“There’s only so much time in the day.”
“Are you expecting me to believe you just woke up one morning and decided you’d rather spend all day lurking in some crusty shed than playing that fabulous instrument?”
“Pretty much.”
I chew on this while Skunk raises my bike seat by another half inch and clamps the lever down.
“I find this answer highly dubious.”
Skunk gives me a look.
“I find this bicycle highly dubious.”
“Promise me you will not sell that gorgeous instrument.”
“Do you play? I’ll give it to you.”
The offer is so tantalizing, my blood momentarily freezes over with greed. I grip the edge of the workbench.
“I play keys. Not bass.”
“You could learn.”
“Keep it. You’re going to play it again.”
Skunk shakes his head. I keep at him. “Yes, you will. I know you will. At least put it in the house. If you leave it out here, it’ll get warped when the temperature changes.”
Sigh. Now I’m the one being all fussy about someone else’s stuff. But I can’t help it: Nobody owns a bass like that unless they’re either rich as balls or they really mean it. Even if he doesn’t think so now, I’m pretty sure Skunk really means it. Or used to mean it, anyway. I eye the bass again.
“Make you a deal. You bring that bass back inside and I’ll consider fixing my brake pads.”
Skunk cocks his head, wrench in hand. “What kind of a deal is that?”
“What do you mean, what kind of a deal is that? You indulge my ridiculous neurosis and I’ll indulge yours. It’s perfectly fair.”
Skunk smiles, and when he does he looks less like a meaty thug and more like a big, shaggy bison.
“I’ll think about it,” he says.
chapter twenty-two
I’m sitting at the piano, listening to the metronome tick. But tonight, for some reason, I just can’t make myself practice. The piano sounds too bright, like a voice in a commercial. Instead of melting into its embrace, I chafe at it, like a hug from a relative you secretly hate.
I remember my first-ever piano lesson with Dr. Scaliteri, a month after Sukey died. She stared at me for a long time, perched on her silver ball, and asked me a question that drove a wedge between that moment and everything that came before it: “Great art requires great discipline, Kiri. Are you ready to be disciplined?”
She had me play nothing but scales that day, up and down the piano in every key, making me do them again and again if I fumbled a single note. My despair at getting them right was a strange sort of rescue from the larger despair clawing at my life, like wrestling with a difficult crossword puzzle when you’re alone in the wilderness with two broken legs and no hope of making it out alive.
Great art requires great discipline.
I lift my hands back onto the keys and grudgingly start on a scale. But tonight, it’s not discipline I need. I remember the time I asked Sukey where she went at night when she snuck out. It was the summer before Mom and Dad kicked her out, back when you could still hear music pounding behind her door anytime you walked by. I was sitting on her bed, watching her paint, her black brush flicking over a rectangular canvas, her hair pulled back in one of my fuzzy pink hair elastics because she was always losing her own.
“I go to Kits Beach and watch the ships,” said Sukey.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because they’re beautiful.”
“That’s really all you do?”
I’d been expecting boyfriends, drinking, all the usual things Sukey got in trouble for. But somehow this felt more luminously dangerous, more thrilling, like swallowing fire.
She dabbed her brush in violet and touched it to a spot of green. The lizard Sukey was painting seemed to come alive and wriggle, as if her touch was all it took to make it real. She smiled.
“That’s really all I do.”
The memory kills me. I pull my hands off the keys and stand up. I’ll go for a bike ride. Just a little one. A starter adventure. I’ll go out and explore and find some ships of my own.
At first, I stick to familiar streets, making a wide circle around the neighborhood. The leaves in the treetops form a starry tunnel overhead, bathed now and then in orange lamplight. I turn left when I get to Arbutus, then right and then left again. Pretty soon I’m in a neighborhood I’ve never been to before, with brick houses and flower beds so perfect it looks like they were unpacked, fully grown, from a cardboard box. I roll past a park where people are playing late-night tennis under spotlights and a short strip of restaurants where the smell of frying onions is sharp in the air.
Each street I turn down is a revelation. With every push of my pedals, I can feel the map getting bigger, new squares and lines and landmarks appearing like new levels in a video game. When midnight rolls around, I’m way down in East Van, cruising down Commercial Drive. I roll down the street, eyeing the record stores and hippie clothing shops and dimly lit bars. Up ahead on my left, I can see a small crowd of people gathered in a playground, all of them on bicycles—fixies and road bikes and one recumbent covered in yellow reflectors. With their blinking lights and shiny helmets, they look like a flock of fireflies. I swoop closer to get a better look. There’s maybe twenty people, mostly college kids, with some people my age and a few older-looking riders thrown in for good measure. Some of them are holding beers or flasks, and there’s a couple joints going around.
I’m so pumped from my bike ride I don’t feel shy at all. I ride my bike up to the edge of the crowd and nose in next to a girl in a cute leather jacket and sparkly tights.
“Hey. Whatcha guys doing?”
She adjusts the strap on her black helmet.
“Midnight Mass. We go for a ride twice a month.”
“Where you going?”
“I don’t know yet. We kind of make it up as we go along.”
I look around at the rest of the group. My eyes wander over girls in furry-eared hats and guys with pink and silver tassels hanging off their handlebars. Everyone’s talking, laughing, drinking, oddly glamorous on their tricked-out bikes. They remind me of the people at Sukey’s art opening. Alive. Happy. Free.
Then I spot him.
Skunk.
He’s standing at the other edge of the crowd almost exactly opposite to me, his huge body balanced over the slender angles of a black Schwinn bike.
I stand up on my tiptoes and wave.
“Skunk!”
He doesn’t hear me. He’s peering down at his handlebars while he feels the brake wire with his fingers, no doubt planning some completely unnecessary repair.
I back up my bike and ride around the edge of the crowd.
“Skunk! Hey.”
His face registers a brief moment of surprise and confusion.
I roll my bike right up alongside his.
“I can’t believe you’re here! Do you do this every month?”
There’s a joint coming our way. I can smell it, but can’t place it with my eyes.
Skunk fiddles with his brake wires. “Sometimes.”
“I’ve already been out riding for three hours. My bike’s riding totally straight now, thanks to you.”
His face brightens. “Good.”
“I’ve been thinking about fixing those brake pads. Pending you taking care of that Fender, of course.”
Skunk doesn’t answer. We stand there in silence, scuffing the grass with our feet. I wonder if Skunk wants me to leave. Maybe I’m ruining his quiet night out with my chatter. Maybe this is the kind of thing that drove Lukas away from me: Kiri Byrd, professional motormouth.
When the joint gets to us, Skunk passes. I waver, then pass too so he doesn’t think I’m a druggie. When a fifth of Captain Morgan comes around, Skunk passes again. I’m starting to worry that he’s a Mormon or a straight-edge punk like this kid Alex at my school, who wears a Mohawk and safety pins but won’t touch a beer. I lean over and catch his eye.
“I choose my poisons.”
“Does that mean we’re robo-tripping later?”
He smiles.
“Wait and see.”
I’m starting to realize that talking to Skunk is like digging for clams on the beach. You see bubbles in the sand and start digging, but he’s digging too, and nine times out of ten that sucker’s faster than you. I cock my head.
“You straight-edge or something?”
Skunk hesitates, and for a second I wonder if I’m digging too hard. He squeezes his brake levers.
“Not exactly.”
“You’re very evasive, you know.”
Skunk’s about to say something when a tall, skinny guy on a red BMX shouts, “Listen up!” and everyone shuffles into a bicycle huddle to decide on a route for the night. Somehow Skunk and I get shuffled apart. When I spot him again from across the circle, he’s lighting a cigarette. He sucks on it nervously and lets out a long, smoky exhale. There’s one of his poisons, anyway.
Red BMX lays out some route options. I vote for northward. So does Skunk. Stanley Park at night sounds like fun. I’ve only ever been there during the day, whenever Auntie Moana and Uncle Ed come to visit. The bike path is always so clogged with little kids on training wheels and their beaming parents that there’s no point in even trying to ride around them.
Red BMX pushes off and starts pedaling down Commercial Drive. For a moment all you can hear are gears cranking and tires bumping down over the curb. I can see Skunk up ahead of me, not too far behind Red BMX and his girlfriend, Purple Mongoose. For someone who loves fixing bikes, Skunk’s doesn’t look like much. The taping on the handles is scruffy, and orange foam peeks out from the cracks in the saddle. You’d think someone Skunk’s size would look funny on a spindly road bike, but Skunk and his bicycle fit together perfectly. When he pedals, I can see the flash of muscles in his calves.
We turn down East 7th Avenue, cutting through a warehouse district I’ve never been to before—blocks and blocks of buildings like monoliths or ancient tombs, so quiet that speaking feels forbidden even though it isn’t; even though it can’t be. I bike on the left side of the street, ready to swoop back over the line if a car comes, but none do. How silly to have a line there at all, I think, delighted, pedaling faster and faster. The city at night is a playground, and we are a pack of kids riding its swings upside down.
As the warehouses give way to residential streets, I cut through the fleet of cyclists to the front of the pack. Red BMX and Purple Mongoose and I keep pace with one another, our bikes humming beneath us like generators. I’ve lost track of Skunk again, but it hardly matters. At this speed, there’s no way we could talk, no way to do anything but watch the houses and trees and bus stops flash past like frames in a stop-motion movie. The Granville Street Bridge is a roller-coaster. We fly over it in a blur of metal and blinking lights and veer left as a single body.
Guys in tight jeans wave and whoop for us as we thunder down the hill toward English Bay. Music pounds inside the nightclubs on Davie Street, and the smell of beer and salt water makes even the air seem drunk. On the water, I can see Sukey’s ships, dark cities of their own. They are objects I will never touch, places I will never stand, sleeping giants that would not be disturbed even if all the shimmering lights and pretty buildings on land crumbled and fell down. Maybe we all need ships to hold our dreams, to be bigger and steadier than we ever could be, and to guard the mystery when we cannot, to keep it safe even when we have lost everything.
I keep my eyes on them as long as I can, falling behind the others as we cruise along the sea wall to the dark, forested path that borders Stanley Park. I startle when Skunk rides up beside me. I’d fallen so deep in thought I’d practically forgotten he was here.
“How’s the bike feel?”
“Oh. You know. Like a total death trap.”
I smile at him so he knows I’m kidding.
“I ant to ear oo ay um time,” shouts Skunk, scraps of his words torn away by the wind. I angle my bike closer to him.
“WHAT?”
“I want to hear you play sometime.”
I nod to show I’ve understood him.
“Make you a deal,” I shout.
“Another one?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I want to hear you too.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but I curl over my handlebars and scream, “Race you!”
Before he can answer, I’ve shot ten feet ahead of him, the bike path melting into mercury beneath my tires. Up ahead where the seawall curves, a bronze sculpture shines brightly in the moonlight. I blast toward it.
When I’m halfway there, a huge black shape streaks past me.
It’s Skunk. Cutting through the night like a sailboat. Flying down the path as if he weighed nothing at all.
I tip my face into the wind and charge after him, leaving the ships far behind. I know they will be there, waiting. But as my bicycle carries me deeper into the forest, it feels like I’m carrying them with me too.
chapter twenty-three
It starts raining after we cross the Lions Gate Bridge back into Stanley Park. Soon, it’s a full-on downpour. The pack dwindles as people peel off in various directions to ride home. Red BMX and Purple Mongoose evaporate into the night somewhere around Denman Street, and by the time we hit Granville, it’s just me and Skunk. The nightclubs have emptied out and the heat lamps have been pulled inside. Granville Street is empty except for cop cars and the leftover drunks and homeless people shouting at each other on the sidewalk. My clothes are soaking wet and suctioned to my skin, and my tires are slick. We bike slowly, floating over the shining pavement.
“You headed home?” says Skunk.
“I guess I should.”
The rain’s soft music has lulled me into a trance, and I hadn’t even realized we’d drifted past Burrard Street, where I should have turned off for the bridge.
“You left your shopping bags in the shed this afternoon,” he says.
“Perfect. I’ll come get them.”
As we coast through the deepening puddles, listening to the muffled sound our tires make slashing through the water, I take another shot at digging for clams.
“So why don’t you smoke pot?” I ask.
Skunk wipes the raindrops off his forehead.
“I used to. I was a big-time stoner when I was twelve.”
“When you were twelve? Where does a twelve-year-old get pot?”
Skunk laughs. “In Montreal, you can do anything when you’re twelve.”
He pronounces it Mo-ray-all, with this whiff of a Quebecois accent that makes my insides go limp. As we bike to his neighborhood, Skunk tells me about growing up in Montreal: smoking cigarettes at recess, skipping school to play in bands, moving out of his mom and stepdad’s apartment when he was sixteen to live in a shared house with the Band That Shall Not Be Mentioned.
“So you’d what, blaze and do multiplication tables?” I say.
“Yeah. Or just sit in my room and play bass.”
“What happens if you smoke weed now?”
“My paranoia gets worse.”
I give him a funny look.
“It gets worse? You mean you’re just generally paranoid all the time? Are you paranoid right now? Are you paranoid about me?”
I swoop my bike closer to Skunk’s and give him my best evil stare.
“I am plotting to kill you, Skunk. Kiri Byrd in the toolshed with a bike wrench.”
He gives my handlebars a light push. I veer away, laughing.
“How do you know I’m not plotting to kill you?” says Skunk. “I could have sabotaged your bike and you wouldn’t even know it. Your tires might blow up the next time you go over a bump.”
I swoop closer again, rain falling lush and heavy on my skin.
“You’re not that evil.”
“Try me.”
“You just think you are because you have tattoos. Speaking of which,
should I get one? I was thinking about getting Beethoven’s face right here.”
I point to a spot on my arm. Skunk grimaces.
“Please don’t.”
“Why? What’s wrong with Beethoven? It would make me more legit as a pianist. I’m going to be in this big piano festival soon, and I want the other contestants to know I mean business. When I flex my bicep, Beethoven could scowl at them menacingly.”
“Or you could scowl at them menacingly.”
“Trust me. I’ve got that part down.”
“You’re a little crazy, you know.”
“Look who’s talking, Bicycle Boy.”
When we get to Skunk’s house, the rain is still pouring down. We wheel our bikes through the iron gate and down the side of the house, flower stems slapping wetly against our legs. Skunk unlocks the shed and lifts his bike onto its pegs. He finds my plastic shopping bags stowed under the workbench and hands them to me. I feel the ridiculous shape of the acorn squash and the straw hat. The piano lesson I had this afternoon feels like something that happened years ago, to a different Kiri altogether. My legs are slick with bicycle grease and rainwater, muscles aching from the ride. I want to freeze myself in this feeling like a fern in amber.
I saw the ships, I want to tell Sukey. I know she’d know what I mean.
Skunk closes the shed door and hooks the combination lock through the metal latch. We stand in the courtyard, rain splashing off our shoulders. I think of my empty house and nudge my kickstand down, playing for time.
“Mind if I use your bathroom?”
I do need to pee, but mostly I just don’t want to go home. When I think of everywhere I’ve been tonight, the warehouses and the sea wall, my house seems lifeless, a plastic Monopoly piece in a world full of brick and glass and water and wood and stone.
Skunk plays with his keys.
“Sure. We have to be quiet, though. My aunt and uncle are sleeping upstairs.”
“No problem. I’ll be in and out.”
I leave my bike in the courtyard and follow Skunk to the house, waiting as he unlocks the sliding glass door and pulls it open. I can’t help but feel a little excited. I’m finally being admitted to the inner sanctum. The Sanctum Skunkorium. The cave of mysteries.
Wild Awake Page 12
