by D. D. Miller
– Dave
he beach is packed today with sunbathers, readers, stand-up paddleboarders and the odd group of picnickers like us. We walked for almost half an hour along Toronto’s western shores before we found a spot on this small grimy beach. It’s hot. There are clouds in the sky, but they are cirrus clouds and as they pass in front of the sun they offer no protection from the heat. The only breeze is heavy, and it pushes the heat at us and wraps us in it before moving on.
Rosa loves the heat. In her slowly improving English she managed to tell me it reminds her of home. It’s been a warm summer by our northern standards, but not for her. It being her first Canadian summer, she’s having a hard time aDJusting to the weather. She looks terribly beautiful today, and I can’t help but stare at her sitting on a small pink towel with her legs bent at the knee and her smooth, dark skin glinting in the sun. Her head is tilted back to take it in. Her eyes close and lips part unconsciously to expose a hint of her white teeth. Her long black hair hangs over her arms. She is wearing a bikini, navy blue, and with her back arched, her small breasts point to the sun.
“John? John, did you hear that? Are you listening?”
“Sorry, what was that?” Sharon, my wife, is staring at me. There is a piece of cantaloupe in her hand. Its juices line her lips and drip down her chin. Her other hand rises to wipe it off her face.
“Alex was saying he’s getting another promotion.”
Alex shrugs. “I think I’ve got a good chance at becoming the director.”
“Oh,” I say, “that’s great, Alex.” I haven’t been listening to their conversation.
Sharon’s wearing a conservative one-piece, its bottom obscured by a purple sarong. Her large breasts threaten to pop out with every laugh, or every time she reaches into the cooler for a piece of fruit or a beer. They’ve gotten bigger over the years and hang off her chest like lifeless appendages. She still looks good, I guess, but she’s got the type of body that looks spectacularly womanly when it’s covered.
“I’m not concerned about whether or not I can do it. I know I can, I just wonder about the board. They almost know me too well.” Alex sounds smugly modest. That’s his way. He always manages a “but” somewhere in his dialogue even if left unspoken.
Alex received a scholarship out of high school, and I followed him to a small liberal arts university on the east coast. After graduation, I returned to Toronto with Sharon, and he’d gone travelling, completed a TESL course and ended up in Japan and Korea for a couple of years before moving on to Central America. Eventually, he came back here to work as a coordinator for this private language school downtown.
“They might want to inject some new blood into the school,” he says.
“Podriamos usar el dinero,” Rosa says right out of the blue. She’s shifted now, moved onto her left side, laid out like some centrefold, legs on top of one another, thighs only barely touching. Her upper breast slips down her chest. I can see the darkening of her nipple and then the small piece of cloth settles into place.
“English, baby.” Alex leans back and places a hand on her leg. He rubs her thigh in small, comforting circles.
She rolls her eyes. “Money. We can use the money.” Alex knows enough Spanish that the two of them can communicate well, and she’s been taking classes at Alex’s school. I wonder what it is like for them at home, wonder if they do more fucking than talking anyway.
She reaches her hand up to tussle his hair, and he grabs it before it gets there and kisses it lightly. “Mucho dinero,” he says and bites her finger.
We got to the beach at eleven a.m., hoping to beat the crowd. It’s well past noon now, our picnic nibbled away. We’ve also had our fair share of beer, and I can tell both Sharon and Alex are feeling it.
“Been awhile since we did this, eh? Drank all day in the sun.” He holds a sweaty bottle up to me. I raise mine back. Beer makes Alex nostalgic.
But it’s true. When we lived back east, we’d spent more than a few days doing just this. But now it seems different. As the beer and heat work together to weigh down my brain, I think we do this because we feel as if we’re still just young enough to get away with it.
I stare out over the water. Not even on a clear day can you see across Lake Ontario and in the haze even the horizon is obscured. But with a breakwater just off the shore coupled with the hovering seagulls, it’s like we’re on the coast – either of them – staring out over the vast ocean; not landlocked, peering south at the United States. Although I lived only briefly on the east coast, and harbour no strange connection to the ocean, this still seems like a cruel illusion.
Rosa has moved away from us and is lying on her stomach. A navy blue triangle of material does a gratefully inadequate job of covering her ass. Her arms are crossed, her head resting on them. Alex is sitting closest to her, his body obscuring my view of his fiancée.
Sharon has nuzzled up to me, slid under my arm and rested her head on my shoulder. “Mmm,” she coos, “it’s so nice here. I wish we could go swimming.” Her hands run along my belly; her fingers tug lightly at the hairs there.
“You could,” I say, staring out at the lake. It does look inviting. The water is very calm, lapping only a bit up onto the shore. People are in the water, especially down by the main beach, but we ended up far from there, near the Humber River, on a patch of sand overrun by a flock of haggard Canadian geese and surrounded by little cylinders of their green droppings.
“I remember us going swimming in the Bay of Fundy,” Alex says. “I bet that water was freezing. I remember even you diving in,” he nods to Sharon.
“That was different,” she says.
“The only difference was we drank more,” Alex points out.
“And we were covered in mud. And it was cleaner.”
“Let’s drink more,” I say. Sharon’s body is hot against mine. Her hair tickles the bottom of my chin.
The sun has cruised right on past us now. It’s hitting mid-afternoon, the hottest point in the day. The beer is cool, though I notice we are running low. Rosa has stopped drinking, and Alex looks flushed from the heat and the alcohol.
“We should go down and check out the water,” he says.
“Oh, I so want to just dive right in.” Sharon is nodding at Alex. She stands and begins to walk toward the water, staggering a bit. Her sarong has come off and I watch her ass shift under her suit as she walks away. She slips a finger under the band to adjust it. She’s still got shapely hips though her ass has filled out, and she has scrawny ankles that are all out of proportion. She brings her hand up to mop the sweat off her brow and then bends abruptly, squatting like a child to inspect something on the ground. “Beach glass,” she says, holding a piece of it up over her head. It is a large sliver of polished green glass.
Rosa moves up behind Alex, wraps her arms around his chest, leans her cheek against his back and whispers in his ear. Her eyes skim over the back of his head and meet with mine. I wonder what they’re talking about. Whether or not she knows that Alex and Sharon have fucked. That he knows what that bare ass looks like; has probably clutched it in his hand while he moaned her name.
I must be getting drunk because I don’t usually think about that anymore. It was before I even met Sharon. It shouldn’t matter. Mostly, it doesn’t. I reach into the cooler and pull out another bottle and some ice with it. I pick up my phone to distract myself, glance at my Facebook newsfeed, but I steal quick little glimpses of Rosa. My phone is warm in my hand, and it makes me think about the folder on my computer at home. The one full of downloaded porn of women who look just like her. How excited I was when one named Rosie ended up looking the most similar.
“I’m going down,” Alex says, standing slowly, “fuck this heat.” He walks down the beach toward Sharon who is standing at the water’s edge. They say something to each other as they dip their toes into the water. There is a certain physical comfort among people who have had sex, and it makes me wonder if they still think about one another,
remember the subtleties of each other’s bodies, what it takes for the other to get off.
He shoves her toward the water, and she shrieks then laughs dramatically. It only comes up above her ankles, but she’s jumping about and reaching for him, then pushing him. Alex is strong. Even when we lived together at university, I remember waking up and hearing him grunting every morning. I’d walk by his room and see him doing sit-ups or push-ups, and even now I bet he does the same. Seems like as soon as I got near thirty my body began to sag. I always said I’d start working out; do a few sit-ups in the morning; maybe take up jogging. It never lasted though. And fuck it really, what does it matter anymore? I’m Married. Getting old.
I lean back with another beer to watch Rosa, who has begun to twitch slightly as she dozes. I have done everything I can to imagine having sex with her. To have that lithe body wriggling under me or swarming over me. I take a large swig of beer and feel the condensation and the small pieces of ice melt off of it and drip onto my chest and it feels so cool, a single little drop weaving through my hair and down to my belly where it is dried up by the heat. I finish it with a second gulp and reach for another, the last.
Alex and Sharon are sitting, their knees pulled up to their chests, staring out over the lake. I can see the movements of their heads as they talk; see her head turn, and her lips move to explain something to him. I inch closer to Rosa. I can feel the sweat drip from my forehead, gather in my underarms and coast down my forearms. I pull my sunglasses off.
When I get next to her I glance over her barely covered breast. Finding women online with breasts as small as Rosa’s has been the greatest challenge. You have to dig through amateur sites for that.
Rosa stirs a bit as my shape obscures the sun and places her face in the shadow of my body. I take a drink of beer, my upper body arching over hers, and a few drops of water fall down to her stomach. She flinches. I bring the bottle to her side. It moves closer and closer to her and then I glide it ever so lightly along the side of her stomach. Her chest heaves and I can hear her breath lurch from her mouth in a small gasp of surprise while both of her hands move quickly from her sides, her left going to where the condensation has fallen, her right up to shield the brightness from her eyes. And as her hand moves, her fingers graze my leg – the first time she has ever touched my bare flesh – and that piece of my leg comes alive. She pushes herself up, squinting into the sun and stares at me. I can see a little fear in her eyes and confusion and the motion of her body moving forward causes her hair to dance over her shoulders and settle there.
This is the part in the video when the woman usually acts surprised for a moment but then smiles and takes off her top.
“Sorry,” I try not to slur. “You must be hot,” I say stupidly because I can think of nothing else.
“No,” she says quietly, and I can see her eyes travelling over me, the bottle in my hand, the excited rise and fall of my chest. She takes one quick glance down to the water where Sharon and Alex sit.
“Drink?” I raise the bottle to her. “It’s cold.”
She shakes her head and pulls her legs into her chest, her calves crushed against her thighs. Beads of sweat form where warm skin touches warm skin. Rosa is so close I can feel her warmth. I imagine I can smell the salty scent of her. I bring the bottle up to take another drink, but stop and move it toward her, keeping my eyes on her, and I let the bottle touch her thigh, run the smooth glass along her leg where it leaves a trail of dampness.
“Doesn’t that feel good?” I ask, but her eyes squint, and she tilts her leg away.
“What’re you doing?” she asks. She pulls herself tighter and once again looks back down the beach. “Don’t,” she says, and this time her voice has risen a notch.
My breath comes in short bursts, and I know I have to do something, grab her, or stand, or pour the bottle over my body.
She stands in front of me, and it is too much. Her body, hot, and glistening now with a sheen of sweat; her stomach and chest moving with excitement and fear and confusion. This is the part of the video where she is supposed to reach toward me, cup my groin and gasp at my erection, but Rosa just pulls away; I go to reach my free hand out to her but she flinches, so I pull back.
“Hey, hey,” I lower my voice, soften it as best I can. “Calm down, Rosa. I’m sorry.” I send a smile her way. She glares at me a moment longer, her eyes squinting and staring deep into mine, and then she turns and begins to walk down the beach.
Over her shoulder I can see that Sharon and Alex have stood again. He notices Rosa approaching and runs toward her. She screeches playfully as he gathers her up in his arms. She kicks and screams, writhes around in his arms so that the muscles on his back contract. He swings her around dangerously and then advances quickly toward the water. When he sets Rosa down, Sharon runs toward them laughing, and the two girls turn on him, each taking an arm, trying to push him toward the cold water. I can hear their laughter plainly, and Alex’s weak pleas to stop. I can see both of them, their hands all over his body, pulling.
I have to look away, and when I do, there is a loud splash. Although I don’t look back, I can still see them: the fake shock on Alex’s face as he sits in the shallows, the cold water washing over his legs and stomach, the two women standing above him and blocking the sun, laughing.
hen Sean Major watched someone take her own life, he didn’t fully believe that it was real. He’d been directed to the website by The Doomer, an online friend of his who’d promised “de sikest shit ul eva c.” So he followed the link to seemysuicide.org and a streaming video popped up. It was a girl, live on a webcam. A teenage girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting in a bland white-walled room. She was slightly overweight, puffy more than anything, soft. She had short, dark, curly hair. There was a dullness to her expression. Her brown eyes – maybe a little too far apart – stared straight ahead without any emotion at all.
For a while she just sat there on her bed. He kept expecting her to start taking off her clothes. He was used to watching girls on cams strip and masturbate, but she just sat there. Eventually, she got groggy. Her arms, which had been propped up on her knees, gave out. She caught herself and laid herself down on her side. She winced once, maybe twice, it was almost imperceptible. Then her eyes rolled shut, her eyelids fluttered and she appeared to stop breathing. A fluid of some kind ran out from between her lips; it was difficult to see.
He watched her lie there for five minutes. Ten. Then fifteen minutes before finally having to turn away. He felt like he wanted to vomit, so he went into the bathroom and stood over the toilet. He shoved his fingers into his mouth but couldn’t get them past his tongue. They tasted like white bread and metal. Instead, he ran a bath and soaked in it for a long time.
The Peer Tutoring Centre was always busy. Sean hated the waiting. There were booths where he and his students could go for privacy – and he always insisted upon using them – but when he had to sit and wait for his next appointment in the centre itself, it was excruciating. Many people used the round communal tables in the front. So there were always people at them hunched over textbooks and notes. So many hushed voices. So many people staring.
He had a first-timer who was already five minutes late, which meant he had to sit at the counter on one of the stools and wait. He tried to avoid making eye contact with Evelyn, the director of the centre, but she was one of those people who didn’t like silence. He thought about turning on his laptop, but he didn’t yet feel comfortable enough around her to ignore her.
“Your first-timer is on academic probation.” Evelyn was at that vague crossroads of middle age, where, to his young eyes, she looked anywhere from forty to fifty-five years old.
“Okay,” he said. He knew all about students on academic probation and how they were forced to go to peer tutoring. He turned slightly on his stool and glanced down at his shoes. They were old, black dress shoes. He’d wanted new shoes for a long time but couldn’t afford them. He’d only received one paycheque from t
he centre so far.
It had taken him a long time to get a job. He didn’t interview well. At the beginning of summer, he’d even bombed an interview at the Tim Hortons down the street from the dorm. Most of the people working there were immigrants who could barely speak English, and he figured that if they could do it, so could he. The manager – a middle-aged man with bad acne scarring and thin, pale limbs – had conducted the interview. Sean’s first thought was that the man was stupid, but when they sat down to do the interview, Sean couldn’t speak; he found himself virtually incapable of giving anything more than one-word responses. The banal nature of the questions (“What do you see yourself bringing to the team here at Tim Hortons?”) disturbed him; they made him think that the manager was put off by him, was convinced that Sean thought he was too good or too bright to work at the coffee shop. The manager was pulling a power trip because the only power he had was there; the only power he would ever have over Sean was in that interview. Sean began to sweat. He felt it on his forehead, right at the hairline. He felt it on his back, first dribbling then streaming right down into his pants. His glasses started to steam up. He tried to wipe his forehead inconspicuously but there was too much. His glasses slid down his nose and he let them rest there. He kept looking down at the brown-tiled floor, waiting for the pool to form. Waiting to be swept away. Swept along the spaces between the tiles on the floor and then flushed down into some drain.
“That’s her there,” Evelyn said, pointing at the door. “That’s her. Samantha McKinnon.”
