by Byron Lane
I see in my reflection a warm and happy face, and I feel new. I see that my body is actually getting lean, fat starting to melt away. I see that Reid has been good for my body, mind, heart.
Reid asks, “What’s your passion, Charlie?”
I blurt, “You.”
Reid smiles, pulls me back close to him, and we fall backward onto his bed.
* * *
Everything is dark. I’m sleeping. I’m dreaming of a different life.
“Hey,” Reid says, groggy, freshly awakened, prodding me. “Your phone.”
I sit up, notice my phone is lit, and reach for it on Reid’s nightstand.
KATHI: WEATHER ALERT! Let’s book flights! Northern lights are on fire tomorrow night. Let’s go see them! Let’s go to Canada!
ME: Canada? Book flights? How does this work? Is Orion coming?
KATHI: Orion left. I’m all cured. I got an A plus.
“Babe,” I say softly to Reid. “I think I have to go to work.”
18
Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Kathi, packing her suitcases, loading the usual Ziploc baggies of toiletries, underwear, Christmas lights. My eyes are heavy from no sleep, from leaving Reid at four A.M., from forcing myself awake to call Kathi’s travel agent.
Kathi got an alert from the National Weather Service a few hours ago that conditions were perfect for a spectacular display of the aurora borealis.
“Yes, we must go,” she says. “I’ve wanted to see the northern lights my whole life, and this showing is supposed to be historic.”
Some people get weather alerts as a means to save their lives—tornado warnings, or to save their livelihoods where rain may ruin crops. Kathi Kannon gets weather alerts for vacation planning.
“I don’t understand how we can be leaving,” I say. “What happened with Orion?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve had a billion sober coaches. He was the best one. He said I passed with flying colors.”
“Passed? You got a grade or what—”
“Yeah. Don’t forget to pack gloves,” she says, looking at her phone. “Oh, the time! We have to go!”
Don’t swim after you eat. Don’t fly if you’re too pregnant. But there are no rules for travel upon termination of your sobriety coach. And so it is, potential relapse be damned, that Kathi and I are on our way to LAX to catch a ride to see in real life her beloved hotel-room check-in namesake: aurora borealis.
I resume my questioning in earnest: What happened with Orion? Why did he leave? What’s the next step?
“The next step is I quit self-medicating,” Kathi says. “One day at a time, you know?”
“And he just left? Is this normal? I want your sobriety to be permanent.”
“Nothing is permanent,” Kathi says.
“Maybe I’ll call Orion.”
“No,” Kathi says. “Call Miss Gracie if you must. She’ll tell you. It’s all good. You did good hiring him. You get an A-plus for that.”
“Well, I want your sobriety to be as permanent as possible. I want you to stay healthy and happy and for us to continue on our fun journey and whatnot—”
“Orion met with me and Miss Gracie last night. We talked through some of our problems. I feel very steady, very centered, Cockring. And why waste money on him when I can take this trip?”
“It just seems like he left kind of abruptly,” I say.
“Abruptly? I was with him for six fucking weeks,” Kathi says. “And, anyway, like he says, ‘Change comes from within.’ So there’s really not much else he could do. I want change. That’s a win for all of us, no? And I have you.”
“I guess.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll prove it to you,” she says, tapping my arm, adjusting her hair, turning back to her phone.
“Did you have sex with him?” I ask.
“Almost,” she says, baiting me, daring me to ask more questions.
“Good talk,” I say.
During the preflight announcements, Kathi opens her purse and pulls out little vials. One is her travel perfume. One is nail-polish remover. She pulls out cotton balls. She pulls out glitter nail polish.
“Are you seriously going to paint your nails?” I ask. “I don’t think you can do that on the plane.”
“No one cares, Cockring.” Kathi opens the vial. “Oops, wrong one,” she says, putting down the perfume and grabbing the remover. She opens it. The smell is strong and pervasive. She dabs the remover onto a cotton ball.
“That really stinks,” I say.
“Does it?”
“We’re in an enclosed space.”
“Is it?” she asks.
Flight attendants start to scramble, no doubt looking for the source of the noxious fumes.
Kathi turns and her elbow knocks over the open vial of perfume.
“Oops,” she says. “Well, that’ll take care of the nail-polish-remover smell.”
* * *
“I hope we survive Canada,” Kathi says as we land in the town of Yellowknife. In baggage claim, I haul Kathi’s luggage to a quiet corner and she and Roy watch as I plunder it, plucking out her thick winter coat, her knit cap, her wool scarf, her leather gloves.
I close her suitcases and look over at Kathi, now thick with layers, already sweating, ready for snow and ice.
“What are you wearing, Cockring?”
I look down at my outfit—sensible shoes and jeans and a peacoat from H&M. I shrug and say, “This.”
Kathi shakes her head. “Jesus Christ. You don’t have winter clothes?”
“This is winter in California,” I say, motioning to my outfit.
“This is winter,” Kathi says, pointing outside to a blizzard. “Let’s go shopping so you don’t get hypothermia. If you die, how will I ever get home?”
Instead of going to the hotel, we first stop at a mall. Kathi walks over to a computer kiosk with all the stores listed. She moves her finger up and down until something catches her eye. “Fourth floor!” she says, jetting to an escalator with me and Roy in her wake.
Kathi leads us to a furrier tucked in a dark corner, with its pretentious façade and caramel lighting and dark-wood accents.
“I’m not wearing a fur coat,” I tell her.
“Who says it’s for you?” she says, opening the door and dashing inside.
The clerk, a thin older woman with her hair in a tight bun, looks Kathi up and down like she’s a swamp creature. “Can I help youuuuuu?”
“Hiiii,” Kathi says, Roy jerking his leash to and fro as he tries to get a sniff of the pelts. “Do you have any coats in dog sizes?”
I roll my eyes. Of course she’s trying to buy a fur to keep Roy warm and cozy and chic.
The snobby woman who works there laughs. “Um. No. We don’t have ‘dog’ sizes.”
Kathi’s face shifts slightly. She smells an attitude, a fight. She smiles and says, “In that case…” And Kathi, not breaking eye contact with the clerk, reaches her hand to the right and grabs the first coat she comes into contact with. “I’ll take this one,” she says.
Kathi slaps it on the counter, a brown number with black lines—this must have once been a beautiful beast. “Cockring,” Kathi says.
I step forward and proudly hand the clerk Kathi’s credit card, and we relish the beeping and the clanking of the register as the clerk lets out a huff. As she starts to wrap Kathi’s new coat with crisp, fancy tissue paper, Kathi speaks up, “Oh. No. I don’t need it wrapped. Do you have scissors?”
And while the clerk stares in disbelief, Kathi Kannon, film icon, grabs the coat, sits on the floor, and slices up the garment, tiny bits of fur flying everywhere, until what was once a woman’s luxury coat is now, indeed, dog-sized. As Kathi stands and exits, it’s up to me to provide the look, and I fix my gaze on the clerk and raise my eyebrows to say, Don’t fuck with her.
Roy’s new fur only stays secured on his wobbly body for a few moments, but the experience warmed him, and us.
Moments later, in a proper
retailer for people like middle-class me, Kathi buys me my first real winter coat, a thick scarf, and stylish black gloves. She pulls the coat’s hood over my head and tugs the drawstrings tight. “You can’t look like an amateur out there with the northern lights,” she says. “This trip could be the one that changes your life forever.”
“How? By getting frostbite and having all my toes cut off?”
“God, I hope so,” she says.
I’m thinking, I hope we survive Canada.
Kathi selected our hotel not based on our usual standards of luxury, size of bathtub, or breadth of room-service dessert menu. No, Kathi chose our hotel on this occasion based on convenience—what’s closest to the show, the new epicenter of our lives, the aurora borealis.
Our adjoining rooms are perfunctory. Bed, check. Toilet, check. TV, check. But no pay-per-view, no porn titles to peruse, only a few cable channels aptly described as basic.
“We’re fucked!” I say, flipping the channels, unable to find anything compelling at eight in the evening in Yellowknife, Canada. “Sorry there’s nothing on TV tonight.”
“TV?!” Kathi yells from her bathroom. “We need sleep, Cockring. We have a big day tomorrow before we see the lights.”
“Oh, no. What are we doing before the lights?”
Kathi emerges from her tiny bathroom and in the doorway strikes a sexy pose befitting Marilyn Monroe. “We’re going dogsledding.”
“Ohhh. Please no,” I say, fearing what could be ahead—namely, Kathi and I, one or both of us, in the hospital with broken bones, dog bites, regret, all under a cloud of what might be her fragile sobriety.
Assistant Bible Verse 143: Pack tourniquets, iodine wipes, cyanide pills.
* * *
At a crisp and bright ten in the morning, we leave Roy asleep in bed and hop in a ride sent by the hotel concierge—some guy in a Ford Explorer—and sit side by side in the back, both of us shivering, me from the cold, and Kathi from the shock of being awake, out and about, and fully lucid at this hour of the day. The driver is polite but disinterested, wearing only a cardigan and stealing glances in the rearview mirror of us wrapped up to the size of sumo wrestlers.
“Do we look like locals?” Kathi asks him.
“Yeah,” he says, as sarcastic as possible for a Canadian.
“I’m here for the full experience,” she says. “Almost the full experience. I won’t drink the tap water, because I don’t need dysentery. You?”
“Huh?” the driver asks.
“We’re good,” I interject. “Thank you!”
“I aim to make love to that man,” Kathi whispers.
“No, you don’t,” I whisper back. “You’re busy.” I point out the window to the landscape.
Kathi turns to the sight of the snowy hills, smiling, beaming. She’s so wrapped in furs and down, I’m doubtful anyone will recognize her, and out here in brilliant sunshine, pure white snow all around us, fresh air and uncertainty ahead, I’m not even sure I recognize us. We’re in a strange and rare black hole of anonymity and raw living. There are no agendas here, no publicists trying to shuffle us around, no agents or attorneys telling us what to do, where to go. Even me—with my rigidity and reluctance—I’m at Kathi’s mercy, following her lead. And Kathi, a woman who has traveled the world already—more than once—who’s practically seen it all, is finally going to be able to say she’s indeed seen everything, the thing, in fact. That she’s finally seen the aurora borealis with her own eyes. She’s finally able to be a random citizen of planet earth and enjoy a simple pleasure, the not-so-little act of crossing a big goal off of her bucket list. She looks at her watch, seconds moving slower than ever in their march to dark skies and those beautiful lights.
“When we arrive,” Kathi says to the driver, “don’t stop. Just slow down and we’ll throw our bodies out of the car.”
I say, “No, sir. Please come to a complete stop.”
“I’m so excited!” Kathi yells. “Cockring, we must be present.”
“I can be present and also not dive out of a moving vehicle.”
“Where are your battle scars?” she asks.
“Where are yours?” I argue back.
“Mine are internal,” Kathi says, raising her eyebrows, challenging me to a duel.
“You win,” I say, gloved hands up.
She grabs my hand and we look ahead as we arrive at our destination.
As the SUV leaves, having properly deposited us at the unmarked gates to a dogsledding adventure land, we’re able to hear the dogs—barking, yelping, anxious. We can see them in their kennels, pacing, mirroring the disquietude inside Kathi Kannon, who’s itching to do anything to distract herself from the slow passage of time and the bane of her existence: waiting.
There’s a buzzer at the gate and Kathi pushes it once, twice, three times.
“Give ’em a second,” I say.
Kathi grips the vertical beams of the gate, holding them and thrashing back and forth. “HELLO!” she screams. “I WANT THE DOGS!”
“When has your screaming ever worked?” I ask.
And then, click, the gates start to swing open, Kathi marching inside, not even bothering to turn to me as she says, “Screaming works nearly every time, actually.”
A handsome man, tall and bearded, is approaching us, and even through his thick coat and gloves you can see he’s pure muscle.
“Hi and welcome,” he says. “I’m Matt.”
“I’m deeply in love with you and your body, Matt. I’m Kathi and this is my stepson, not my lover. I have no lover. I’m single. Available, some might say. Some might also say I’m deft, open, supple.”
Matt looks at us a moment, then raises his eyebrows and nods. “Alrighty, then. Let’s get you geared up.”
The dogs get a little quieter one by one as Matt walks past their kennels. It’s clear they know he’s the leader, each of them trained on him, waiting for him to give a command, to say something they’ll recognize, to call them out and signal that their time has come to run, run, run.
The dogs are gorgeous, mostly white fur, a few of them with dazzling blue eyes. They’re tall and muscular and focused.
“I have a dog named Roy,” Kathi says to Matt, motioning to his animals. “Roy is back at our hotel. He wouldn’t leave without a proper coat, which is impossible to find. Want to come back and meet him?”
“I’ve kinda got a full day,” Matt says politely.
“Roy is very similar to your dogs in terms of, sort of, having dog qualities.”
“You have an Alaskan husky?”
“Well,” Kathi says, “he’s definitely husky.” Kathi looks to me to help, but I shake my head no.
Ahead of us is a sled, the sled, our sled. It’s steel and shiny, unpainted, with clearly visible seams where it’s been welded together as if from scraps. It’s a simple frame, like a go-cart with no wheels. There’s no floor, only a spot for one person to sit and prop their legs up, and a spot on the back where someone stands and holds on to a little safety bar, or, in this case, what appears to be the suggestion of a safety bar.
“How did you find these people?” I ask.
“Concierge,” she says.
“What’s their Yelp rating?” I ask.
“What’s Yelp?” Kathi looks at the sled suspiciously and turns to Matt. “Do you offer a model with a seat warmer?”
“Or one with a steering wheel?” I add.
Matt laughs. “It’s easy to handle. These dogs know the path. Just let them lead you along. There are no reins to pull or jiggle to make them go faster or slower; these guys only know one speed: run. The only control you need is the brake.”
Matt stands on the back of the sled and pushes his foot down on a sliver of metal that looks like an afterthought, a leftover hunk of steel, something stuck on by mistake. His foot pushes it into the snow. “If there’s an emergency and you need to stop, just step down on this. Step hard, so it goes into the snowpack. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the dogs will stop.�
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“Wait,” I say as Matt walks away. “You’re not riding with us?”
As Matt starts to explain, Kathi grabs my shoulders. “We don’t need him! We can do this! You can do this!” She releases me and turns to Matt. Pointing to me, she says, “This ride is part of a trust exercise his psychiatrist says will help make him more comfortable coming out of the closet. You know what I mean?”
Matt nods politely. “I’ll be right back. I’ll go get you some dogs,” he shouts as he walks away. I turn to Kathi.
Looking at the sled, still unsure how to board it, I ask, “Who’s driving?”
Kathi says, “I am.”
I playfully bow and extend my arm toward her chariot. Kathi climbs on back, gives the brake a little tap with her foot. “Get in, Cockring. Let’s risk our lives!”
With uncertainty, I squeeze onto the sled, my legs resting on a couple of wayward steel bars so they’re off the ground, my body snug in the seat. I’m forced to look straight ahead, at miles and miles of frozen white pasture, framed by tall and stately evergreen trees and powder-blue skies—even the heavens look frozen.
Waiting for Matt to bring the dogs, I realize that for the first time since we landed in Yellowknife, I’m sitting still. I feel the icy breeze on my face. And as I lay my hands in my lap and wait for this to get going, I feel the strangest sensation of being present, of being in the moment, not hours or days ahead with dreams of Reid or nightmares of tomorrow, not months or years in the past with regrets about my parents or my news career. I’m here. And I’m with my hero, her snow boots snug against my ass.
“Your stepmom looks ready to go,” Matt shouts as he returns with a couple dogs.
“Let’s fucking get on with it, Jesus Christ,” Kathi says.
The dogs, the beasts, they know what’s happening, they know what’s next, howling and yapping, begging for a mission, a purpose. Matt guides them on long connected leashes and starts strapping them to the sled like Santa’s reindeer.
Matt whistles one of those wild shrieks you see on TV but think no human can actually make in real life. A couple of handlers walk over with more dogs, all of them manic, wild, excited to run. They’re all barking or whining, wondering why they’re being held back, all of them ready to be let loose and pull us into the bright yonder.
