The Melting Queen

by Bruce Cinnamon

  Kaseema has organized a roving microphone, so people can put up their hands and ask a question or make a comment. The first person to speak is an old man in a grey coat.

  “This is a stupid waste of money,” he says. “We need to spend money on fixing our roads, not building expensive and pointless fountains.”

  “Thank you for sharing your point of view,” says Clodagh, showing what I think is an impressive amount of restraint.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Rome and see the fountains,” says an old lady with a sun hat covered in a strawberry print. “Or at least to Kansas City, the Fountain Capital of the Midwest. I think this sounds just divine.”

  “I think you should resign as Melting Queen,” says a woman with wiry red hair. “I’m not an intolerant person, but I think that this whole genderfluid thing is just an excuse for a man to muscle his way into a sacred women’s tradition.”

  “I agree with that lady who just spoke,” says a young man with a British accent. “There are two genders, male and female. You’re clearly just a man who likes to wear women’s clothing and makeup sometimes. And sure, if that’s what you want to do, whatever. But that doesn’t make you another gender, and it shouldn’t make you Melting Queen.”

  “I like the idea of having a fountain,” says a young man with a little black dog. “But I don’t want it to be downtown. People downtown get everything. You should build it in a new neighbourhood and make it a real destination where people want to go.”

  “I think it’s fine that you identify as whatever gender you want,” says a girl with a prosthetic arm. “What it means to be a man or a woman changes all the time throughout history anyways, and like everything else we do gender is just a big incompetent mess of made-up bullshit that we think is important, and human civilization is going to collapse soon anyways because of climate change. So do whatever you want and enjoy your life while you still can. Oh and the fountain idea seems cool. Go for it.”

  “I think building a fountain is a bad idea in a city that’s frozen for half the year,” says a woman with a sunburn. “Let’s build a big teepee where we can have sweats down in the river valley instead.”

  “I’m not opposed to this fountain,” says a man bouncing a baby on his knee. “But I think that you shouldn’t’ve said those nasty things about Edmonton at your coronation. I think you should apologize.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to apologize for,” says a woman with mermaid tattoos on her arms. “What you said about Edmonton is so true. It’s a breath of fresh air to have a Melting King. And if you think that this fountain is the best way to fix Edmonton, then I’m all for it.”

  The conversation continues like this for an hour, everybody sharing their ideas and opinions, about the fountain and about me. I’m surprised that most people seem on board with our project. But I suppose that the people who gathered for our announcement were already inclined to support us.

  Kaseema announces the launch of our website, where we’ll hopefully get more feedback from Edmontonians and keep everyone updated on the process. Clodagh and I spend the rest of the afternoon meeting with individual picnickers, hearing ideas, taking photos, and in my case listening to whispered confessions. It drains me, but I finally have the energy for it. This project has brought me back to life as much as it has for Clodagh. For the first time in months, I want something. Even if it’s just this one small thing, for just this one person. I have a vision of the future where I exist and where the world is a little bit better—and it’s my vision, not an Intrusion from someone else’s life. And that keeps me strong, and makes me happier than I’ve been in a long time.

  Over the next few days, we see results pouring in on our site. Lots of it is abuse and threats that people are too cowardly to make in person. But some of it contains interesting ideas and suggestions. Based on one of them, we decide to do a comprehensive review of Edmonton’s existing fountains and document this journey on our site to build enthusiasm.

  We float in the reflecting pool in front of the Legislature. We feed magpies beside the Ortona Memorial Fountain in Giovanni Caboto Park. We watch kids splashing under the water arches in front of City Hall. We picnic beneath the rusting iron sculpture fountains at the University of Alberta. We pour laundry detergent into the fountain in Alexander Circle Park and watch the suds build up in delicate mounds. We take a paddleboat in lazy circles around the jet d’eau in Rundle Park. We speak with people everywhere, trying to convince them of our cause.

  Drawing upon the ideas on our website, we draft a series of sketches with our fountain designers, trying to create our masterpiece. Many of our imaginary fountains can freeze in the winter into skating ponds, like the fountain at City Hall. One of them involves damming up Mill Creek and reshaping it into a series of cascading pools. One of them is not so much a fountain as a structure of mist-gates. One of them is an Edmonton cliché: a giant glass pyramid that people can walk into, with water constantly running down its sloped sides.

  I like all of these ideas, but it feels as if something big is still missing. When that hidden detail reveals itself, then the rest of the design will come.

  Which is why I go to West Edmonton Mall, to scrape the bottom of the barrel for creative possibilities. We left mall fountains off our original list. But the mega-mall has its share of water features, and its massive indoor waterpark is itself a testament to the powerful allure of aquascapes.

  West Edmonton Mall has been Edmonton’s dubious claim to fame for forty years. The sprawling consumerist temple takes up two dozen city blocks, making it North America’s largest mall. In addition to its thousand stores, it also features a full-size replica of the Santa Maria; a revolving array of exotic animals; an indoor theme-park where several people died on a roller coaster in 1986; a white marble statue of Augustus Caesar which presides over the largest food court; and dozens of people who’ve memorized the floorplan of this enormous building so thoroughly that they can live illegally in its hidden service corridors, without fear of ever being caught by the private army of security guards who seek to evict them.

  I walk through the crowd, trying to ignore the noise and brightness and focus on the feeling of the space, the ideas that it inspires. The mall is designed to be deliberately disorienting, to trap you inside so that you spend more money like at a casino. I weave around distracted shoppers who stare into their phones and swat away their children, past the aggressive kiosk vendors who try to sell me remote control drones, past the old brown women who sweep up trash.

  In the middle of one of the bubbling fountains that separates the two walking lanes from each other is an enormous bronze whale. It’s been here since I was a kid, one of the hundred random features of this hodgepodge mall. I’ve always enjoyed walking down into its belly. I peek into its mouth to check if anyone is sitting on the bench at the end.

  The whale is vacant, so I step down into its belly and escape the din of the retail floor. I settle onto the bronze bench—worn down into ridges and polished to a gleam by a hundred thousand bums—and watch the shoppers milling past. They seem far away, at the end of a long tunnel. None of them sees me down here, which is just fine by me. A red light in the roof of the whale’s mouth makes everything inside glow. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of my breathing echoing through the bronze cavern, along with the tinkling of the fountains outside. Clodagh’s right. I feel impossibly peaceful in the midst of all this chaos.

  “So who’s stalking who, really?” calls a voice, breaking into my meditation. I open my eyes and see René Royaume standing at the top of the steps in silhouette.

  “Who’s stalking whom,” I correct. René clomps down into the whale. He’s wearing a Miles Hortons apron and visor. His hair is in a bun, and he has dark circles under his eyes that no makeup can hide.

  “Did you get fired again?”

  “No,” he glowers. “I’m on my break.”

  He plops down beside me.

  “I wonder how many people come in
here and don’t make out,” he says, running his hand over the names and heart-ringed initials which have been carved into the walls (along with several phone numbers).

  “That’s kind of a lazy chat-up line,” I say. He rewards me with another scowl.

  “You’re not my type,” he says. He holds up a paper bag.

  “What’s this?”

  “Milestones,” he says. “Want one?” He shakes the bag of doughnut holes.

  “I don’t know. Is your own little poison stone crouched in there somewhere?”

  “Don’t make fun of my mental illness,” he says bluntly. “And I’m not telling you if it’s in there. You’ll never know unless you reach inside.”

  I take the bait, pull out a Milestone, take a bite. Dark chocolate with pomegranate jelly.

  “Yum. So you work at West Edmonton Mall now?”

  “Ugh I know, rub it in. I hate this place.”

  “It’s not so bad,” I say. René inspires the devil’s advocate in me.

  “It’s awful,” he whines. “It’s the worst place in the city.”

  “You have to admit that it’s kind of impressive. At least from an organizational standpoint.”

  “Yeah, in the way that factory farming is impressive from an organizational standpoint. In the way that the Holocaust was impressive from an organizational standpoint.”

  “Wow, are you sure you want to make that comparison?”

  “I think that it conveys how strongly I’m disgusted by this mall. People boast about the fact that even though we lost the title of World’s Largest Mall to China, we still have the World’s Largest Parking Lot here. That’s all you need to know about Edmonton.”

  “I don’t know. It’s good for people to be proud of something. We’ve got to work with what we’ve got. Maybe Edmonton isn’t so bad after all.”

  “Oh god, you’ve really drunk the Kool-Aid. Next thing I know you’re gonna be telling me how Edmonton is really Canada’s hidden gem, a diamond in the rough, a dirty geode that sparkles on the inside. BARF.”

  René snorts at his own mockery and then slides down the back of the whale’s mouth until he’s practically horizontal on the bench, his legs sticking out in front of us. He tilts his face up to look at mine. I look pointedly out the whale’s mouth.

  “Shouldn’t you get back to work?”

  “I can be late. What are they going to do, fire me?”

  “Uh yeah, they could.”

  “Then I’ll get another job.”

  “How many jobs have you had?”

  “I don’t know. Who has time to remember those sorts of statistics?”

  I study René’s face in the red glow. The way he’s sitting gives him three chins, and his dark eyes look extremely sleepy.

  “What do you want from me, René Royaume? Seriously. Why do we keep running into each other everywhere?”

  He shrugs.

  “It must be destiny. Which I’m cool with. You’re an interesting supporting character in the story of my life. Eddie Redmayne can play you in the movie adaptation.”

  “I think I’m more of a Tilda Swinton.”

  “Ha! You wish. Anyways, we should officially be friends.”

  “I have enough friends.”

  “Oh yeah, the nerd and the liar. Where were they when you had your seizures?”

  “I’ll remind you that your own record is only one for two on that count.”

  “Well, I’m improving.”

  “Yeah, good for you.”

  René falls silent. I watch the shoppers ambling by with their plastic bags swinging from their arms. After a while I notice René staring up at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he sighs. “I have to get back to work.”

  He shimmies to his feet.

  “Walk me back,” he says.

  “I think I’ll stay.”

  “It’ll do you good to get out of this whale,” he says, offering his hand.

  “I love this whale. I’ve always loved this whale.”

  “Oh god,” he laughs. “You’re really beyond hope, aren’t you? I don’t know why I bother.”

  I grumble and clamber to my feet, stooped over in the whale’s belly.

  “Wow, you are unfortunately tall,” says René.

  “I’m not tall, you’re just short.”

  “I’m not short, I’m just very far away.”

  I roll my eyes and laugh as I follow him back up into the lanes of shoppers. He leads me through the mall, past the Santa Maria and the decommissioned submarines, past the New Orleans-style Bourbon Street, past the waterpark and the Ice Palace skating rink.

  I shiver. Even up on the second level I feel a chill from the ice below. Maybe we shouldn’t have a fountain that freezes. Skating is all well and good, but what everyone really wants in the winter is to be warmed up.

  “I’m super bored,” says René as we enter the Miles Hortons, which overlooks the skating rink. I’m surprised that it’s completely empty, considering that there are apparently forty thousand people in the mall at any given time. “If you promise to stick around and chat until my shift is done I’ll make you The Great One for free.”

  “What’s The Great One?”

  “It’s our legendary, off-the-menu Miles Hortons drink. It’s like a double-double but it’s nine creams-nine sugars. Get it? After Wayne Gretzky. Number 99.”

  “That sounds horrifying. I think I’ll pass.”

  “Your loss. I drink one every day.”

  René struts across the café and goes behind the counter. I sit down in the middle of the empty coffee shop and look up at the TV screen hanging on the far wall. Kastevoros Birch’s face is on it. He’s being interviewed by Rosemary Silt on EdmonTonight.

  “—unprecedented, yes, but not unforeseen,” Birch is saying.

  He pauses dramatically, flips open a leather folder. Rosemary Silt sits across the table from him, food conspicuously absent from her wide desk.

  “I have here an original copy of the Melting Day Proclamation, the founding document of the Old Lore, set forth by the eight thousand citizens of Edmonton on March 20th, 1904. The first Melting Day.”

  Birch removes the yellowed paper from its plastic sheath and stretches it out towards Rosemary. The host reaches out her hands and Birch hesitates, drawing it back.

  “This is one of only three surviving copies.”

  “I’ll be careful,” says Rosemary in an irritated tone. I cheer her on for this rare moment of emotion. Normally she’s a master of the poker face.

  “As you can see,” carries on Birch, “one of the most famous articles of the Old Lore is written right at the top. Number three, which creates the position of Melting Queen.”

  He reads it out as the camera zooms in on the paper.

  ARTICLE III.

  And on that glorious day—that splendid, shining, singular moment of the year—the people of Edmonton shall be led by One Woman. A daughter of the city, the mother of its people, the Melting Queen shall embody the spirit of the city, proclaim our victory over the Long Winter, and lead a Parade of Revellers, who dance with joy to see a shattered river.

  “And if you’ll look farther down the page, I’m sure you’ll take an interest in Article Six,” says Birch. “You’ll notice the incredibly harsh wording, and the fact that it is the only article which our forefathers saw fit to exclaim, and not just state.”

  ARTICLE VI.

  Woe to the woman who, once Named, refuses to heed the call of service to her city! Woe to Edmonton should she deny her sacred duty! She shall be Melting Queen, and nothing in Heaven or Earth shall prevent it. For once one is Named, she cannot be changed. She who flees the call incurs a curse on our city. Let history forget her name. Let her memory be damned.

  Birch recites these articles from memory, drilling his eyes into the camera, cheeks flushed like a brimstone preacher. He turns to Rosemary and continues in a calm and condescending voice. “But I want you to look at Article Number 15.”

/>   Rosemary tracks her eyes over the blank space at the end of the long page, then flips it over to find another item in bright black ink.

  “Read it,” whispers Birch.

  Rosemary looks at her guest for a tense second, then turns her eyes back to the page and speaks.

  ARTICLE XV.

  And last of all, should a Melting Queen be Absolutely Unable to fulfill her Sacred Trust, the Good People of Edmonton shall be called upon to appoint Another to serve in her place.

  She trails off, realizes what she’s said, jerks her head up at Birch.

  “Go on.” The old man smiles like a wolf.

  Rosemary frowns down at the page. Speaking softly, she finishes reading Article 15.

  And should this Sad Event occur, a General Consensus shall be required among Edmontonians, so that she who is Late-Named, like every Melting Queen from First to Last, shall surely embody the Spirit of Spring.

  I’m frozen. I look over at René, who frowns at the TV.

  “If someone is totally unsuited to serve as Melting Queen, then they must go,” says Birch. “Clearly River Runson—or, to use his real name, Adam Truman—meets this criterion. It is up to Edmonton to choose an appropriate replacement. Luckily, we’ve already found a suitable woman for the job.”

  Birch’s smile broadens. He looks directly into the camera, his face looming over us. We’re silent, tense, waiting, wondering how it can get any worse.

  “We humbly submit this wonderful candidate for your consideration, Edmonton. All that remains is for the referendum we’re circulating to pass—as I’m sure it will—and then she will be Queen. It may be premature to say it, but here she is: please welcome this year’s true Melting Queen, Olechka Stepanchuk!”

  No.

  No. No no this isn’t happening this isn’t real. This isn’t possible.

  Odessa comes out and sits next to Birch. She’s wearing a modest pink dress which shows her baby bump and a platinum blonde wig woven in a Tymoshenko Crown. Her tattoos have been covered with makeup. Her smile is radiant.