His forte, as she referred to it in her piece, was photographing aging female intellectuals, which Didi, personally, thinks is kind of perverse, although in her article she called him a feminist and praised him for loving women for their minds, because that’s what the press release said—although she didn’t believe it for a minute, especially when he insisted on calling her by her full name and invited her over, saying Wear whatever you like, Deirdre with feigned disinterest after she asked. She’s wearing something filmy, a pastel-blue blouse that floats above her midsection (exposing the only tattoo-free stretch of twentythree-year-old backside in the civilized world—her fear-of-pain thing neutralizing the humiliation she’s entitled to feel over not having a kanji symbol or Celtic knot peeking out above her thong; even her nose ring is a clip-on). And just so no one would think she takes clothing that seriously, she’s wearing track pants with the blouse, a combination she had hoped would keep them guessing, keep them wondering what that Deirdre was all about. But there’s no them here, only him.
So last night there she was having such a great time, what with the terry-cloth-shorts thing and the butt-smacking thing and Rufus W. in his sarong there with his new boyfriend (who she thinks she did catch a glimpse of from the back after someone pointed him out), and now here she is watching a guy in brown plastic sandals, with his seriously yellowed toenails poking out for all the world to see, tossing a salad and telling her about the time he was sent to photograph the Berlin Wall coming down and how he was shocked at feeling a little sadness and nostalgia for Checkpoint Charlie and the damn wall itself (emphasis his) and how these feelings were so disturbing amidst the general euphoria that he just stood there as if paralyzed for a minute or two while champagne rained down on his head as if he were being baptized even though he didn’t deserve it. And because there’s nothing remotely flirtatious about this story and because she doesn’t understand why he’s telling her all this, Didi wants to ask, “What are we doing here?” It’s the not knowing that’s killing her. If nothing is going to happen, she’s going to walk out right now, because what’s the point of eating all these carbs and then just going home to watch some Rhoda reruns on WTN? That’s what she’ll be forced to do, as she can’t very well go catch up with everyone—the gang—later and admit that the party she went to at the semi-famous photographer’s place was a bust.
The interview last week had been fun. The photographer had brought his favourite camera down to the gallery, a Mamiya, he told her, a real man’s camera because you needed man-sized hands to work it, although Annie Leibovitz used the same camera, he told her, as she had these man-sized hands. It was gratifying how everyone at the party last night was impressed by how Didi effortlessly worked her insider knowledge of Annie Leibovitz and this other sort-of-famous photographer and their Mamiyas into the conversation as she gamely offered her shorts as a hand towel, although the information was wasted on the butt-smacking guy from Ajax who thought Annie Leibovitz was a stand-up comedian and had never heard of the sort-offamous photographer who took pictures of aging lady intellectuals and in fact had made a joke about lady intellectuals which she had thought was funny at the time, although she’d stopped laughing abruptly when she realized no one else found it funny and pretended that she was really just choking because her drink had gone down the wrong way. (No one thought to thump her on the back and later, much later, she couldn’t help wondering what would’ve happened if she really had been choking.) After that came the incident with the palm tree and that Buddha-shirt girl, and waking up alone on the roof early this morning and climbing down into the apartment and peeking in on her hosts sleeping so peacefully in their bedroom, wrapped around each other, surrounded by old family photos in really nice-quality frames, and then letting herself out, but not before making a fair degree of noise in the bathroom hoping they’d wake up so she could wave goodbye and hear them tell her she’d been the life of the party.
Out on the balcony while the photographer flips the steaks, their fat hissing against the fake briquettes like a clique of fashionable viper-mouthed grade seven private-school girls,1 and tells her about watching a bridge blow up outside of Sarajevo and how it was too close for comfort (emphasis his) and how a dog, a really ugly mutt, just stood on one side of this non-existent bridge whimpering and that all he wanted to do was take a picture of the dog, not the bodies, and get out of there, Didi wonders whether it was maybe unwise to have hinted so broadly last night to everyone up there on the roof that Annie Leibovitz might be at this other party tonight at the photographer’s place, which has turned out not to be a party of any kind at all.
Maybe it had been the soupy stillness of the air last night, the humidity that hung so thick the tiny pimento olive lights on the poor pissed-on palm tree glimmered as if through a fog, but she had felt as if there were a trampoline beneath her feet, felt as if anything could happen, so maybe she had convinced herself that Annie Leibovitz was going to be at the photographer’s party, when, in fact, the photographer himself had quite possibly hinted at no such thing at all.
The telephone rings and rings again, but the photographer just ignores it, poking at those alarming potatoes with a fork and talking quietly, in this flat, even tone Didi associates with people who are going off their nut but straining to appear normal, about how no one seems to really listen anymore, how everyone is too busy “communicating” (he did the quote-mark thing with his fingers) to listen, and how there was a time when he flew to the direst places on earth to find pockets of silence so that he could hear himself think, and how, believe it or not, the deepest silences come in the aftermath of an explosion, in that thin wedge of time between the explosion itself and the chaos— the sirens and keening and yelling—that follows, and that this is the same no matter what country on earth you are in. And all the while he airdrops her name every few words like it’s a relief package for starving Eritreans, Believe it or not, Deirdre, and This is the same, Deirdre, until she feels the skin tightening across her face, pulling her mouth into a grimace, although she’s not sure if she should be smiling or nodding soberly.
Then there are her hands. She has absolutely no idea what to do with her hands, which are twitching to grab those two Zeppelin-sized potatoes and hurl them into the street like grenades. But then where would that leave her?
Last night had been so full of possibilities, even after she’d been forced to give up on the butt-smacking guy when that tight-T-shirted Buddha bitch came and stuck her tits in where they didn’t belong. There’d been that Angelina Jolie–lipped VJ couple who looked like they could be brother and sister and who kept peering at her as if they were trying to convey something telepathically. Although that was before she tried to up her madcap quotient by juggling a handful of olives that went flying all over the place, causing that Eurasian tranny with the yellow hair and the five-inch cork-soled wedgies to slip on them and call her some choice names that weren’t even worth repeating, after which a very pale woman with Smartie-coloured braces (who someone said was Rufus’s new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend) raised her eyebrows at Didi in a seriously empathetic manner. Didi could practically see You go, girl! in a cartoon thought-bubble above the woman’s head. Now, out here on the photographer’s balcony, all this talk of explosions is bringing her down, bringing on the mortality thoughts, which are verboten, as her therapist has told her. Is this the old guy’s way of making a play, of impressing her with his heroic journeys? Because if that’s what he thinks, she’s just not interested.
The photographer is looking at her as if it’s her turn to say something. The barbecue tongs in his hand drip sauce out over the railing of the balcony and she wonders if somebody walking by in the morning fourteen storeys down below will think that what they see are drops of blood. And if somebody jumped off this balcony, naming no names, at this exact moment there would be a chalk outline down there tomorrow in the shape of a person as well as some real blood, which may or may not look as real to passersby as the drops of barbecue sauce. Did
i considers telling the photographer this, thinks he may find it interesting, but instead she leans out over the railing and concentrates on looking as if she’s peering so hard into the distance that she can divine the future, when in fact she can’t see anything at all through the haze of barbecue smoke and the pinpricks of static dancing behind her eyes.
In the photographer’s bedroom, after inspecting the disappointingly dull contents of his bathroom medicine cabinet, Didi flings open the closet and sees an ocean of shirts, all in pale blue denim. She hugs the shirts to her and burrows her face into them as if she were his long-time lover missing him dreadfully while he was off on assignment somewhere remote and squalid, and she thinks that if he were to wander in at this exact moment to find out what was taking her so long, his heart would involuntarily contract at the sight of a young woman so capable of devotion that she’s transported from her earthly surroundings.
Didi deeply inhales a scent she finds surprisingly fresh for a man his age, a scent that scurries up her nostrils like the first sharp tang of spring, until she realizes it’s the smell of dry-cleaned clothes, and because she’s allergic to dry-cleaning chemicals she knows it’s only a matter of time before her eyelids start swelling shut and her nose begins to run and then any chance at all for salvaging the evening will be gone. Back in the bathroom she checks her face, which still seems all right, although she has to close one eye and then the other in order to focus properly. She thought she was a redhead this week, but the person staring back at Didi has this black hair and these terrible chunky bangs. When did she dye her hair black? When did she have it cut? This whole time she’s been acting like a redhead, doing red-headed things with her hands, saying red-headed things, trying to think red-headed thoughts, and her hair has been black? Was it black last night?
She’s already back in the dining room refilling her glass when she remembers she didn’t flush, unlike early this morning when, after waking up alone on the roof (even the palm tree was gone!) and somehow managing to crawl down into the apartment before being sick, Didi made sure she flushed and then flushed again. Then she’d washed her face, scraping at the flecks of roof pitch with an AirMiles card someone had left in the soap dish, before stepping into the hallway and belting out the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. One of her hosts appeared in the doorway of the bedroom, wide-eyed, naked, just as she was pretending to toss her hat into the air Mary Richards–style, and closed the door in her face, loudly, but she caught the pretend hat anyway just to prove she didn’t need other people around to have fun.
It was only afterwards, when she was standing down on Adelaide, that she realized she didn’t have cab fare or even enough for the streetcar and had to walk all the way home while flipping the bird at ignorant would-be johns in rusting Impalas and gleaming Isuzu Rodeos with bicycle racks on the back who couldn’t differentiate if their very lives depended on it between her ironically short terry-cloth shorts (that had just been at a party with Rufus Wainwright and his new lover and the latter’s understanding and rather empathetic ex-girlfriend) and something a hooker would wear. And after all that she had so looked forward to tonight, to a fun evening in a fourteenth-floor luxury apartment belonging to a semi-famous photographer who specialized in portraits of aging women intellectuals, so excuse her!
The steaks and those very large, scary baked potatoes have somehow made their way onto the table and she finds herself sitting in front of a plate with a knife and fork in her hands and the photographer is still talking, something about how if he hadn’t become a photographer he would’ve been a short-order cook, an excellent short-order cook, because that’s how much he likes a well-greased grill (??!!), and how much simpler his life would’ve been, and Didi wonders why he’s telling her these things, wonders if he maybe has her confused with somebody else, with this Deirdre whose name he keeps snapping his jaws down on as if they’re a leghold trap, because, well, explosions, if you like that kind of thing, could be considered a turn-on, but a well-greased grill can’t be construed as anything other than a well-greased grill.
In between all his words, if she squints, she can see that he’s trying to tell her something and that it has nothing to do with innuendo. She knows she should be interested in these things he’s talking about, that somehow these things matter, but she isn’t. In fact, they make her feel itchy.
What she really, really wants to ask, once and for all, is What are we doing here? She tries to will this simple question into being, to thrust it into the air between them like a magician conjuring a dove from the old-fashioned beige clutch purse of the mousy divorcee in the front row, the bird’s small breast throbbing against the magician’s thumb, the woman feeling off-balance but delighted (He picked me!), but when the words refuse to materialize, Didi tugs her blouse off over her head and lets it float to the floor.
The place had looked spotless, but now she sees dust scudding in drifts over the dulled parquet like clouds as the blouse wafts down in slow motion. In these elongated seconds, between her shirt coming off and him looking up from his plate and noticing, Didi has time to think she should be happy because here she is just one degree of separation from Annie Leibovitz and, in effect, only two degrees of separation from John and Yoko, David Byrne, Chris Rock, Nicole, Brad, Ben, Gwyneth, Kate—from everybody. This should make her feel elated, but instead she’s filled with this prickly, fur-bearing sadness. She is, after all, only one degree of separation from that ugly dog at the edge of that bridge that no longer exists, in a country that no longer exists—so close that she could be that ugly dog, and in fact, if you looked closely enough, she is that ugly dog, and she needs to know if that dog ever jumped into the river to try to get to the other side or if he’s still there shivering and whimpering for his owners, for the only people who loved him no matter what and who may or may not exist anymore anywhere on earth.
1 Named Marnie, Teka, and Charlotte, names she’s tried to forget for nine years now but which cling to her brainpan like the words Deirdre fleas gouged into the lip of a desk with the tip of a red Bic.
SOMEONE IS KILLING THE GREAT MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKERS OF AMERIKA
I’ve stopped caring about skeptics, but if they libel or defame me they will end up in court.
—URI GELLER, PSYCHIC SPOON BENDER
Belief is commonly easier to acquire and maintain than knowledge.
—BARRETT L. DORKO, P.T.
You try telling that to Dodge.
—ME
Someone is killing the great motivational speakers of Amerika and I am afraid I may be next. In an effort not to alarm my followers, I have camouflaged my disappearance as a wilderness retreat. The surroundings are more rustic than we are accustomed to and there have been grumblings about the lack of facilities. I tell them their ancestors didn’t have backpacks containing rolls of three-ply toilet paper and antibacterial wipes; they had to make do with leaves and corn husks. In more recent times, it’s possible they resorted to sections of newspapers that left their backsides inked with the TSE Composite Index or Blondie. Soon everyone is enthusiastically gathering foliage, although Dodge, twiddling his small goatee, complains about not having a copy of the latest Vancouver Sun editorial page. Dodge, with his almost indiscernible sense of humour, has for a long time now caused me equal measures of joy and grief.
As I watch my crew milling about with purpose—collecting firewood, securing tarps, taking inventory of the granola bars and shrink-wrapped Bavarian rye breads, the nut butters and fruit leathers, giving each other a hand—I can see it has been worth it. Is this not all I ever wanted? Cinders unfolds a foil astronaut blanket and wraps it around my shoulders. Felix has torn up a patch of moss he now cradles in his arms like a kitten. He advises me to stroke it with a pinky finger while keeping my eyes screwed shut tight. Gratitude wells in my breasts for all I have wrought. If this isn’t synergy, what is?
Campfire songs are suggested, and I don’t see why not. We are too isolated for anyone to hear us. And it is very lat
e. The moon is a high, hard rind through sweating cedars. Hives prickle my neck from all the fungi around. The city is far away, only the occasional magnesium flare through hemlock and Douglas fir. Something in our small fire cracks like a pistol shot. I’m a bow-legged chicken, I’m a knock-kneed hen, Felix sings, his lisp almost indistinct, and the rest join in, even The Kevster, who during the past few weeks has taken to lurking on the perimeters with a sneer perma-pressed onto his face. Never bin so happy since I don’t know when. Except for Pudding, who stares at the sky, as always, as if waiting for a signal.
Pudding is the only one I’ve never been able to get through to.
My troubles began almost a year ago, with the publication of an obscure scientific document, a paper rife with antiquated language and reactionary ideas (the lingua franca of fear). Science is on thin ground these days and particle physicists were up in arms: “[We’re] damned if we’re going to stand by and let a handful of rogue advocates of quantum quackery overrun quantum mechanics, a field of research that could lead, finally, to a Theory of Everything” (Brisbane Convention Report, 2011, p. iv).
Snake oil was mentioned. The phrase half-baked was deployed. String theory was draped around the text like rolls of crepe paper livening up a fiftieth-anniversary party.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosives Page 10
