The Waterproof Bible

by Andrew Kaufman

  Three weeks before classes started, they arrived in Halifax, carrying one backpack each. They stayed at the Halifax International Hostel on the south end of Barrington Street. The hostel had a strict policy: unmarried men and women had to sleep in separate rooms. So every night Lisa would make sure she got a bottom bunk, which Lewis would sneak into shortly after three. They would hold each other for the rest of the night and then, just before sunrise, Lewis would return to his room.

  Nine nights later they found a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a rundown building at the corner of Creighton and Cornwallis. The building swayed when the breeze was strong, but if Lisa stood on a chair in the corner of her room she had a harbour view. Every night Lewis would go to bed on his futon, crawl into Lisa’s bed an hour later and then return to his room just before the sun rose.

  When school started, Lewis and Lisa began studying how to become artists. Since they couldn’t be sure whether they were artists or not, they mimicked those who were. They drank. They smoked constantly. They hung out in dive bars. Shortly after Christmas break, they started sleeping around. Or at least, Lisa did. Lewis, despite initial opportunities and enthusiasm, tired of it quickly.

  At first, Lewis tried to ignore the late-night noises coming from Lisa’s side of the wall. When that failed, he tried to make art out of it. He took photos of the different shoes he found at the back door of his apartment. He created sculptures with the different brands of cigarettes left in the ashtray. He signed out microphones and tape decks from the AV department and made field recordings in the middle of the night.

  Then one night Lewis put the pillow over his head, a blanket over the pillow and his hands over the blanket, but he still heard everything. When it was over, Lewis listened to the footsteps leaving Lisa’s room. These footsteps were heavy. They were not Lisa’s. Hearing the bathroom door close, Lewis opened the door of his bedroom. In three steps he was in front of Lisa’s door. He opened it. He stood, motionless and backlit from the light in the kitchen.

  “Lewis?”

  He did not reply. He stepped into her bedroom and onto her futon and pulled off the comforter. He stooped and gathered her up. Lisa did not speak or resist. She remained silent even as Lewis, with a bend of his knees, swung her over his shoulder and carried her out of the room. Lewis shut the door of his bedroom with his foot. He tossed Lisa onto his bed. He held the covers over their heads as the bathroom door opened.

  “Lisa?” they heard the guy with the heavy footsteps whisper. “Lisa?”

  They listened to him in her bedroom. They listened to him walk through the kitchen. They listened to him check the other rooms of the apartment. They listened to him put on his shoes and leave. When he had gone, Lewis said, “I’m jealous.”

  “Finally.”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That night they went all the way.

  They were married, albeit in a civil ceremony, nineteen months later. After the wedding, Lisa and Lewis began working collaboratively. Four years later, for their thesis project, they decided to create a band. Not just start a band but create one, fully formed, as if it had sprung from their foreheads. They decided on the name: The Impostors. They created a logo. They silk-screened it onto T-shirts, then hung them in second-hand clothing stores. Posters for gigs never played were designed, printed, aged in the oven and stapled underneath older posters around town. Using Lisa’s Casio, they recorded a secret demo, which they burned onto CDs, labelled The Impostors—Demo. The CDs were left on buses and in coffee shops. They created a web page disguised as a fan site and leaked the demo to the Internet.

  They received a passing grade for blurring the line between fiction and fact. The line was blurred even further three weeks later when Steven Tassle, then head of acquisitions at Broken Records, loved the demo, simply had to have it and personally flew to Halifax to sign the band. The only stipulation was that they rerecord “Sounds Like Something Forever” to be released as the first single.

  Lewis did not realize how large a scene he had made until he was safely across the street and sitting once again on the bench. The record store clerk was looking at him through the front window of the store. Scratching his scruffy beard, the clerk talked on his cellphone, no doubt describing the customer who had lost it over a has-been pop band. Lewis’s palms were still wet. His heartbeat remained quick. He twisted his legs to the left so he wouldn’t be facing the record store, and this afforded him a view of a basketball court attached to a public school. There was only one person on the court, and it was Lisa.

  Her dirty, straggly hair was pulled into a ponytail that seemed to sprout from the top of her head. After she jumped but before her feet landed on the ground, the ponytail stood completely upright, making her head look like the dot of an exclamation mark. She was dressed in a ripped greyish-white T-shirt, although there was no mustard stain over her nipple today.

  Lewis watched as she practised her jump shot. In the time he sat on the bench, Lisa made seven rushes towards the hoop, none of which succeeded. On her eighth pass, she dribbled on the toe of her left foot and ended up kicking the ball to the far end of the court. This made Lewis laugh. His laughter caught Lisa’s attention. After retrieving the ball, she stood at the far end of the court and faced him, turning the orange basketball slowly in her hands.

  Lewis lifted his right hand slightly, giving a small wave.

  “Wanna play?” Lisa asked.

  “Sure,” Lewis said. He got off the bench. He jogged around the fence and onto the court. He held out his hands to receive the ball.

  “Let’s just start with twenty-one,” Lisa said. She passed Lewis the ball, and he moved to stand at the foul line.

  “Who said you could start?” she asked.

  “I just assumed.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “You start, then.”

  “Definitely,” Lisa said. She stood at the foul line with her toes slightly over it. She dribbled the ball three times. She held it tightly with both hands. She raised it. A look of intense concentration came over her face, and then she took her shot. The ball sailed through the air and over the backboard, landing in the grass on the other side.

  Lewis laughed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’ll get it.”

  Jogging, Lewis retrieved the basketball. He passed it back to Lisa. Again, she dribbled the ball. She raised it high. She shot. The ball sailed over the backboard without touching it.

  Lewis laughed again.

  “What?”

  “I just thought … you know.”

  “What?”

  “I thought God might be a little better at shooting hoops,” Lewis said. Lisa glared at him, but Lewis was unable to eliminate the smile from his face. “I’ll give you a ten-point lead if you answer one simple question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Where do we go when we die?”

  “Go get the ball,” Lisa said, setting her hands on her hips. Lewis nodded and ran to the grass, returning with the ball. He passed it to her and Lisa dribbled it three times. “I have no idea,” she said. “I haven’t died, and I never will. Mortality is your thing, not mine.” Raising the ball, Lisa shot. The ball hit the rim and bounced back onto the grass.

  “I’m not fetching it this time,” Lewis said.

  Without protest, Lisa retrieved the basketball. She bounce-passed it to Lewis, who stood at the edge of the foul line. He raised the ball and shot. The ball sailed through the hoop.

  Lisa chased it, and passed it to Lewis, who had not moved from the foul line. Lewis aimed. He shot. The ball went through the hoop again.

  Lisa retrieved it. Lewis shot again. Again he scored. His next shot was also a winner, but the one that followed circled the rim and bounced out of the hoop. Lisa was quick to the rebound, retrieving the ball directly to the left of the basket. She raised it. She aimed. She brought the ball back down and held it against her hip. “I’ll tell you what
,” she said. She leaned over to tie her right shoelace. Her shirt hung open, revealing her braless breasts. “If I make this shot, I win the game.”

  “Why would I agree to that?”

  “Because if I lose, I’ll tell you the meaning of life.”

  “Lisa, I don’t really believe that you’re God.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t really believe you’re a rock star.”

  “Alright, then,” Lewis said. “Shoot.”

  Lisa turned the ball slightly in her fingers. She raised it. She shot. The ball sailed through the air, missing both hoop and backboard completely. Together they watched the ball land on the grass, and then Lewis looked at Lisa expectantly.

  “You idiot,” she said. “There is no meaning. There’s no plan. No script. It’s not a movie. There’s no lasting significance. No great reward. No right. No wrong. No punishment. No justice. There’s no heaven or hell. Forget all that. There’s no reason for any of this. It’s all random. Everything’s fucking random!”

  She stopped. She caught her breath. She continued. “You can invent something. You can make up some sort of meaning. You can make the boy get the girl. You can tie up the loose ends. You can persuade yourself that suffering brings redemption.” With these words she paused. She looked directly into Lewis’s eyes, extending her index finger. She took a step towards him, invading his personal space. “But you know what?” She touched his chest with her finger. “You know the one thing I do know? All that suffering brings is bitterness. Eventually, no matter who you are, no matter how firmly you believe in heaven, or karma, or the way, it all ends with bitterness. None of those things can protect you. Tell me that seventy years of anything, of happiness, of euphoria, is worth seven months of bowel cancer. You can’t. It isn’t.”

  Lewis attempted to form a reply, but Lisa turned her back. She dropped her basketball and walked off the court, leaving Lewis alone.

  22

  The ghosts in the Vice-Regal Suite

  It was just before midnight when Lewis began to search his hotel suite for the basketball. He was sure he’d brought it with him. He remembered picking it up from the pavement of the basketball court. He remembered dribbling it along Broadway Avenue and up the steps of the Fort Garry Hotel. He remembered tucking it under his arm to carry it across the lobby. He was sure he’d bounced it against the wall of the elevator, accidentally requesting floors seven, eight and eleven. But now he couldn’t find it anywhere. He searched the bathroom, the living room, under the bed and behind the television. But he couldn’t remember what he’d done with it.

  At midnight, Lewis undressed, climbed into bed and pulled up the covers. At 12:17, he turned the clock to face the wall. He fluffed his pillow. He turned on his side and curled up into a little ball. Still he could not stop thinking about the basketball.

  Shortly after two o’clock, Lewis got up, dressed and left the Vice-Regal Suite. He walked the length of the hallway. He did not find his basketball. He walked up and down every hallway on his floor, but still, no basketball. He pressed the down button for the elevator and waited. When the right-hand one arrived, Lewis let it leave without him. He pressed the down button again. When the left-one one arrived, he got in, as this was the one he’d come up in, but there was no basketball inside it.

  Lewis went down. The doors opened in the lobby. He walked to the front desk. He was glad that the clerk named Beth was working and that she was alone.

  “Good evening,” Beth said.

  “Do you have a lost and found?”

  “We do.”

  “Do you have a basketball in it?”

  “I’ll have to check,” she said, but she did not move. She seemed to be waiting for some sign from Lewis.

  “I’ll wait,” Lewis said. Looking over her shoulder, Beth went through the door behind the desk. Lewis waited. He was the only one in the lobby. There were no guests. No concierge. Lewis was alone in a room designed to hold hundreds, and for a moment he became frightened that, with no one watching him, he might begin to disappear forever. Then he heard Beth come through the door and return to her station behind the desk.

  “Sorry. No basketball. No sports equipment of any kind.”

  “Oh,” Lewis said. This saddened him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just fine. Really fine. I just can’t seem to find my basketball.”

  Lewis turned towards the elevator and did not see that the look of concern remained on Beth’s face. He did not look back while he waited for the elevator. He rode it directly to his floor. He went straight to his room, unlocked the door with his pass card and was surprised to find his wife standing just to the left of the bed. She was full-sized, but transparent.

  “Quickly,” she told him. “I can’t hold this for long.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re so messed up right now.”

  “I know.”

  “You have to deal with it.”

  “You want me to grieve faster?”

  “Lewis, you haven’t even started.”

  Lewis stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. His wife had already begun to fade. He could see the carpet through her legs and the floral print wallpaper behind her shoulders and head.

  “What should I do?”

  “For starters, you have to stop listening to that woman.”

  “I know. I know. She’s not good.”

  “But you’re doing the right thing.”

  “What thing? What am I doing?”

  “Just keep doing it.”

  “What? What am I doing?”

  “Just keep making it tactile. Making it something you can touch …”

  There was more, but it was too quiet for Lewis to hear. With a small but audible poof, she disappeared.

  23

  Some semblance of order

  Lewis sat on the edge of the bed and, although he tried not to, began to cry. After three deep sobs and four deeper breaths, Lewis went into the bathroom, where he wiped his nose and tried to figure out how to make things tactile. He asked himself what he felt inside. He told himself to stop thinking, stop talking and became perfectly still. When he did, he remembered a winter night seventeen months after they’d married, when they were still in Halifax and in their fourth year of art school.

  For six weeks they’d been arguing, although he was unable to remember what the fight was about. All he knew was that he’d decided to leave, but Lisa had convinced him to spend one last night. They slept together one last time, and it was so boisterous and gymnastic that Lewis fell asleep immediately afterwards. While he slept, Lisa took a steak knife, went outside and slashed all four tires of his car.

  In the morning, Lewis was carrying a box filled with his most precious possessions when he noticed that all his tires were flat.

  Furious, Lewis stormed back into their apartment, accusing her in the kitchen. She did not deny it. His initial reaction was that she was crazy, and it validated his decision to leave. But he soon reinterpreted the gesture as a sincere display of affection. On the condition that she paid for the new tires, and that she do so before the end of the week, he decided to stay.

  It was only now, standing in the bathroom of the second-best hotel room in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that Lewis realized how much more her actions had meant. At that moment, when the honeymoon glow had completely faded, when he was exhausted from the fighting and disheartened by the wet Halifax winter, he would have left her. Had Lewis been able to drive away, he would done so, and he wouldn’t have looked back until it was impossible to return. With four simple thrusts of a kitchen knife, Lisa had made this impossible, saving not only their relationship, but him.

  Lewis looked up from the bathroom floor at his reflection. He couldn’t believe he’d made her pay for the tires. “There,” he said to himself. “That’s a great example of you being an asshole.” He walked out to the living room, where he plucked the steak knife from the dishes he had yet to set in the hall and left the suite
.

  It was in the elevator, descending, that Lewis crystallized the plan: he would deflate all four tires of a car. If that didn’t make things tactile enough, he would deflate all the tires on another car. He was prepared to stick his steak knife into as many tires as it took. However—and this was very important to him—the destruction couldn’t be completely random: whether they were all hatchbacks, or all had headlights that folded down, or all had out-of-province licence plates, the cars needed to be somehow related. Lewis wanted destruction, but it had to have a structure, a guiding principle, some semblance of order.

  Lewis walked through the lobby and nodded to Beth. He was three streets north of the hotel when he decided the theme would be cracks in the windshield, primarily because he was passing a BMW that had a long horizontal crack in its windshield. Lewis knelt down at the right back tire of the car. He put his hand on the bumper, which felt very cold. He pulled the knife out of the inside pocket of his jacket and, with considerable effort, pushed it into the tire.

  Doing this made Lewis feel very happy. He listened to the air escaping and pushed the knife up and down so it exited faster. When the tire had visibly flattened, Lewis tried to pull out the knife. The knife resisted. Only after several attempts did Lewis succeed in removing it. Keeping the knife in his hand, Lewis circled the BMW, slashing each tire as he passed it. He stood in the middle of the street, turning the steak knife in his hand. He watched as the other three tires deflated, and then began to search for another car with a crack in the windshield.

  Winnipeg was a Prairie town, surrounded by gravel roads and farms, and Lewis had anticipated that cars with cracked windshields would be common. But after searching for forty-five minutes, he hadn’t found another one. Lewis was about to change the theme when he turned right onto Wolseley Street and his eyes focused on a white Honda Civic. Even from half a block away he could see the crack that started in the middle of the windshield and travelled upwards towards the left-hand corner. Lewis ran towards the car, then crouched at the back right tire. He pulled the steak knife out of his pocket. He heard the driver’s door open and became very still.