As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  I nodded.

  ‘Who did he kill?’

  I drew again on the cigar and spoke in the tone of someone talking about the weather. ‘My mother.’

  I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I believed it on some level. He could’ve convinced her that day to let Baron give us a ride. He could convince her of anything. If he had she’d still be here.

  ‘Jesus.’ This was Karl.

  Valerie leaned back and said nothing.

  The Redhill sisters looked at each other and Veronica told me she was sorry. I said she had nothing to be sorry about and I felt calm. I had given them something they hadn’t expected and for the moment I had command of the table. Yet what I’d said didn’t affect Valerie the way it did the other three. I could see it in their faces: awkward sympathy, discomfited reticence. With Valerie, though, there was the kind of smirking reserve found in the countenance of villains. Indifferent, nearly, to the events of others’ lives. Impervious to the sadness. Compassionless. Solipsistic. Ever-concerned with the present and what comes next because nothing can be exhumed from the past but ghosts and bones. And she had no time for either.

  As though on cue, in walked the man she had, I would soon learn, most recently excised from her life.

  Relieved and elated to move on, Karl Knotold grinned and stuck out his hand to the man standing behind me. ‘Danny Mann.’

  I resisted the natural urge to turn and look at him and yet I knew he was big. Weightlifter, t-shirt busting, alpha male big. I could sense his heft. Like an ape. I hated him instantly.

  I watched Valerie to see how she would react. I watched her because I couldn’t not.

  ‘Val.’ He paused, like he was really thinking about his next line. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  She checked her nails. ‘Like, wow-what-a-coincidence-it-is-running-into-you-like-this good to see me? Or, You’ve-been-stalking-me-like-a-pathetic-fucking-nutjob-creep-for-two-weeks-and-can’t-stop-jerking-off-to-the-hundred-pictures-you-take-of-me-a-day-coming-out-of-my-building-doing-laps-in-the-pool-leaving-the-gym-the-grocery-store-the-library-sun-bathing-on-my-balcony-and-oh-I’d-love-to-get-a-copy-of-the-candid-zoomed-in-close-up-pics-you-take-standing-across-the-road-looking-up-through-my-floor-to-ceiling-loft-window-at-night-while-I’m-belting-out-Bon-Jovi-ballads-to-the-street-below-in-my-stripper’s-thong-and-bra-because-I-know-people-are-watching-and-I-like-that-they’re-watching-and-because-I-know-you’re-watching-and-it-tortures-you-and-I-like-that-it-tortures-you-but-you-do-it-anyway-because-you-convince-yourself-that-if-you-set-the-camera-to-multi-shot-you’re-bound-to-get-one-where-my-head-is-back-a-little-and-my-eyes-are-slightly-closed-and-my-mouth-is-open-like-I’m-coming-and-my-lips-are-at-the-edge-of-the-invisible-microphone-I’m-holding-as-though-it-were-your-cock-in-my-hands-like-it-was-in-your-Hummer-that-time-we-crossed-Lions-Gate-Bridge-and-I-loved-that-it-was-in-your-Hummer-by-the-way-or-like-it-was-the-first-night-we-met-and-I-brought-you-here-to-Shebeen-and-I-blew-you-in-the-back-parking-lot-because-I-felt-like-being-dirty-and-found-you’re-hulkiness-lip-lickingly-attractive-and-your-roughly-hewn-edge-and-diminished-intelligence-and-lingual-inferiority-charming-however-unintentional good to see me?’

  Karl Knotold clapped. He clapped slowly and shook his head, grinning but not. The Redhill sisters rolled their lips in and pressed them together. I felt Danny Mann leave. Vanessa slapped the table and Veronica toe-tap-sprinted on the spot beneath it, both erupting in laughter. I turned and watched him go. What could he do? What could any man do? I felt for him then, this man whose face I’d yet to see, this man who would in less than an hour call me outside and drop me with a single drunken punch to the side of the head, this man who had not long ago in the grand scheme of things been where I was now and was now where I would eventually no doubt be.

  Karl: ‘You have a heart of stone, Miss Argent, and a tongue of forged steel.’

  She grinned and puffed on her cigar. ‘Why, thank you, Mr. Knotold.’

  He looked at me. ‘And you wonder why we never got involved.’

  All of this—all of it—was fair warning.

  Out of nowhere but not awkwardly the Redhill sisters said they were sorry but they had to be going. No one asked why. They hugged Karl, told me it had been nice to meet me, and, finger-waving to Valerie, said they were sure they’d see me again.

  After a moment of not saying anything, Karl poked a thumb over his shoulder and said he had to go, too. Valerie raised her brow a little and shrugged. When Karl vacated his spot in the booth, she looked at me, sipped her Scotch, and tapped the leather seat beside her. I got up and sat down as directed.

  ‘So. Vodka martini. Tell me. What is it you’re willing to lose?’

  CLIPPINGS (4)

  (taken from personal email)

  Vector Sorn:

  Your quest, should you choose to accept it, begins now. More accurately, it begins tomorrow evening, but for the sake of weighty moments—

  Who: You & Us.

  What: Meet & Greet

  Where: Main Hall.

  When: Ten days hence – 5:30 post meridian – an indeterminate but eventual end

  Why: You tell us: your first assignment

  In anticipation & with curiosity,

  The Faculty at Quest

  ~

  This was the place for me.

  #305 36 WATER STREET, TERMINUS BUILDING: VANCOUVER, BC

  I hadn’t seen her in ten days. I felt like Arturo Bandini. Only I wasn’t poor and she wasn’t a waitress and I couldn’t return to where she worked whenever I felt like it. A man can’t just walk onto a plane in the middle of the sky whenever he feels like it and have a cup of coffee. Or a virgin vodka martini.

  We were in her loft. The bedroom. It wasn’t really a room. More like a space. There was a half-wall you could rest your elbows on and look over, like a balcony, which I tried when she took me upstairs.

  I was supposed to be making my way to Squamish to ‘accept my quest,’ as The Faculty had put it, but now I found myself pleasantly and willingly helpless beneath her. She cuffed my wrists with her hands.

  She whispered and her voice felt like a ghost’s in my head. ‘You don’t really have to go, do you?’

  I couldn’t speak. Like a spider on its prey she wrapped me up and sank her lovely teeth in.

  I woke from a dream of her cooking my flesh. Thin slices of thigh sizzling in the pan, peppered and curling at the edges. The cutting board and the knife beside it were bloody. I could see myself seated at the table, shirtless, my right leg wrapped in white gauze, the red seeping through, like a wounded soldier. I was wearing a bib. I held a knife in one fist and a fork in the other. Stunned, I was watching her. She flipped the meat and pressed it into the pan which made me wince and salivate at once. She looked over her shoulder, grinning. Which is when I woke, sweating, and bolted upright in the bed reaching for my leg.

  I dressed and went to the bathroom sink and brought handfuls of cold water to my face. My eyes widened and I breathed deeply in. Coming out of the bathroom I saw the clock by the bed. It was six minutes after five which I read as sob.

  I took the top of the half-wall in my hands like a rail and leaned over the side. I couldn’t see her. There was music I ­recognized but couldn’t name. I could smell and hear something cooking in a pan. I tried to think of a joke about the dream I’d woken from but nothing would come, and when I turned with the intention of going to find her she was already coming toward me from the top of the stairs, a glass of red wine in each hand. She offered me one and I took it. Her legs and feet were bare and I saw how perfect they were. I noticed another tattoo on her right ankle which I’d missed somehow until now. A bird of some kind. A pterosaur. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt like a dress with the saying ‘Love is Overrated’ printed across the front. She leaned a hip against the half-wall and crossed her feet, ran a hand through her hair. The shirt lifted and I saw she was w
earing nothing beneath it. I wondered if the shirt was ­something she had purchased that size on purpose or if it was something some other guy had left behind. I looked at her and tried to think of something clever to say but again nothing would come.

  ‘You’re alive.’

  ‘It feels that way.’

  She sipped her wine and I did the same.

  ‘Hungry?’

  I nodded. ‘Starving.’

  She turned to descend the stairs and I followed.

  The wooden table in her dining room was four inches thick and heavily lacquered. Everything looked expensive: the art on the wall, the furniture, the plates, the cutlery, the flowers in each of the rooms, the silk sheets and pillows on the bed, the bottle of wine sitting on the table between us.

  ‘So. What do you think?’

  I looked around and nodded. ‘I love it.’

  She grinned, poked a scallop with her fork, held it up like a head on a spit. ‘I meant the food.’

  She reached across the table and fed me the catch, watched me chew, and waited until I swallowed the morsel down. ‘So?’

  I sipped the wine and nodded.

  ‘You don’t know what it is, do you.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You often put things in your mouth you can’t name?’

  She came around the table, put her hands on my shoulders, and climbed on as though my lap were a saddle. She put my hands on her waist, moved them up her body, and slipped out of her shirt like a magician.

  She moved her hips and I felt the heat through my jeans. She whispered for me to carry her upstairs and I did—she weighed almost nothing—and told me to lay her on the bed. She directed my head, moved against my mouth with an unrelenting purpose and energy. When she came I felt her whole body go off and I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. She drew me up, kissed my mouth, and bit my bottom lip as I moved inside her. She took my face in her hands and told me to look at her. I did and she kissed me, eyes open, and it felt somehow like I was making a promise, a vow I could not articulate. Before she rolled me away she bit my chest hard enough to leave a mark. She patted the impression her teeth left and made a little laughing noise that bordered on evil.

  When she returned from the shower I was lying on the bed, sheets drawn over me, nearly sleeping again. She stood at the foot, naked, drying her hair. I sensed her and opened my eyes.

  ‘Didn’t you say you had to go?’

  ‘No. Well. Yes.’

  She pulled on her thong like a stripper after a dance and put her hands on her hips. ‘We’ll have to work on your ­clarity.’

  I smiled. ‘I really should go.’

  She went to the armoire in the corner and spoke with her back to me. ‘Should’s not a very good way to live.’ With the hanger hooked on a finger and the uniform draped over a shoulder, she turned and did a catwalk strut towards me. ‘Want is much better.’

  There was no doubt in my mind she had taken everything she had ever wanted.

  ‘Okay. Well, I can’t say I want to go because I don’t. What if I said I have to go?’

  She gave a little shrug. ‘It’s more immediate but it sounds too desperate.’ She took the uniform from the hanger and put it on. ‘How do I look?’

  I tapped my neck and the side of my nose.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘My secret identity.’

  She opened a drawer, pulled out a short navy scarf, and waved it in the air. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to me, and asked me to do the honours. She bunched her hair and held it up with two hands. I drew the scarf around her neck and began to tie it.

  ‘Not too tight now.’

  She sounded like Curly’s wife talking to Lenny in the barn. A tee-heeing sexy sort of voice with a hint of apprehension, completely affected.

  She stood, looked at me, and removed the ring from her nose.

  ‘I have to ask—’

  She corrected me with her eyes.

  ‘I mean, I want to ask. What’s it mean? The tattoo on your neck.’

  She shrugged like it didn’t matter. ‘Something like power or control.’

  I nodded. ‘Fitting.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  Shirtless, I stood and stretched my arms above my head. ‘So let me get this straight. When I said I should go you say I should’ve said I want to go.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Because we should always do what we do because we want to do it?’

  ‘Close. There should be no should.’ With a finger she ­examined the bite mark she’d made on my chest. ‘You don’t seem eighteen.’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘Cute—why is that?’

  I shrugged. ‘Grew up in a hurry.’

  ‘Right. The father.’

  I hesitated. ‘Yes. The father.’

  ‘When I talk about you I’m going to say you’re twenty-five.’

  So she planned to talk about me.

  ‘If I’m twenty-five I’d have to have a job.’

  ‘If you were twenty-five you’d want to have a job.’

  ‘Right. So what do I do?’

  ‘You’re an IT guy. Google. Remember?’

  ‘Right. I forgot.’

  She looked at my chest again and swept her fingers over the mark as though to wipe it away. ‘We need to get you a tattoo.’

  She turned me around and drew invisible marks on my skin as she spoke. ‘First, an old fashioned arrow. Right here. A steel-looking tip. Quills at the base. Then the letters B-I-D-M to the left of the shaft and E-R-U-N to the right.’

  She tapped a period at the end and spun me back around.

  ‘Why an arrow?’

  ‘Because. You’re a vector.’

  ‘And what do the letters mean?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You said you’re a runner.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I assume you’re also here for school.’

  I nodded.

  ‘What are you studying?’

  I shrugged. I really didn’t know.

  ‘Well, whatever it ends up being, be sure to get some Shakespeare.’

  She said Shakespeare like it was sleep. Like it was something as easy to get, as inevitable and necessary, as rest.

  It fit. I could see her on stage. A female Prospero. A gunslinging Cordelia.

  She handed me my shirt and I pulled it on. Then my jeans and my socks and she fastened my belt. I pocketed my hands and looked at the floor.

  “Seriously, I really should—’

  ‘Careful now.’

  She tapped my chest, went on her toes, and kissed me, eyes open. ‘Don’t worry. Duty calls for me, too.’ She dangled a set of keys. ‘Here, you can drive. After you drop me off you can take the car. Go wherever it is you want to go and when I get back in a few days you can pick me up.’

  ‘You want me to take your car.’

  ‘You sound surprised. You didn’t think this was a one-off encounter I hope.’

  ‘Two-off, you mean.’

  She grinned, touched my face, and tilted her head to the side. ‘Oh, Vector. Nothing happened that first night. We kissed a little. I iced your wounds. You passed out. That’s it.’

  I looked confused, I’m sure.

  ‘Tell me this wasn’t your first time.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  She bit her bottom lip. ‘It was. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I couldn’t tell.’

  I had never felt any better in my life to be honest.

  ‘Anyway, there are two things you’ll want to know about me.’

  Her word again: want.

  ‘One: this—’ She drew an invisible line back and forth between us. ‘—won’t be forever. I don’t d
o forever. There’s no such thing. And two: I don’t do one-night stands. I decided the moment you handed me your library card on the plane that I was going to keep you for a while. You see, Vector, we’re only at the beginning.’

  ALL I CAN SEE

  From the Journal of Vector Sorn

  It’s been four years since Rayn died. As many days nearly as there are metres in the race I run. Though the distance from then to now is far greater than any physical measurement. There is no forgetting but the remembering changes. The event shifts from an immediate reality to an archived truth, a personal truth, which is a paradox, I suppose. There’s a movement from the happening to the story of the happening. Scenes arise. Selections are made. Unintentionally and by design. Truth is liquid, as alterable as the container that holds it.

  If only Max had said no—which he would never do—but if only he had. If only he’d suggested waiting or made some joke about her insatiable appetite which he could do without being offensive. He had a way of making everything he said to her sound like love. Because it was.

  If only he’d scanned the subway station like he was trained to do. If only he’d seen the pusher standing like a spectre by the column of Osiris: the dishevelled hair, the glassy eyes, the saliva pooled at the corners of his mouth, the wicked grin, the fingernails bitten to the quick, the ratty woollen sweater despite the summer swelter, the beltless bloodstained kneetorn pants, the bare feet, six strides away and zeroed in, the indiscriminate hate in his eyes. The underworldness of him.

  There were so many signs and he saw none which is what would do him in. Knowing that he could have prevented it. Knowing with tortured certainty that it wasn’t inevitable or as the pundits of death say ‘her time.’

  I can only guess how he felt. For a year I witnessed the unravelling. Regardless of how close you are to someone—what you are witness to—you never really know how another person feels. Feeling, I’ve come to learn, is not about knowing.

  Let me be clear. I have no defence for what he did. Nor do I have any judgement. I’ve never understood the point of judgement, and even if I did, what right would I have now?