’s handbag rings again, and again she ignores it.
“I mean if you are loved that much, you have to live up to it. Be worthy of it. All the time.”
Rachel looks puzzled, but Sharon cannot articulate it any better.
“Are you saying you didn’t feel worthy?”
“I’m not sure what I’m saying.”
“Well.” Rachel sips from the thick white cup. “Maybe the question is, did you love him?”
This is an essay question when Sharon is barely prepared for multiple choice. “Someday we can talk more about this,” she says carefully. “Not today.”
“I get it. Whenever you’re ready.” Rachel pauses. “You know, you don’t have to keep everything inside all the time. It’s okay to let stuff go. You don’t have to hold on to it all.”
* * *
Sharon has to hold on to what happened that hot July day. It is a memory she cannot probe deeply, a wound that refuses to scab, but it is all hers.
When Rafe appeared on their doorstep that day he rang the bell, a visitor to his own home after two months of living elsewhere — where, she never knew. A college student offering lawn care was what she expected, or a pair of Walmart-wardrobed proselytisers. Instead her husband’s bulk filled the doorway, his face as familiar as her own yet so unexpected that she flinched.
“I’m sorry. I should have called,” he said.
She took in his altered appearance: hair shorter, buzzed close to the scalp; jaw stubbled with grey; shirt loose around his barrel chest; purple pouches beneath weary brown eyes. The time away had not been kind to him. She felt an ugly stab of satisfaction.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, uneasy as ever with close scrutiny. “I got the day off. Can we talk?”
You had your chance to talk, she wanted to say. Remember me pleading with you to talk? Asking you over and over why you were giving up on us? What she said was “Not here.” Damned if she would let him back inside the home he had abandoned.
“In the park, then.”
She hesitated. Every rational brain cell resisted, while every ungovernable hope pulled her to him.
“Come on. You can walk away anytime.”
Why should she? It’s over, he had said the day he disappeared with his duffel bag, and she’d had two long months to absorb the finality of his pronouncement. Twenty-three years she had stuck by Rafe Mackie, twenty-three years of long absences, sporadic moods, forced relocation, abandoned dreams. Nearly a quarter century of loyalty, snapped.
“If you come,” he said gently, “bring your hat. It’s a scorcher.”
That was Rafe, looking after her in spite of everything, and it made her cave. She walked with him to the park down the street, to the talk that bridged their divide, to the promise that buoyed her heart only to smash it cruelly later, and as she walked she unconsciously fell into step with him, skin shielded by a broad straw brim.
Twenty-Three
Sixteen weeks after
Almost noon and I can’t drag my sorry ass out of bed. Even with the covers up to my chin, it’s cold as a supermodel’s stare in here because the cheapskate landlord won’t turn the heat on until mid-November. My head’s drumming like John Bonham, like it doesn’t know I tossed back three Aspirin and three glasses of water before collapsing last night. My guaranteed stop-the-hangover technique, but this morning it’s only affected my bladder. At least it woke me up. If I didn’t need the bathroom, who knows what time I’d have come to. Maybe too late to make it to Sharon’s.
Sharon. Jesus. If I had one ounce of self-respect I’d cancel rather than drag the shit heap that is me into her nice tidy house. Last night, for the first time since flying season ended, and with it my duty to live clean, Andy and I went on a tear. A lot of the specifics, the exact wheres and whos of it all, are blurry now, but some parts stand out sharp as glass. I am a waste of skin: that’s the part I remember best.
We started around eleven at Shay’s, a noisy martini bar behind an unmarked door on Seymour. There, we instantly radared in on three beauties arranged around a back table. I have no trouble remembering those whos. All three of them in their twenties, flawless, decked out in what Andy calls the classic low-high: low-cut dresses, sky-high heels. “A bowl of exotic fruits, my friend,” he shouted in my ear. “I’d dirty the pink of any one of them.”
We weaved our way to the back and leaned around a long time waiting for seats to empty near the trio. We’d almost given up when at twelve thirty the two earnest guys who’d been locked in discussion for over an hour, oblivious to the display at the table next to them (who goes to Shay’s to have a conversation?), finally made a move to leave. I swear, Andy slipped into the one chair before the former occupant had time to recrease his khakis. The two altar boys hurled some righteous indignation his way and then hightailed it, to the relief of all concerned, including, it appeared, the ladies. With the table beside them purged of dweebs and five-syllable words, they shifted sideways, crossed their legs in unison, and checked us out.
Okay. In the interest of full disclosure, they checked out Andy. Here’s a guy who like me hasn’t seen the early side of thirty for years, but unlike me has divided his time between an investment bank that pays him astronomical sums, the best clothing stores in town, and the top nightclubs, where he has perfected the art of allure. As he said before we sat down, he knew in his bones, and in one bone in particular, that we’d be leaving with these three. He picks up girls effortlessly, even younger girls, ones with no twenty in their age, and when he parts ways with them after a night or a week, always amicably, they’re too spoiled by his mature charm to ever fish again in the cesspool of youth.
I, to be clear, was not the target of the checking out. I’ve spent too long stewing in my juices, as Andy put it when he dropped by my place early for a few warm-up brews, fanning one hand under his nose to underscore the point. “Christ almighty, Will, you’ve gone all Downtown Eastside on me. So you’re some kind of street person now? Dumpster diving for fun and profit?”
True, it was midsummer the last time I sat in a barber’s chair, and what started as rugged stubble had bushed out into ragged-ass beard. And true, I haven’t been all Martha Stewart in the laundry department. But I didn’t think it was that bad.
Andy begged to differ. “No fucking way will I be seen with some rubbie-dub just got kicked out of the gospel mission. Either you clean up or I’m outta here.”
Cleaning up, it soon emerged, did not entail a simple shower and change of clothes. This was Andy, after all; I had GQ standards to meet. Before my next swallow of Rickard’s Red, he was on his phone. “Cam? It’s me, Andy. Yeah, I’m great, man, it’s all good. Listen, I got an emergency. Buddy of mine needs a cut and needs it now, before we can, you know, venture out in public.” He stood tall, designer-denimed legs slightly apart, bench-pressed chest thrust out, a life-sized advertisement for himself. “Well of course you’re not at the salon, that’s why I’m calling your cell. I know it’s, like, irregular, but could we meet you there in half an hour? There’s something in it for you beyond just a big tip. Know what I’m sayin’?”
Apparently Cam knew, because the transaction concluded then and there. For the stated cost of sixty bucks plus twenty-dollar tip, which came out of my pocket, and the unstated cost of who knows how many pastel E pills, which came out of Andy’s, I ended up at the only lighted hair station in a south Granville salon while Cam, a Type-A whippet with ferocious darting scissors, went into extreme makeover mode. An hour later I was done: short hair with some kind of flip at the front, like a reddish-brown whitecap, held in place with what Cam vaguely called “product”; face and neck stubble-free and smelling faintly of citrus; and neatly pressed shirt and artificially distressed jeans, both on loan from Andy, which hung off me like bedsheets but were fashionable, or so I was told.
Cam told me to stand up, whipped off the plastic cape, and eyed me top to bottom. “All good. Oh, except for the, um …” Finding no adequate words, he flapped his hands at my feet.
My low-rise hikers, I grant you, have seen better days. Andy peered at them and, no exaggeration, winced. “Fuck me, Will. You think we’ve got a night of boggy trails ahead? Why the fuck are you wearing those shit-kickers?”
We quickly established that, one, I owned no other footwear except for an assortment of equally broken-in running shoes and one ancient pair of funeral-and-wedding wingtips; two, my size twelve feet could not cram into anything either of these two owned; and three, my certainty that no one would notice was a miscalculation of hysterics-inducing proportions. Cam and Andy fell silent.
“I don’t know anyone in footwear,” Cam said eventually. “There’s a couple great shops down the block, but they’re closed. I’m not sure breaking in is the way to go.” I peered at him, then Andy. Was it possible Cam wasn’t joking? “Women’s shoes would be so much easier,” he continued. “There’s a few large drag queens owe me a favour.”
“Okay, okay, hold it there,” I broke in. “You did your best. This is as good as it’s gonna get. I mean God, Andy, you’ve been out with me before when I’m wearing these shoes and it wasn’t an issue.”
“You have never worn those shoes when we’ve gone out.” Andy glanced nervously in Cam’s direction.
“Duh, I have. What other shoes would I wear?”
“I have no idea, bro, but it was not those. They are like the negativest footwear I’ve witnessed in my life to this point.”
“They just stand out because I’m wearing these stupid things.” The lower legs of Andy’s skinny jeans were the only snug feature in the entire ensemble.
“Those are awesome jeans! They cost me over two hundred bucks and you better not —”
“Guys,” Cam interjected. “Enough already. We have to accept that we are done here. The shoes will have to stay.” He shrugged at Andy. “Maybe someone’ll feel sorry for him. There’s worse things than a pity fuck.”
Long digression. The point is, by the time we sat down near the trio in the bar, I knew enough to plant my feet under the table so as not to ruin the spell Andy cast. It must’ve worked because after an hour or so of rapid drinking and heavy flirting, the girls invited us to a party in Kitsilano, at the house two of them shared with some guy.
By the time we spilled out of our taxis, the party house — the only one on that block of east Kits to have missed its half-a-million renovation — was shaking. Luckily it was cold enough that the windows were closed; otherwise the cops would’ve shut down the festivities by now. As it was, we opened the door to a blast of music and frat-boy yells that I swear knocked me back a foot. When I stepped forward it was into a blowout the likes of which I haven’t seen since high school.
People don’t always know it, but pilots tend to be a sober bunch. We have to be. Our careers and our lives, and the lives of others, depend on it. Sure there’s the odd alcoholic or speed freak in our midst, but by and large the aviators I know are light to moderate drinkers and they just say no to drugs. I’m the odd one out on that last score. If you’re a Vancouver native you’re born to it; you’re basically at play in the land of weed. My parents were semi-regular partakers and could have laced my baby formula for all I know. Whatever the reason, the occasional strategically timed toke has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, occasional and strategically timed being the operative terms. Never when I’m flying, about to fly, or likely to fly, and never, ever during fire season. The exception being last summer’s unplanned vacation from the sky.
This party was way beyond. Andy and I showed up most of the way drunk, and our new lady friends were even further along, but the lot of us were as straight as Mormon elders compared to the tripping, gyrating mass inside that house. The place was awash in pot and ecstasy and coke — at least, those were the substances offered to me within minutes of my arrival — and the air was thick with sex. Dozens of people were dancing — grinding, more like it — to a heavy bass mix of hip-hop and rap. More than one woman had experienced some degree of wardrobe malfunction, to use the old Super Bowl euphemism, but not one person seemed troubled by the sight of bare, jiggling breasts. In the corner of the living room a red leather armchair held two squirming women, one a pale pierced goth, the other a ripely rounded South Asian beauty with her arm up the goth’s black skirt. A cluster of beer-swilling guys cheered and urged them to please, please take it off.
“Isn’t that Speedman Steve?” Andy pointed at a pair of dancers. Sure enough I recognized the goateed deejay from bus ads for the Wolf, Vancouver’s Home of Indie Rock. He was weaving beside a short-haired blonde who’d removed her sparkly top and was swinging it from her index finger, a narrow swatch of silver catching the light while she swayed, eyes shut. Speedman’s eyes, in contrast, were wide open, fixed on the spectacular set of hard nipples in front of him.
“Willie baby, I admit it,” Andy slurred, taking in the crowd, “I am one hundred percent pussified. In complete thrall to the pussy.” Then he was off, in a slow slalom toward the armchair show, a snake lured by irresistible notes.
In my ear came a tickle of warm breath. It was Caitlin, the petite raven-haired member of the bar trio. “My girlfriends are so lucky to have this place, right? The parties are amazing.” I smiled and grazed her bare elbow. She smiled back. Her teeth were brilliant, her eyes long-lashed and smoky. “So how come I haven’t met you before?” she said. “You go to Shay’s much?”
“Nope. I’m out of town a lot.”
“How come?”
“Flying. I have to go where the forest fires are.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot you’re a firefighter.” She looked around the room. “That’s amazing.”
It occurred to me as I watched her, so pretty and small and nicely decorated, that I was getting too old for the back-and-forth ritual of the hook-up.
She swung her attention back to me, offered a pink gloss smile. “So, Will. You like to party when you’re not flying airplanes?”
Time to get on with it. “I do if you’re around.” I trailed two fingers up the bare skin of her arm.
She moved closer, butted her head against my neck like a lamb, ran her hand down my hip bone. “I got ways to make you fly, pilot boy. It’d be amazing.”
The boldness of her and the shiny smoothness of her hair and skin finally kicked me into gear, and my heart thudded along with the bass-thumping speakers. She caught my fingers and pulled them to her warm mouth, giving the tips a tiny lick.
“I know where we can go.” Gripping my fingers in her small but surprisingly strong hand, she guided me through the throng to a bedroom at the end of the hall.
* * *
I was drunk, it’s true, but not all the way to wasted, so it’s no excuse for what happened.
Caitlin was stunning, sexy, and beyond proficient. She unstrapped her heels and peeled off her dress and push-up bra in a confident striptease. Is it something she practises? I wondered. I lay on the bed and tried to focus. If there were panties on that girl when the evening started, they’d gone missing, because the only thing between her legs was a dark, narrow runway of bush. Could she have lost them, like actually misplaced them? I watched her, my mind spinning wildly. Say she’d absent-mindedly left her panties in the bathroom at Shay’s, would someone turn them in to lost and found? How long would the bar hang on to them? Would someone who’d lost underwear just call and say, hey, I might’ve left my thong in one of your stalls? Naked, she straddled me, unbuttoned my shirt and the fly of my jeans. No — Andy’s shirt, Andy’s jeans, that’s why they’re so loose, that’s why there’s a stupid button fly. I would never get a button fly. Plain old zipper, that’s good enough for me. She planted kisses on each patch of skin as she bared it. She pulled my jeans down — no, Andy’s jeans, two hundred bucks, who pays that much for jeans? — and kissed my thighs. Her breasts skimmed my knees and I felt a faint stirring. It was like the starter on my old Acura, a kind of half-hearted whir, but like that old starter motor, nothing engaged. I shut my eyes and concentrated on her skin, the touch of her lips and tongue on my legs, her nipples hard wherever they brushed me. I felt it all, but it felt like nothing. It was like being on a doctor’s table or in Cam’s salon chair. The circuit between body and brain was working, but the one connecting body to cock was busted.
Eventually I had to sit up and ask her to stop. She said not to worry, we were only getting started, there was lots of time. I cupped her shoulders and looked into her beautifully made-up eyes. “You’re sweet, Caitlin. But it’s not happening. Let’s leave it.” I pulled up my jeans — Andy’s jeans — buttoned myself back up, and for the first time in my life turned away from a woman who wanted me.
