Nothing Looks Familiar

by Shawn Syms

  Tell me what happened I know you want to

  “You know me too well.” Raimundo loved having a friend to whom he could tell everything. “Then you can tell me about your date with Kathy.”

  Joe rolled his eyes, and the laser pointer scribbled the upper wall of his apartment, incidentally next to a photo of his girlfriend that was hung on the living room wall. He spelled out another response. I don’t kiss and tell like you

  “You know you love me and don’t want me to change in any way.” Raimundo was eager to get on with his story. “So this guy, he was all right, pretty good-looking. He took his shirt off right away like he wanted to show off his body. Conceited much, right? So we start making out and he starts playing with my nipples.”

  Joe interjected, Kathy does that too

  “I thought you didn’t kiss and tell,” Raimundo said. “Anyway, then he starts rubbing his fingertips on the ends of my arms which drives me crazy because they’re sensitive. But he wasn’t like an icky flipper queen who would just be fixated on them, do you know what I mean?”

  Fetish person. Joe spelled out the letters one by one, since the word “fetish” did not appear on his board.

  “Yeah, exactly. One of those guys would be staring and masturbating onto them and everything. This was just nice, his eyes were closed while he was kissing me, and I think he just did it because he could tell I liked it. I’m a moaner. He pulled my shorts off, but I didn’t let him touch me because I was so close already! He stood on the front wheels of my chair to get some oral. Lots of guys have done that, but it does require some balance, so I was impressed. Then we went into the bedroom and did it. Au naturel as they say!” Raimundo giggled and Joe shot him a quizzical look.

  Don’t you worry about catching something

  “Do you and Kathy use rubbers?”

  Different. She wants to have a baby

  “I don’t care about AIDS anymore, you know? I just don’t care. I could get hit by a truck tomorrow anyway. Dennis knows I like taking loads. He was watching the whole thing on my webcam. He likes to see me getting nailed by other dudes. I’m going to be with him for good in two weeks anyway.”

  I will miss you when you go, friend

  “Don’t get all mopey on me, bro. Put yourself in my shoes. What if Kathy lived in Alberta and you never saw her? You’d want to be with her. It’s called, come for a visit. I don’t care if you’ve never been on a plane. I do it, and so can you. Are you afraid?”

  With his pointer, Joe indicated his answer. Yes

  Raimundo stared his best friend down, with an arched brow. “But are you going to come see me?”

  A near-imperceptible pause, then the answer came. Yes

  Joe changed the subject. Think you will see this guy again

  Raimundo laughed. “He asked me on a date. Cumming right inside me made him all emotional and clingy. Ugh. I reminded him I have a boyfriend. Then I booted him out. It was fun but now it’s done.”

  Want to watch some TV

  “Okay.” Raimundo drove over to the TV set and stack of DVDs next to it, relieved to find that his chair’s motor wasn’t on the fritz anymore. “Whatever you do, just don’t say Glee. I fucking hate that show.”

  Charla expertly separated the meat from the bone of her curried chicken wing. Something to focus on, keep her mind off her nerves. She spoke loudly to be heard above the ambient noise of the bar, not to mention “Smoke on the Water” from the nearby jukebox. “Why do you think the dude kept asking if you were cool with the wheelchair?”

  “I guess he’s dealt with some crap before. Gay guys can be real assholes.”

  Charla didn’t really see gays or bisexuals as especially different from straight men. She figured that they all had the capacity to be goofy or decent. Her mouth burned from the spicy wing, and she reached for the pitcher for some more Stella. “If you’re so sensitive to the plight of horny men in wheelchairs, why would you take cash from this guy?”

  Ben was discreetly checking out the muscular, middle-aged coach of a girl’s soccer team loudly taking up an enormous table nearby. “It was his idea!” Ben’s face reddened. “I figured I should accept the offer at face value. I didn’t want it to seem like I pitied him for being disabled. And I didn’t take the money anyway.”

  “How magnanimous of you.” Charla threw another drumstick aside. “You’re not a high-priced call boy. I’m glad you slept with this guy for free, like you’ll do with almost anyone else.”

  “Jealous much? Anyone would look like a slut compared to you, Mother Teresa.” Ben got the server’s attention as she moved away from the soccer team’s table, balancing a trio of empty plastic pitchers on a large tray. He made the sign to get the bill. “Truth is, I’m proud I have pretty broad tastes.”

  “Well, maybe you should fuck me if you’re so open-minded. I’ve been thinking of having a baby. I can pretend I’m in a wheelchair if it would get you off.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Charla looked away, focusing for a moment on the waitress over by the bar. She was pretty, with faint blue eye shadow; flat-chested in a plain black T-shirt.

  “Well, we could use a turkey baster if you’re weird about it. Yes, I’m serious. I think about it a lot. You would just be a donor. You wouldn’t have to have any responsibility.”

  Guitars duelled in an old Black Sabbath number as nearby dart players hooted at one another, slapping each other’s backs. Ben finished his sudsy mug and plonked it on the tabletop loudly. “Charla, you’re my best friend. I screw around with randoms on my lunch hour. Why wouldn’t I have sex with someone I actually really care about?” He paused. “Yes. Baster or no baster. I’m in.”

  Charla looked over at her purse, then back at Ben. “I know I’ve been a bit of a bitch to you tonight, and I’m not sure I’m in the mood for angry sex right now. Plus you can’t just snap your fingers and be fertile. There is timing and stuff to consider. I have to talk to a specialist about it. Are you seriously willing to consider this?”

  “Well, were you actually going to suggest we go back to your place and have a trial run?”

  “No, but maybe we can just talk about it?” Charla hadn’t had any company in her apartment at all since Erich had left.

  Ben paused. “Well, the dude in the wheelchair dumped me, so I guess I’m free tonight.”

  “‘The dude in the wheelchair.’ Don’t you even know his name?”

  “Ray. Ray dumped me.”

  “What do you mean he dumped you? I thought it was just casual sex.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. All he wanted was a sperm donor. Just like you.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ben, you are such a fucking bitch.”

  “I love you too.”

  “So do I. Seriously. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Ben stood up to leave. Charla grabbed a twenty out her wallet and put it down. Ben did the same, and they headed for the exit.

  East on 132

  They drove east along Highway 132. To the right, dozens of red oaks reached skyward, seeking the last fading embers of the late afternoon sun. And to the left, the beginnings of the sea: the St. Lawrence broadened and ebbed outward, passing Trois Pistoles, passing Rimouski, reaching for the Atlantic. But with her head buried in a copy of The Bell Jar, all this beauty escaped Beth’s notice. Gus shifted gears, then touched her leg gently. He turned to face the open window and belched. She smiled absently but didn’t look up.

  The Talking Heads’ Remain in Light cassette had played twice and was starting to grate. Beth glanced toward the back seat, where eight-year-old Todd sat. This is the longest drive he’s ever been on, she realized. At first, he’d been content to engage in his usual roadway pastime, writing down the license-plate numbers he found on any out-of-province plates he hadn’t seen before. He kept track of the plate numbers on a set of index cards that he called his “documentation.” The slogan on the New Hampshire plate, “Live Free or Die,” particularly intrigued him. (“Dad, what does that me
an?” he’d asked. “I don’t know, bud,” Gus had replied. “I think it’s about the fact that slavery is wrong. Which it is,” he added with a masculine air of finality.) But since crossing the Ontario–Quebec border many hours ago, they’d been faced with a uniform sea of rectangular reminders that “Je me souviens.” Todd scribbled a thick mass of intersecting triangles on the back of an old envelope. Beth couldn’t blame him if he was bored by now.

  Next to her, Gus tapped out a fidgety rhythm on the hairy expanse of his leg, tugging on the hem of his denim shorts. He must be tired after being behind the wheel all day. He hadn’t let Beth drive since they’d left Peterborough that morning. “Baby, I haven’t given us a vacation since our honeymoon. Let me take care of everything.” She’d been slightly perturbed by his unintentionally stifling proposal, but kept it to herself. After all, she wasn’t that fond of long-distance driving.

  From the back, Todd suddenly piped up, sounding surprisingly alert after all. It was time for a new game. “I spy with my little eye, something that is … white!”

  “Aw, fer chrissakes, kiddo!” Gus bellowed. “That could be just about anything.”

  When Beth looked out the window, she knew right away what unusual sight Todd had spied. A giant white whale loomed in the distance.

  “What the hell?” Gus muttered under his breath as they drew nearer. The sea mammal was afloat upon a bed of gravel off to the side of the road. A large hand-painted sign announced that they were approaching La Baleine at Parc Sirois. As if for their benefit, another three signs offered an explanation in English, their block letters announcing, “Art. Camping. Souvenirs.” Next to the signs, the four fleurs-de-lys of the Quebec flag waved proudly.

  “Honey, why don’t we stop here and spend the night?” Beth proposed. They’d made good headway in their planned trek to Cape Breton that day, and her sore eyelids told her it was time to rest. And if she was tired, she knew Gus must be exhausted.

  He pulled over without argument, slowing the car until they stopped directly in front of the white-plaster whale itself. It was at least fifteen feet high and about the combined length of their AMC Gremlin and the hardtop camper hooked up to its trailer hitch. Where one might normally expect to see a fin, there was instead a large red door with six small panes of glass flanked by two frayed lawn chairs. Its large, toothless mouth gaped open, and its painted lips were curled up in a crimson smile. Between the jaws sat an old woman wearing an orange kerchief, methodically folding sheets and placing them in a hamper.

  The woman put down the linens and pulled herself slowly to her feet. “Bonsoir!” she called out, smiling.

  “Hello … ” Gus said tentatively.

  Beth hoped the woman spoke English. If not, she could try to employ her own rusty high-school French. But as with the driving, she knew Gus would want to handle this himself. When they’d stopped for dinner at a Poulet Frit Kentucky a few hours earlier, no one would speak to him in English. While a teenaged girl at the counter stifled snickers, he pointed to pictures on the menu to get them a bucket of fried chicken and some macaroni salad. Beth realized that she didn’t know the French words for macaroni salad either.

  Gus continued. “Madame, could we get a hookup for our trailer for the night?”

  She turned away and yelled into the mouth of the whale: “Axel, viens’citte!” She looked back at Gus. “My grandson Axel will help you.” She smiled and returned to her mound of sheets.

  A long-haired teen emerged through the bright red door. In contrast to his grandmother’s weathered but fair complexion, he had soft, light-brown skin and calm dark eyes. Looking directly at Beth, he said, “Come inside—we’ll get you set up in no time.” Beth entered the office behind Axel. Gus and Todd got out of the car to stretch and share a bag of Doritos.

  The office interior was spartan. The carpet resembled AstroTurf and had a light odour of Plasticine. Next to a green wooden chair in the small waiting area, a crate table held neatly stacked copies of the tabloid La Voix du Dimanche. An oval ashtray made of dark amber glass held half a dozen matchbooks whose covers bore a likeness of the whale. A colour calendar was thumb-tacked to the wall. The current photo for May 1980 featured a young-looking female singer on stage before a crowd of applauding onlookers. Beth didn’t recognize her.

  She turned to Axel, who flipped briskly through a ledger near the cash register. He wore a hockey jersey emblazoned with a large M and a cartoon image of a beaver chomping a hockey stick in half. The oversized shirt hung loosely off his slender frame.

  “I assume that you are here in Matane for the balloon, Mrs … ?”

  Beth approached the antique-looking wooden desk Axel sat behind. “Luciuk. Beth and Gus Luciuk.”

  “Lou-chuck?”

  She spelled the surname for him. “It’s Ukrainian,” she added by way of explanation. “Not too common around here, I suppose.”

  “I am Mi’kmaq,” he replied. “That’s not so common around here anymore either.”

  Beth paused, not sure how to respond. “You said something about a balloon?”

  “This campground would normally be deserted at this time of year. Instead, it’s half-full—because of the balloon.”

  The next day, Axel informed her, a hot-air balloon that had launched from San Francisco four days earlier was expected to land in a farmer’s field just outside of Matane. If successful, it would be the first non-stop flight of its type to span North America.

  “I’d like to know why the balloon is going from there to here, instead of the other way around!” he exclaimed. “If that were the case, I would be lining up to get on it. Matane is a nice place to visit—but you wouldn’t want to live here.”

  Beth had never seen a balloon landing before. She thought it was the sort of thing both Gus and Todd would like.

  Axel told Beth to help herself to a newspaper. “Everything you need to know about the balloon landing can be found in the first few pages.”

  “And take care when you walk around this evening if you are alone,” he added as she left the office. “It’s Saturday night, and some of the other campers here can get drunk and rowdy. Expect a few catcalls.”

  Beth blushed. “I think I can take care of myself. But thank you, Mr … ?”

  He flashed her a charming smile. “I am Axel Delpeuch. If you need anything at all, please come see me.”

  While they drove the bumpy dirt path to their assigned lot, Beth reviewed the campground map and the brochure Axel had given her. The site boasted electrical hookups, a laundromat, and shower facilities as well as such leisure options as basketball, volleyball, and horseshoes. Both motorcyclists and leashed pets were “aloud.” Camping Québec had awarded the campground two stars. Was that out of three, or out of five? she wondered.

  She told Gus the details of the hot-air balloon landing, and he suggested that they stay in town an additional day. He looked to his son in the back seat.

  “Wouldn’t you like to see a hot-air balloon, kiddo?”

  “Of course I would,” Todd replied.

  The small campsite was dotted with hard-tops trailers, soft-top campers, and various tents, but was hardly filled to capacity. They followed a series of small, spray-painted wooden signs until they reached their assigned place. The lot next to it was occupied by a large stand-alone tent, a pair of rusting motorcycles, and two men sitting at a picnic table littered with cans of Labatt 50. One of them was a large guy like Gus, but dark and swarthy, where Beth’s husband was ruddy and red-haired. The man had a shaved head, and his face would have been considered handsome, were he not missing a tooth. His companion was lean but had the same dark features; his straight hair was long and greasy.

  As the Luciuks got out of their car, the men were in the middle of an animated discussion. The bald one was loud and self-assured. “I don’t give a shit if Darcel’s black, she’s a damn attractive woman—she’s got the finest legs of any dancer on that show!” The other guy snorted loudly and handed his buddy another beer before notic
ing the newcomers. “Hey, neighbours!” he called out in a voice thickened by lager. Beth’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed their disheveled campsite. Gus nodded to the men. “How you guys doing.”

  Todd looked quizzically at the bigger biker’s shorn scalp and then walked over to where his father was disconnecting the trailer hitch from the back of the car. Beth helped Gus set up the hardtop—with Todd handing them a few of the metal poles—and then she took her son to find the communal washrooms. She glanced back at their new neighbours. The large man still sat at the picnic table, wedging a toothpick between two side molars. The tall, thin one was urinating against a nearby tree.

  Todd was quiet as they moved along the path toward the facilities. After a minute, he asked: “Are those guys some kind of pirates?”

  Beth ran her fingers through his hair. “Well, they do talk like sailors,” she offered.

  They approached a rectangular block of concrete split in two sections, with the entrances to the men’s and women’s restrooms right next to one another in the centre. Beth patted Todd on the shoulder. “Wash your hands and face when you’re done in there, and we’ll get to bed soon.” The men’s room door closed behind Todd, then Beth turned to use the women’s. She wondered how well they’d sleep this first night in the camper.

  By the time Beth and Todd got back to the campsite, the neighbours had started a bonfire. Their conversation had advanced to beer preferences. The lean one scratched at his moustache and then spat into the flames. “Back when I was working in St. John’s, you couldn’t go wrong with a case of Blue Star. Now, that was a beer that went down smooth. ‘The Shining Star of the Granite Planet,’ we used to call it.” Beth smiled in their direction as a courtesy. The bald man flashed her a lurid grin in response, and she quickly turned away. The other guy horked into the pile of burning branches a second time. Beth pulled back the zippered canvas door and let Todd in ahead of her.

  Gus had already hooked up the electricity and had just transferred the last of the pop cans and luncheon meat from the trunk of the car into the camper’s small refrigerator. A faintly musty scent permeated the interior. They’d bought it used, and it had seen better days. Putting Todd to bed on the far side of their sleeping quarters, Beth noticed a small hole in the canvas right near his pillow. She found a Band-Aid and used it to cover the hole so sunlight wouldn’t stream onto his face at the break of dawn.