Fatal Light Awareness

by John O'Neill

  “The Don Valley,” he said aloud, “is dandy, just dandy.”

  He passed below another electronic sign. This one said: TAKE A BREATH, LEONARD. THINGS ARE GOOD. ALISON LOVES YOU. RELAX. DON’T BE A DICK. TRAFFIC MOVING WELL, BLOOR TO LAKESHORE.

  A gust of wind blew through. Leonard raised his arms, steered with his knees, hoping the wind might dry out his sweat. Now, he was mild and reasonable. Alison would be glad to see him.

  On Bloor Street, a different valley. Extravagant storefronts, blocks of glass walls, glaring reflections, endless possibilities for commerce. Need swelled inside him. He drove past Banana Republic, past Marc Laurent, past Harry Rosen. Past Holt Renfrew where last January, amidst a bevy of weightless salesmen and women whose practiced elegance slowed everything down, and within the reverent consumer quiet, he’d embarrassed himself by laughing out loud at the price-tag of a cashmere scarf he’d picked up ($599!), after which the saleswoman abandoned him. Leonard hunkered down in his car seat until he’d cleared the row of posh stores and was approaching the dirty Faculty of Education building, Bloor and Spadina. He turned left onto St. George, trying to steady his hands, fearing he might lose control and careen into the Bata Shoe Museum on the corner.

  At Innis, inside, voices from a soundtrack, but he couldn’t make out the words. At the projection booth stairs, he hesitated. The metal stretched and wobbled, Slinky-like. Leonard gripped the rail, began. The moments of confidence he’d felt in the car had been wrecked by the retail valley. He tried not to think of the implications of coming here, his neediness, decided he was demonstrating refreshing spontaneity. His unpredictability was a turn-on, evidence of youthfulness, edge. He knocked twice on the projection booth door but the film was now a series of crashes. He tried the handle. The door opened.

  Beyond the dark projector space, Alison’s legs were sticking out from the couch in the adjoining room. He coughed and scraped his feet against the cement floor. Alison leaned forward into the doorway. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened. Leonard walked past the projectors as she stood up. Her hands gripped the doorframe.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I almost had a heart attack. I thought you were my dad.”

  “I called you. Several times. I just want to talk. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “It’s been crazy. I was going to call you, but. Come and sit.”

  Leonard sat on the couch and Alison dropped beside him. She pushed her knees up against his legs but crossed her arms. She wore no makeup, and her hair was seriously dishevelled, more so than usual. She’d been napping. Her raw look, her pale, plain face, offended him. He wondered, irrationally, why she hadn’t prepared for his arrival. The sleepiness of her expression, the way she was inclining backwards, made him feel as if he was in a dream, her dream. Even her rough voice, a voice he always felt he could reach out and touch, like a bolt of cloth, sounded high and airy, insubstantial. Insincere.

  Prodded by her distance, Leonard started in: “I hope you’ve talked to him. You know he called me again? At my home? My wife heard the message.”

  She didn’t speak. For the first time since Leonard had known her, he saw the face of a much older woman.

  “He’s upset. He’s upset we’re seeing each other.”

  “How does he know?”

  “He remembers you, from school. And one night, he saw you arrive.”

  She lifted her hand. Bit down on her thumb. Leonard waited for her to continue. But she just stared at her feet, flexing, unflexing her toes in her sandals.

  “Saw me arrive? Was he … I don’t get it … spying on you? How could he have seen? So, you’ve talked to him about it? Told him it’s none of his business?”

  “Cigarette burns. I have to change the film.”

  Listlessly, Alison carried herself into darkness. Leonard pictured a loose spool of film, flapping on the reel. Closed his eyes. Opened them to find Alison next to him again, but farther off. She clutched a cushion against her chest.

  “I told him. To leave you alone. He said you must be strange to want me. That it made him sick. I said I didn’t care. We yelled. This was on Monday, last week.”

  “If he phones my house again. Jesus Christ. There’ll be hell to pay.”

  Leonard stood up, inflated by his own indignation, moved quickly past how he didn’t want to consider what he meant by the cliché.

  “That why you stopped calling? You think it’s wrong, too?”

  “No. But my parents are divorced. My dad remembers how I admired you. When my parents were separating, I was acting in your plays. I used to talk about it, about you, a lot. My mom told him he was a lousy father, that I had to go to school for guidance. He remembers all that. I’m all that’s left of their marriage.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re a woman. You can make your own decisions. Doesn’t he have something else to occupy his time?”

  “I told him to fuck off. He punched the wall in my room.”

  Alison had stood up, was pacing. Leonard thought, for an instant, he saw her smile, but her face was red and her eyes were wet. She was squeezing the pillow hard. Leonard sat back down on the couch.

  “Is he violent, usually? Was he violent with you, your mother? I don’t know anything about him.”

  “No. No. Just some of the things he says.”

  “Sorry this has been so much trouble. I wished you’d phoned me. You can talk to me. Don’t be afraid.”

  She tossed the cushion onto the couch.

  “It wasn’t that, but. I’ve been projecting all week. Kept running into friends. Been out late, every night. It hasn’t really been about you, or him.”

  Her energy shifted. She straddled Leonard. Kissed his neck, moved her face to his ear, rested it there. Inspired by this, he hazarded a further imposition.

  “Alison, what are you doing, after? I haven’t seen you all week. Can we spend tonight together?”

  She leaned back, her hands on his shoulders.

  “We’re seeing each other now.”

  Before he could protest, let his face fall, she angered him by placing the back of her hand against her own face, as if to obstruct his view of her expression. With her other hand she pushed herself up, turned away. She peeled off her t-shirt, straddled him again, breasts exposed but with her head lowered.

  He kept his arms limp. Avoided her eyes. They spent a few moments like this, Alison half-naked on top, neither of them moving. Their proximity was what he’d been dreaming about all week, but now he felt she was offering herself as an apology, that her spirit was occupied elsewhere, doing other work, like the projectors in the next room. Leonard lifted an arm, ran a hand along her back, feeling the little pattern of moles there. Let his fingers stop on the largest interruption, pressed his fingernails into it. Alison flinched, hissed, fell back from him.

  “Shit, ow! That hurt, Leonard. Christ, be careful.”

  He tried to redirect her attention, gather her in again.

  “Sorry, sorry. Sorry. Do you know, Alison, you’ve got Cassiopeia on your back?”

  “What?”

  “Cassiopeia. It’s a constellation. Stars, W-shaped. I liked astronomy, in high school. Anyway, you’ve got almost the same shape on your back. Your moles. It’s amazing. You’re celestial. It’s cool.”

  “No. What I have on my back is a problem. My doctor has to monitor them, in case they become malignant. I’ve had a couple removed.”

  “They’re cancerous?”

  “Not yet. I don’t know. I don’t understand myself. My doctor talks in riddles. I don’t really want to know, just as long as he watches. Probably, I’ll die from it.”

  Leonard was annoyed, disappointed that his observation hadn’t impressed her, that she’d ruined the moment by retreating into the merely physical. He’d hoped that his insight, his uniting of her flesh with the eternal, her pale skin with the dome of the universe, was evidence of his romantic nature, that she would have swooned in the face of such discernment. But she’d retreated even further. />
  “Why won’t you kiss me? Every time I try, you avoid my mouth. Yes, I know, we’re going to build up to it. Is it my breath? Alison, it’s insulting.”

  She was standing again, lifting her t-shirt from the floor.

  “I can’t explain, really. I go through phases. Sometimes I just, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Don’t be insulted. I’ve had a long week. I think we should cool it for a while. I care about you, but. You’re a lot. I don’t care what my dad says. But I’m not sure this is working. I have to lock up. You shouldn’t wait. I’m meeting friends later, but. I plan to crash early. I’ll call you.”

  26

  PLAN TO CRASH

  Sound of the projectors. Lives going on, bodies moving through counterfeit spaces. The world worked out, scripted. No humanity in it. It was most like, Leonard thought, the sound of rain, or waves on a shore.

  “We should cool it. I care, but. Plan to crash. Not sure this is working.”

  He remembered a night from years earlier, when he and Cynthia had stayed in a rustic hotel near the Oregon dunes. Leonard, sleepless, had watched his wife sleep, the sound of waves behind. He’d thought of Matthew Arnold’s famous poem, had luxuriated in the imagery, as it gave his sadness legitimacy (he tried not to think of an incident from school that same year when, while teaching “Dover Beach” to a unruly Grade 11 class, he’d been challenged by a typically contrary student with severe attendance issues and overbite, who said that it was an old person’s poem and went on to argue, rather cogently, that poetry was a dead form, and that a recent Eminem song better expressed the same ideas. In response Leonard, fatigued and surly after a night of torturing through a stack of mostly incomprehensible personal essays on the topic, What bothers me most about the world, irrationally and faithlessly kicked the boy out of his class, advising the buck-toothed, freakishly articulate teenager that Eminem, while currently popular, would disappear like a fart in a storm, while the teenager’s grandchildren would still be studying “Dover Beach,” if, that is, they managed to stay in school, and avoid a life dependent upon the hiring vagaries of the fast food industry; and if, of course, the buck-toothed boy ever managed to procreate, which was unlikely, due to his apparent inability to apprehend the moods of others, thus greatly diminishing his seed-spreading potential). There’d been such futility in the sound of the lapping water, in the innocence of Cynthia as she slept, the light wheeze of her breath, the rustle of the sheets as she shifted, how she was unaware of his labouring mind. Now that same feeling, brought on by the projector’s hum, had found him out again. Leonard allowed himself, in that instant, to hate Alison and to conclude that her job, her title as a projectionist, was a fraud, was death-loving, and that the true summation of humanity was not in any projected image, but in the blankness of the screen, in the silence of an empty movie house.

  He left without saying goodbye, descended the metal steps slowly, hoping that Alison would burst from her dark lair, would stop him with generous hands, and with the passionate admonition that she couldn’t live without him. That she loved him.

  She didn’t. Leonard settled for her bicycle.

  It was strapped in a stand by Innis’ side door. It was a thick model, more mountain bike than city, the type some urban riders prefer, as the wide tires can’t fall between the rungs of maintenance holes. It shone in places, but was coloured a flat black, as if Alison had painted it uncarefully to dull its finish. The seat was the standard V-seat, hard as stone, the padding worn away. A red reflector was fastened below the seat, but there was no light in front. The bike was snug up against the metal bicycle rack, fastened there by a chain encased in clear plastic. Leonard surveyed the darkness, could see a young couple talking beneath an anaemic tree by the Robarts Library. He dropped down to see if there was a way to remove the tire, make off with the body. But Alison had placed the chain around the back wheel, the body and the stand. He’d need tools.

  He was half lying down beside the bike, considering a plan and also noticing, through the front wheel spokes, a dim star, maybe a planet, when he heard footsteps. He managed to stand just as a man appeared on the small walkway near the building’s side entrance. The man nearly ran into him, had to veer sideways to avoid a collision. Leonard saw suspicion in the stranger’s eyes.

  “I’m not ...,” Leonard said. “Just checking the type of tire.”

  The man acted as if he hadn’t heard, disappeared through the doors. Leonard wondered why he’d tried to explain himself, but a sense of authority had emanated from the stranger, some sense that he was in a position of judgement, that this was his vocation. In contradiction to this impression, the man had been poorly dressed in an overlong dirty coat and corduroy pants that dragged on the ground. Perhaps it was his long grey-tinged hair and thick eyebrows that intimidated Leonard, reminiscent of an uncompromising, severe, Old-Testament style judge. Leonard was reminded of the elderly John Huston playing the part of Noah Cross in one of his favourite films, Polanski’s Chinatown.

  Leonard once more examined Alison’s bike then skulked off, fearing that an army of thick-eyebrowed, sour-smelling men was about to emerge in waves from the fortress of the Library to swarm him, like in some climactic battle scene from The Lord of the Rings. He found his car skulking in shadow and crawled inside. Even the engine sound had a furtive quality, a low conspiratorial roar. Leonard decided to extend this theme into the remainder of his evening, unhappy with the idea of heading home to Scarborough, to the feeling of despondency that would surely intensify with each strip-mall and doughnut shop he passed.

  27

  BODY PARTS

  Parked at Yonge and Dundas. With bowed head walked along the neon street, went, bowed, into one of the adult shops. Studied the racks of pornographic magazines, flipped through one after another. Saw that the variety of women was severely limited, all of them with hourglass waists and thick, pouty lips, and each one in rapture about her chosen career. Leonard searched for pictures of a woman who resembled Alison, for a body that was thin, angular. Found one who had two bears (Ursa Major, Ursa Minor?) tattooed on the small of her back. Perused a couple of magazines geared toward lowered expectations; one for the man who fantasizes about women over 70, another for the man who dreams of women who tip the scales at three hundred pounds. Found magazines that focused on specific body parts: tits, asses, legs and feet, elbows, eyebrows, knees, hair, lips, earlobes and eyes, every imaginable dissection, and a spread in Playboy that featured women in miscellaneous professions – waitress, factory worker, secretary, lawyer, race-car driver, cabbie, mechanic, soldier – the only common element in their job descriptions being, apparently, that they wear lacy underwear under their uniforms, and spend part of their shifts spread-eagled against workplace furniture: restaurant table, assembly-line conveyor belt, office desk, and the like. He flipped through, disappointed that a projectionist was not represented.

  After about half-an-hour of skimming, and of examining the covers of magazines in back rows (women tricked out in leather, or rope-bound, their pleading eyes staring out from advanced examples of sailing knots: stoppers, bends, loops and hitches), the desk clerk appeared and began to hover, rubbing his hands together, frowning, anxious that the customer make a purchase or vacate the premises. The fact that the clerk was tiny annoyed Leonard all the more, and he imagined the man had recently been dismissed from the dwarf contingent of some travelling circus, and had taken this job out of desperation, and so was harbouring all sorts of bitter feelings about his plight and, say, his lustful estrangement from the bearded lady, or the hermaphroditic contortionist. (Leonard wondered whether there was a dirty magazine that catered to former members of the Ringling Brothers, or Cirque de Soleil). In his periphery, Leonard saw a glint of metal, and feared the clerk had produced a small hammer, was about to go to war on his kneecaps. But the man was just consulting his wristwatch.

  The clerk smiled and said, with an accent: “Hard to decide, I know. But sir, I must use the restroom. She doesn’t know
how to work cash. Have to close for few minutes. Come back later, kindly.”

  Leonard heard a laugh and looked to the back of the store to see two small boys in long plaid shirts and red sweatpants, hovering in a rear doorway on either side of a girl in jeans and a dark niqab, only her eyes visible. Their eyes met. Leonard was still holding a magazine whose cover showed a woman with her arms pinioned behind her. Embarrassed, he replaced the magazine, went into the street, keeping his face turned from a passing group of teenagers. Leonard thought of how he’d react if one of his students was among them (he knew that when his students talked about going downtown, they usually meant Yonge and Dundas), what excuse he might use to explain his presence there. (Well, Jessica, I’m thinking of introducing a unit on perversion into the Drama curriculum, so need to do research, every job has its unpleasant aspects, but I do have a responsibility).

  Leonard walked to Dundas Square, a nondescript slab of cement with a stage that the city had installed, where various entertainments and public events were held, all illuminated by huge pixel boards. The new design was an attempt to imitate the neon rush of New York City’s Times Square, but Leonard felt only contempt for this sad cousin. Contempt for the teenagers who congregated here; for the tourists; for the police; and even for the formally-dressed older couple who had wandered too far north from the Winter Garden Theatre, where they’d probably jumped to their feet in an ovation after the final curtain, motivated more by their determination to believe the play they’d just seen was worth the three hundred dollar ticket price, than by the quality of what actually transpired on stage – a melodramatic mish-mash of broad gestures and shouted songs and million-dollar special effects, an attempt to reproduce film experience on stage. Leonard hated the idea of their complicity in supporting such corporate entertainment, and he hated the place where he stood, felt the oiliness of the street and oiliness of the square and oiliness of the neon signs, the light itself like a secretion, foul issue of the city.