Two-Man Tent

by Robert Chafe

11:46 PM G______: I didn’t realize I was such a bad person.

  11:49 PM me: You tell me you’re retarded. You tell me youre angry at yourself, and then you let it slide away.

  11:52 PM G______: What are you taking about?

  11:55 PM me: When I tell you working with these chats is painful you say that you’re “retarded”. You let that drop, implying… what? implying something you said that was wrong, or something that you haven’t said that you wish you could say.

  11:57 PM G______: I don’t understand “why” this is getting so heavy suddenly. We used to have fun.

  11:58 PM me: You’re the one who wanted to talk about it last week.

  12:02 AM G______: I wanted to talk about it because it felt like it needed to be clarified, I wanted to be clear. I didn’t want us to hurt each other.

  12:05 AM me: You’re the one who said you were angry at yourself for that conversation. But why? Because of something you said? Something you wished you’d said?

  12:09 AM me: It’s like you throw this stuff out. You throw it to the wind. And then do your best to pretend afterwards that it is nothing. You act like its all inconsequential and only feels more important to me. You said: I’ve calmed down now. Like that was all that mattered, how you felt. But you tell me that you are angry about how things go down between us, and that affects me too. All of this feels like it could be so much more important somehow and you are just so willing to let it fall away. Let it fail.

  12:12 AM G______: We. Live. On. Opposite. Ends. Of. The. Continent.

  12:14 AM me: So what? by that rationale we should never have even started to chat in the first place, right?

  12:15 AM G______: You want me to agree with you?

  me: No.

  12:16 AM G______: You want me to say that we should have never started to chat?

  me: Do you think that?

  12:17 AM G______: I think you should live your life, and I’ll live mine and when we can chat we chat

  me: And…?

  12:18 AM G______: and maybe we’ll get together again sometime.

  12:20 AM me: Maybe.

  12:21 AM me: That sounds like a declaration, a line in the sand.

  12:23 AM me: Hello?

  12:25 AM me: Are you gonna speak or is this how it is now?

  12:27 AM G______: I really like you.

  12:28 AM me: I know that. I have no insecurities about that.

  12:31 AM G______: Well I don’t know what else to say.

  G______: I’ll talk to you later.

  12:32 AM me: Ok.

  12:33 AM me: Will you though?

  12:36 AM me: Or will you vanish into thin air. Because you can. You can vanish, you can just stop and all you’ll be is a memory and a blinking cursor.

  12:39 AM me: hello?

  33 minutes

  1:12 AM me: I’m sorry, ok. Its unfair of me to hold you to some standard based upon what you’ve said in these chats, what you’ve sent out into the ether months and months ago.

  1:15 AM me: I’ve been going back and reading and re-reading this stuff. You never got the chance to do that. not until recently.

  1:21 AM me: It wasn’t my intent to dig this up and use it against you. Ok?

  The original idea was to take our chats and let them sit outside the fiction, to comment on it, to illuminate it. It was fun, going back and sifting through the real and finding points of intersection between what you had said and what I had written. The fact that you wanted a Norwich Terrier and then separated by months and thousands of km and totally unconsciously, I write Norwich Terriers into a story, a breed so unfamiliar to me that I had to go online and look up their name. I thought this was cool. This “made-up” and this “real.” I thought the made-up was coming from the real somehow, influenced and shaped by it. But maybe that’s not what was happening at all. Maybe that is not what this is.

  Maybe what this is is the opposite. The real shaped by the fiction.

  Writing stories about loneliness has made me lonely. No surprise I suppose. But even with you, the potential of you, all I have ever felt was lonely. And so being with you and feeling that, how does that make me behave? Maybe I should have written these stories about romance, or sex. What would we be then?

  You were right, I do script people. I have always tried to script people. I have always tried to plan and predict and in doing so I map conversations, have them infuriatingly mapped and planned before they happen so that when they happen I am inevitably disappointed and heartbroken with the discovery that people are fuller and more messy and complicated and difficult than I could ever imagine or predict and then, as I’m left without a plan, all I can do is mourn what wasn’t, what isn’t. I have always known this about myself. So looking back through our chats, bringing them back out of memory, I know with certainty that I have done it again.

  I did all of this, I think, because I thought you were lonely too. I have come to realize that I thought you were in fact what I was most afraid to become. I hate that you are so alone in the world. It saddens me. And it terrifies me. I want to take some of that away from you. I want to prove that such a thing can be taken away, remedied. I think I might have cared about it more than you ever did.

  On my last day in DC, you insisted on coming with me to the airport to see me off. We had an extra couple of hours to spare, so before getting on the subway we stopped outside the hotel at a crepes stand. You told me to go save a seat in the nearby park while you took my order and paid for the crepes. Going through our text chats later, I saw that it was the only time we were far enough away from each other during our time in DC to warrant me texting you. I said:

  Sorry. I feel like a dick just sitting over here while you get us food.

  I was feeling like a dick because after four months of online chatting and four days of sharing a bed I was no closer to understanding what our script was. I was starting to feel out of control and I was starting to outwardly sulk. And I knew you knew me well enough to at least see that if not understand it. You said:

  You only look like a dick.

  I always suspected and now I know. It’s my shaved head isn’t it.

  In the four days before this we had walked seemingly every inch of DC in the dark. I took videos of your T-shirted back moving through the amber lights of the WWII Memorial. We walked around the back of the Lincoln Memorial, saw the kissing couples in each enclave between the columns. You grabbed my hand, said that I should get to kiss a boy in DC, and you kissed me. That was the only time.

  Later as I sat in the plane on the tarmac, I was reticent to turn off my phone, even after they asked, and they shut the doors. I turned off the volume instead and held it hidden in my crossed arms and then felt a buzz in my chest and when I looked it was of course you:

  Miss you already. :(

  The plane started to taxi and I started to thumb type:

  Miss you too. Sorry about being such a weirdo last night/this morning, for sulking. And thanks for being so kind and generous.

  I had just enough time to send it before we left the ground. And before I shut the phone off I took the picture of the National Mall.

  It felt like our story was already ending somehow, even though we were talking about getting together again. Maybe San Francisco. We talked loosely about plans, but we never set any. But in my gut I knew we were done, that I would mess it up, if I hadn’t already. Maybe that’s what all of this is, an attempt to hold on to some of it.

  It’s all I’m left with now, these transcripts of my failures.

  When the plane landed in Toronto I sent you the picture of the National Mall.

  Ten seconds later you texted back:

  Success!

  THE PIGEON CAVES

  HER afternoon’s business then: moving rocks in the darkness. Hands cut by unseen edges, surprising sharpness, face covered in the pasty marriage of flying silt and sweat. She smelled him and could hear him breathing next to her. Darkness and dust. Can’t catch any clean air. Calm down. What time is it? No wa
y to tell. Somewhere there is a sunset, a sunrise. Somewhere there’s a sun. She exaggerated the sweep of her arms in lifting and lowering, hoping to accidentally catch a piece of him, to add touch to sound and smell, to confirm he was close. Something soft. That flannel shirt, he was wearing flannel. There was a way in so there must be a way back out again. Keep digging.

  —Hi ho, hi ho.

  —Nothing to drink, he said.

  —Except the wine.

  —We probably shouldn’t drink alcohol.

  That morning she had left her father’s warm car and walked the back edge of the school parking lot. After her father drove off she ducked under the low windows of Science 2010, peeled off the white shirt of her uniform in the November chill, stuffed it in her backpack next to the pilfered bottle of wine and soft French cheese, and put on a grey sweatshirt that made her look tough, ready for adventure. The best way down through the park, hole in the fence. Grass wet, fuck it. She walked the back routes away from her school and towards his. A good girl, paranoid to be seen ducking classes by the rush-hour stream of judgment. He’s cute. He’d asked her for a picnic. Who does that, who goes on picnics? He was waiting for her outside the gym, fighting with a cigarette lighter behind the rust-red dumpster. Pocketed the lighter when he saw her coming, the cigarette bouncing in his lips as he said good morning. Can’t walk right with him watching. One foot in front of the other. His sunglasses. Can’t even see what part of me he’s looking at.

  —So, where are we going?

  —For a walk. It’s a surprise.

  She followed him following the traffic unashamed over the hill into downtown, a stop to buy more cigarettes, chocolate. He paid for everything. Friend of his by the beer cooler, both of them talking about her at a distance. One-sided smiles, hands in back pockets, sunglasses. She loved and hated that she couldn’t see their eyes.

  The walk up the hill had taken the wind out of her. They sat for a while, legs straddling the wide concrete of the parking perimeter wall, the city losing all its colour with distance. Ate the chocolate. He corrected her pronunciation of his last name, made her blush. He asked about hers, never heard it before, and she gave him a rundown of its lineage: Balkans, Montreal, her father’s decision to move them to St. John’s. She told him her mother’s maiden name, popped out of her like a cork, hadn’t thought about it in so long. He stood and stretched and howled out at the morning sun, looked down to the valley hanging by the ocean. An idea, devilish.

  —Wanna see something?

  She was going to say no. A bad feeling. And then he offered her his hand. Smooth sun-browned skin, tiny black hairs at his wrist. Warm. She held it as she hopped with him over the wall. Her bare legs brushed through the grass at the edge of the trail leading downward, the city well behind them, the ocean flat and blue and looking friendly enough to swim in.

  —It dries you out more, the alcohol. It dehydrates you. He was still now, on a break from moving the rocks, his breath overtaking him. Hi ho. Those dwarves. Wonder if he’s ever seen that movie. Work ethic and Dad’s early morning rises. She was ok to keep digging but didn’t want to make him feel bad. She was feeling afraid, adrenaline rush, embarrassed to admit it.

  —We need water. She was testing her forehead, the sweat there, moisture lost.

  —We don’t have any.

  —We can last for two days, tops.

  Read that somewhere. Frightened herself remembering it. How long has it been? Impossible to say. Less than a day. They’d slept, but not for long. The early sunsets of winter, napping in the afternoon and waking confused in a dark room. The loss of light, it’s the loss of time.

  On their way in, they’d turned a corner, fully cleared the reach of the light.

  She wanted to go back, and he said just a little farther. Led her in, hands grazing the side of the cave walls to navigate. She’d marvelled at the darkness, how disorienting, trick of her mind to see light farther in. An illusion, she had to remind herself. A noise. A trickle of loose sand behind them, something he had dislodged that didn’t settle. Rolling and rolling, sand and silt, and rock, and then more, no thunderous collapse like in the movies, just an incessant stream. We should go back. Listen. And like an hourglass with no time limit, the sand and stone kept coming. By the time they turned back it was too late and the way they had come was gone and they could smell the rock suddenly and everything was wet and cold. She shut her eyes and kept them shut. It was scarier to have her eyes open to it, open to nothing.

  He wanted to leave her. Cave system, maybe there’s another exit. He had seen light. Told her to sit tight. She asked him not to, didn’t want to admit she was afraid. Told him it was a bad idea, tried to reason with him. The light wasn’t real. Pressure in their ears saying the new dirt wall had made it airtight. He could get further lost, he could leave and not come back. We should try to dig ourselves out. Her idea. Didn’t think about it much, spat it at him as the only alternative. They fought about it. She let herself get angry and he must have heard the truth in that. Apologized, wanted to calm her. She said she was ok, and she was lying. He felt bad. This was his fault and he knew it. She’d never even known about these caves. Never would have braved this but for him. And two of them now, grime packed tight under their nails, the iron smell of dirt and hard work.

  She had first seen him at the championship game last March. Their schools playing each other, the long-held rivalry bubbling hot across the cold rink. The racist chants the players handed off to the cheerleaders. His school: Brother Rice Collegiate. What comes out of a china man’s asshole? Rice rice rice! Booming off the tin ceiling. Everyone yelled it, parents even. Squinting, she could see him, sitting over there with his mother and father, the three of them doing their best to look small and inconsequential. His brother on the team, their Vietnamese surname like a misprint across his shoulders. In the stands, his hair black like his father’s and ripped jeans in the chill of the place and the shape of him lean and long and that red toque like a cherry on top. Her father next to her blowing into his hands and clapping them for warmth. Asked her a question and she never bothered to answer. She watched his red toque bob its way through the crowd to the canteen, the rhythm of his step sad somehow, so she fought her way over to stand in line behind him. Even taller up close, the fine hair on the back of his neck. He turned around, the sweep of his eyes across the rising steam of the rink catching her. Thinking how much she didn’t like hockey. Told him that, and they laughed. She bought a plate of French fries, yellow and soggy, cold in seconds, ate two and gave the rest to him. She wanted him to take off his toque, to see his hair, the full length of it and the shape of his head. Remember what he looks like. His dark eyes, one dimple. Tingle in her stomach at the sight of him. All of this darkness. It would be ok if she could just see.

  —Gimme a hand over here.

  She swept her hands in front of her until she found him. Followed down his arms, the effort in them. A bigger chunk of rock had the tiniest bit of give, both of them pulled at it. Hold on and heave. The rock gives the whole wall might. It could fall right on us. And it caught her for a second, in the fight with that one rock: the wall might not yield. They might really be stuck here. This darkness might be a precursor to the unspeakable. Awash in a new sweat and her hands too slippery to do anything useful and so she let go and felt her way down the wall and argued with her body to take a deeper more substantial breath. Heart racing. Adrenaline. Dizzy.

  He sat next to her, put his arm around her, the stink of him, a stink now not a smell. Sitting in the dark. Are there bugs? Nothing alive in here. Not comforting. Dad will miss me. He’ll be wondering where I am. He will call the police. A day or even longer now. How long until his panic got the better of him, until he convinced everyone that this absence wasn’t normal. He would notice right away. His bedroom at the top of the stairs, he could hear her when she came home. He would notice when she didn’t.

  Up to her elbows in her knapsack, scrapes on her skin stinging.

  �
��You hungry?

  —What you got left?

  Cheese fumbled in her busted knuckles, cold enough that her hands had to fight to find play in the plastic wrap. Dirty fingers breaking off bites. Tasted the dust and cheese and blood. Dad will miss me. Dad will look. She let her head fall on his shoulder. It was bony. Never complain about things again, bad airplane pillows or thin blankets. Hungry. Wish we still had that chocolate. Cheese almost gone. Not much left. Don’t eat everything. Not yet. Don’t know how long it will have to last. His shoulder. The smell of him. His breathing. Don’t care, as long as he doesn’t leave me.

  Headache had sent him to bed early, supper left out. Woke in the darkness to the smell of burning pasta sauce. He’d left the burner on low. In the kitchen saw the blackened bottom of the pot. The taped note on the front door untouched. Called her name up the stairs to silence. No shoes in the porch. Her bedroom door was open. Bed still smooth. Past midnight.

  He called and woke the parents of her friends. Groggy voices, angry at him until he said why. Their kids in bed asleep. Some of them getting up and going to double check. Pity in their voices then asked if there was anything they could do. Go find her, bring her home. He said no, there was nothing. Hung up, called someone else. One friend, woken by her parents and pressed to tell the truth. Said she’d been with a boy from another school. No name to give.

  The police suggested he calm down. Advice he wanted to take.

  —She was with a boy.

  —Maybe she ran away. Fifteen, they do that.

  It was the middle of the night. Some kids may do that, but she doesn’t. The police don’t know her like I do. They told him to call in the next morning, twenty-four hours, obligatory, arbitrary. I hope she’s run away. Consider the alternatives. The house so quiet. She wanted a dog. He said no, he shouldn’t have said no. He had given her the biggest room, stuck himself in the smaller at the top of the stairs. In the night when she was little, he’d hear her turning in her squeaky bed, the pad of her feet on the hallway floorboards to the bathroom, reading books aloud to herself. May I always hear you. May you always be close.