Something for Everyone

by Lisa Moore

  Okay, she said.

  So my buddies and I borrowed a truck, there were six of us. And we cleaned up the field. We got out there at nine in the morning. Are you walking up the stairs?

  Yes, she said. Yes, I’m going up the stairs now.

  And we loaded the burnt-out couches, he said. We loaded them onto the truck bed and we had more bags of garbage than you can imagine, we just went around and collected it all. I bet the fellas were pissed, the ones the mayor was going to hire to clean up, but the next day there was another article, and the same mayor saying about how some young people had cleaned up, and he didn’t exactly say thank you, or anything like that. But he said something about young people that was basically positive and that cleaning up had been a good sign about the future.

  He didn’t tell her that he had kicked at the grass near the couch where he had been making out with Jill, the girl Jill who had come up to him and clinked her beer bottle against his and asked did he want to sit down for a bit on one of the couches and asked was he a friend of Chad’s and started kissing him just like that. And how she had lifted one knee over his hips and staying kissing him very slowly and lazily while sitting on his lap until they were actually lying down and kissing for a long time under the stars with music blasting all around them. In the morning he saw that the watch was gone.

  Can you see me? Chelsea asked. He saw a shadow moving fast across the skywalk, the bulb on her back that was the knapsack. She disappeared between the window frames, or whatever they were, strips of metal dividing one window from another, and he saw the other figure lumbering toward her. She was going fast and the other figure was a man, David could tell because of the shoulders and his gait, and the man was not going fast at all, maybe drunk, maybe weaving.

  Then he saw for a split second, the two dark shapes — the girl and the man — in one of the big windows, as they passed each other. They seemed to pass through each other. He heard her breathing fast and running down the stairs and back outside. The man who had passed her had not stopped, or even slowed down.

  I’m through it, Chelsea said. I’m out on the other side.

  Acknowledgements

  I am profoundly grateful to Melanie Little, who is a magnificent editor. Thank you for your brilliance and dedication, and for having my back. Thank you also to Peter Norman, for copyediting and for having such a sharp, clear eye.

  Thank you to Sarah MacLachlan for your unfailing insight, deep friendship, and for steering ship Anansi.

  I am grateful for all the hard work by everyone at Anansi. Thank you, Maria Golikova, Barbara Howson, Cindy Ma, Laura Meyer, Alysia Shewchuk, Matt Williams, and Janie Yoon. Thanks to Tilman Lewis for the proofread.

  Thank you to Jillian Tamaki for my beautiful cover. It’s everything I could have ever dreamed.

  I would also like to thank the Burning Rock for reading excerpts of these stories, and for being the wonderful friends and writers they are! Claire Wilkshire, Larry Mathews, Jessica Grant, and Libby Creelman all sent in detailed notes. Thank you also to Nan Love and Holly Hogan.

  Thank you to my students and colleagues at Memorial University. Special thanks to Jennifer Lokash and Danine Farquharson. Joel Deshaye, John Geck, and Chris Lockett also provided valuable feedback. Thank you also to Robert Finley and Mary Dalton.

  Big joyous love-filled thank you to Lynn and Libby. Humongous thank you to Emily, Eva, Theo, and Leo. And thank you, Steve, for everything, everything.

  I am extremely grateful to the magazines who published these stories and the editors I was fortunate enough to work with: Lynn Henry, Madeleine Thien, Conan Tobias, Nick Mount, John Barton, Mark Medley, Paul Taunton, and Larry Mathews.

  Versions of these stories first appeared in the following publications: “Lighting Up the Dark” in the Toronto Star; “Marconi” in the Globe and Mail; “Visitation” as “Visions” in Taddle Creek; “A Beautiful Flare” as “The Shoe Emporium” in the Walrus; “The Challenges and Rewards of Re-Entering the Workforce” also in the Walrus; “The Fjord of Eternity” in Granta; “Lovers with the Intensity I’m Talking About” in the Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Short Fiction; and “Guard of What” in the Malahat Review.

  This book is dedicated to Sheila Barry, with whom I had the great privilege to work when she was the publisher of Groundwood Books. She is very much missed.

  Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, and Alligator, and the young adult novel Flannery. Caught was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize and is now a major CBC television series starring Allan Hawco. February won CBC’s Canada Reads competition, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was named a New Yorker Best Book of the Year and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Alligator was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean region), and was a national bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a national bestseller. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.