by Alan Cumyn
ALAN CUMYN
All Night
Grass Roots Press
Copyright © 2013 Alan Cumyn
First published in 2013 by Grass Roots Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Grass Roots Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Grass Roots Press would also like to thank ABC Life Literacy Canada for their support. Good Reads® is used under licence from ABC Life Literacy Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication (Print)
Cumyn, Alan, 1960-, author
All night / Alan Cumyn.
(Good reads)
ISBN 978-1-77153-001-9 (pbk.)
1. Readers for new literates. I. Title. II. Series: Good reads series (Edmonton, Alta.)
PS8555.U489A55 2013 428.6’2 C2013-902652-5
For Gwen and Anna, and their young men
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
Chapter One
The night is so cold as we run down the dark alley. I will never, never, never again take a bus to a funeral. A funeral that’s out of town.
“Open the door!” Jess says behind me.
I drop the key in the slush by my feet. Why didn’t I bring gloves? My fingers are freezing.
I wipe the slush off the key, jab it at the lock. “Come on!” I mutter.
“Gregor. Damn it!” Jess says.
She is tiny and very beautiful in her prom dress, with her pink ski jacket on top. Even in the dark. Even this late at night.
I bend down to try to see the keyhole clearly. The key finally slides in. The lock is so loose I have to hold it with my other hand as I turn the key.
When the door is open we race down the stairs. I slap on the overhead light. There it is: our one room. One room for almost everything: the old fridge, the pullout couch, the hot plate. No oven. And no kitchen sink. We wash dishes in the bathroom.
“God, I hate that light,” Jess says. She slaps it off, as if the ugly, glaring light were my fault. Then she turns on the light by our bed, the pullout couch.
We just need to go to sleep, I think.
“It’s so cold in here!” Jess says. We take off our jackets anyway. I stand in front of the fridge and look in. I can’t help it. I’m hungry.
“We are never taking a bus to a funeral again!” she says. My feelings exactly. She pulls out the bed. I get out the milk and reach for the cereal box. Not much left. I empty the last of the cereal into a bowl.
“You have to get your driver’s licence,” I say. “Then we’ll be able to rent a car the next time we need to go out of town.”
Just as I’m about to pour the milk, she says, “That cereal is all we have for breakfast.”
I stop. “Really?” I say. “You waited till I was about to pour.” Then I think: why did I say that? I don’t want to start an argument. I just want to go to bed.
I just want to hold her in bed.
“I did not wait,” she says. “I just couldn’t believe you would eat all of our breakfast.”
The wrong word now and we could be up all night fighting. Not that we fight, not often. But losing our friend Peter and then going to his funeral has been hard.
“Why do I have to get my driver’s licence?” she says. I return the milk to the fridge. I eat one flake, then I pour the rest of the cereal back into the box. Dust and all.
She’s hurt, she wants to fight, and I have to be careful. I have to stick with a safe topic. So I say, “You came the closest to getting your licence. If only that stupid car hadn’t stopped in front of you when you were taking your test. We could be renting by now.” It was a small accident. She needs to try again.
She needs to believe enough in herself to keep going.
I turn on my old laptop. It used to be Peter’s. It was too slow even for him. But it works.
“We have no money to rent a car,” Jess says. “That’s the big problem. You aren’t checking messages now, are you?”
The laptop takes forever, but finally my e-mail comes up. The conference centre needs me tomorrow, first thing. Before first thing!
“I have to set up chairs for a big meeting in the State Room at eleven o’clock in the morning,” I say. “I have to be there at nine-thirty. That room is huge. You could park a train in it and no one would notice.”
“How many chairs will you have to move?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Hundreds. Hundreds of thousands.”
“So you might build some muscles or something?” It’s the first nearly funny thing she has said since the bus.
Why is this computer so slow? There are other messages ... The Rats’ Nest, a comedy club, wants my team to perform on Saturday night.
“Hey,” I say, and glance at Jess, about to tell her the good news. She is lying on top of the bed in the blue silk slip she had on under her prom dress.
The one I got her from the second-hand store last Christmas.
She’s so hot she could melt butter in that slip.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Are you—?”
But she gets up quickly and changes into her flannel pajamas.
“Wait a minute,” I say again. “Was that—?”
She hops deep under the covers. “Too late. I’m freezing.”
I push the laptop aside and hurry to the bed. But I don’t get in, not yet.
“Too late!” she says. “You saw it. You blinked.”
I start to rub her back. She closes her eyes and makes purring noises, in her way. I let my tuxedo jacket fall from my back and onto the floor. How silly to wear a formal costume like that to a funeral. And the suit isn’t even mine, it belonged to Jess’s father. I kiss her neck.
“Too late,” she says.
I pull off the bow tie and undo my fancy shirt.
“You could just do my ...” she murmurs.
I reach under the blankets and rub her bum.
“Mmm ...” she says.
I worm my way out of my suit pants and socks. Then I slip under the blankets beside her.
“You’re not going to leave my dad’s clothes on the floor,” she says. A whisper. With an edge.
“They all have to be dry cleaned anyway,” I say.
I kiss her neck again. Why are my lips still cold? Because I’m so skinny. I lose heat easily.
But she has stopped purring. Right. All the clothes had been her father’s. I groan but get out of bed anyway and pick them up. I race across the freezing room and hang the tuxedo in the closet.
“We could not have been more stupid,” she says. “Dressing up like that for Peter’s funeral.”
“Well, everyone knows Peter and I have ... had ... a comedy act,” I say.
“But they didn’t get the joke, did they?”
Suddenly the door blows open and lets in a blast of icy air. Is the lock broken now? I dash up the stairs, slam the door shut, and stare at it, as if that might keep it closed. Then I dash back into bed and run with my legs to warm up the sheets.
“Did you break the lock?” Jess asks. She wants to fight. She wants to fight. Why is she in such a mood?
Because of Peter. Maybe we need to talk about Peter. So I say, “How could he just wake up dead like that?”
“Are you trying to be funny?” Jess says.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I stop running and reach for her. She is warm already, and soft, and good to hold.
“He isn’t going to wake up.” She turns off the light.
We breathe together. I think about what I almost asked her on the bus. But timing is everything. Better to stay quiet now. Go to sleep. I just need to ... nuzzle closer. But she keeps an inch between us. The cold has crept into the blankets.
“He was only twenty-eight,” she says. “A few years older than us. I’ve never had a friend just, like, die before. He had a nice body. How could he—?”
Sleep, sleep. How can she not be bone tired? Because she slept on the bus. I move my thigh against hers. That’s all I want now.
She has the sweetest voice. A man could ... could get lost in a voice like hers ... “Hey!” She elbows me, not hard, just hard enough. “I can’t believe you’re asleep already! I was talking about Peter.”
“I heard you,” I sputter. It’s dark here in the cold. I don’t really want to open my eyes.
“What did I say?”
“You said he had a nice body.”
“What else?”
“And that you were lusting after him,” I joke, “and now that he’s dead ...”
“Shut up!” she says. She pulls the blankets around her body. My feet stick out in the night. Now I really am awake.
Jess is winding me up. So I say, “You wondered how a guy who can sing ‘O Canada’ in Pig Latin can just have his heart stop in the middle of the night. And he wasn’t even, you know, with anybody.”
“There was no nooky,” Jess says.
“No necking, no nibbling ...” I try to nibble her neck.
“Stop it!” She turns her head away but I follow. I kiss her hair, her shoulder. Search for her mouth. She pushes my arm, and my hand ends up around her small wrist. But she tears free and slaps me. God!
Hard. Right on the face.
I can see her in the light coming in from the alley through our one tiny window. She looks startled, as if she can’t believe what she has just done.
“Ow!” I say, rather late, and sit back holding my jaw, stunned.
Chapter Two
“Sorry.” Jess’s voice is thin, and she looks down at the blankets, not at me. She has never hit me before, and I have never hit her. I never would.
She must be twisted up about Peter.
“I’m not in the mood,” she says.
“Okay.” I would have been happy with just a kiss.
“I didn’t, like, use a lot of power,” she says. Joking now, sort of. A good thing she didn’t plow me. She is not very big, but her father was a fighter, and he trained her. He made his living by keeping the books at a tai chi studio. He took in all the money from students for lessons, and he paid the bills. But tai chi was his real passion. He loved how peaceful the slow movements made him feel. Just like all the martial arts, though, tai chi is also about fighting. Jess is no tai chi expert, but she is strong and fast. She might have broken my nose or something.
“It’s all right,” I say. “I wasn’t trying to force you or anything. I’m sorry if I made you think that.”
“No teeth loose?” She kisses me now. Lightly. “I just don’t think we should make love tonight.”
“No,” I say. “Of course not.” I lie back down. I could try to hold her again but I turn my back instead. I just stay quiet.
“We need to think about Peter,” she says. “We have to honour him. His death has to change things for us, doesn’t it? Life is showing us something here. Everything we know could be pulled out from under us. It’s a wake-up call.”
I press my cheek into the pillow.
“I don’t think we should go to sleep tonight,” Jess says. “You have to get up early anyway. What’s the point? We should stay up and really talk about things.”
She turns on the light.
“You mean about Peter?” I ask finally.
“About life! What we want from it. What we’re doing here. Where we’re going. How we feel! You start.”
My face still stings from her slap. The words spill out of me. “Okay. How I feel: I’m starving. But I don’t want to ruin my breakfast. So I’m here with you. My beautiful girlfriend. Tired but not sleeping. A bit beaten up. And we’re not making love. You’re in your mother’s pajamas anyway. Some things a man can overcome ...”
“Is that it?” she says.
“Pretty well.”
“Okay,” she says. She rolls over.
We are on a wire high above a black pit. I know this. I know. But the words keep tumbling out. “What happened to staying up all night? To honouring Peter with our blazing honesty?”
She does not open her eyes. “Just go to sleep. Dream about Karla.” She seems to harden in front of me, becomes as still as glass.
“What do you mean, ‘Dream about Karla?’ ”
“You know what I mean.”
I shake my head slowly. “I talked to many people tonight, not just Karla. I didn’t eat enough, so now I’m starving. Why do we never have any food in this house?”
Jess leaps out of bed. She pulls a blanket to the small, sagging chair in the corner and sits very still. “This is not a house. And we don’t have any food because it’s eighteen blocks to the grocery store. You don’t help, so I just buy what I can carry. And what we can afford, which is not a lot. And you talked to Karla for half an hour. Which I don’t mind at all. I mind the way you were looking at her.”
This apartment is freezing. Of course I help with the shopping. Sometimes.
I pull the rest of the blankets around me. All right. The fight has started. But, I think, one problem at a time. I say, “How was I looking at her?”
She makes a funny, love-struck face.
I say, “I don’t even know how to do that with my face. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You used to look at me like that,” she says.
I can’t help it, I blow out until my lips flap. “All right. Hold on. It’s late, we’re both worn out. We will never, ever, take a bus out of town to a funeral again. Or dress up for one in costumes. I forgive you, you forgive me. Forget about staying up. Erase everything. Come to bed and go to sleep.” I turn out the light. “Good night!”
Jess does not move. “Wow. Now I’m more worried than ever about Karla.”
I toss and turn in the bed. “Oh, for God’s sake! Why are you doing this?”
She does not move.
“Stop looking at me!” I cry.
She keeps staring.
“This whole thing hit Karla hard,” I say. “She needed to talk to somebody. You know we used to go to school together.”
Jess pulls at her hair. “She and Peter broke up two years ago. She’s had eight boyfriends since. She just wanted to see how beautiful she would look in black. And you were there like some white knight.”
I slump into the pillow. “Jess ...”
“She’s gorgeous! She’s needy! She collects men like prize ribbons and then throws them away.”
I can’t stand it. I drag my own blankets out of bed and kneel beside her. “I am not anybody’s prize ribbon!”
“Well, I should hope not.”
I hold both her hands. Hers are chilly now, mine warm. “I don’t think we’re honouring Peter by fighting over Karla. She means nothing to me. She’s my ribbon. Here, I’m pulling her off and throwing her away. Be gone!” I pretend to pull a ribbon off my chest and wave my arms to make it disappear in the shadows.
“You really are a goof.” At last, a hint of a smile from her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you my love-struck look.” I lean in for a kiss. I am owed at least one.
She nudges my shoulder. “Shut up!” But she giggles, too, at last. We kiss slowly. Warm lips now, as well. We both have warm lips. Finally.
But then she pulls away.
“My turn,” she says.
Chapter
Three
Jess pauses. A look in her eyes. She has been thinking about what she wants to say for a long time. Maybe all the time I thought she was asleep on the bus. Or longer.
“I feel as if there’s never enough money,” she says. “Not for food, not for clothes. Not for good makeup. Or an actual hair style. There isn’t enough money for a decent place to live. Think of it: natural light from proper windows! A garden with a rose bush!”
I reach for her hand again but she clenches her fist.
“I’m an actor, but I can’t afford voice classes,” she says. “But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is, there’s never going to be enough money. You have a part-time job stacking chairs. I’m just a restaurant hostess. It’s hourly wage crap. I could put up with being poor if we were getting somewhere. But we’re not. You do comedy for no pay. After three years of theatre school, the only acting work I get is being an extra in crowd scenes. Peter was just like us, spinning his wheels. Now he’s dead. I don’t want that to happen to me.”
I wait a moment for her to calm down. “You’ve already had voice classes,” I say.
Jess throws up her hands. “I need more! I need acting for the camera. I need stage movement. I’m years away from being really good. And to get there, I need help. To get help, I need money.”
I try to hold her again. It was warmer, much warmer in bed. “You’re a lot better than you know. When you perform in a show, I can’t keep my eyes off you. And I’m not the only one.”
She pushes me away. “You’re just thinking about after the show.” She takes all the blankets with her and settles back into bed. I am alone out here in the cold in my T-shirt and boxer shorts.
“I didn’t tell you about the other e-mail I got,” I say. “My comedy team is on for Saturday at the Rats’ Nest.”
“The Rats’ Nest?”
I squirm into bed beside her again. “It’s a really cool new place. Very hip. Everyone wants to play at the Rats’ Nest now. But we won’t have Peter on the team, of course.”
“Because Peter is dead. Will they pay you?”
I pause. “A beer each.”
