by Rio Youers
Until now.
Hello, Nadia, I said.
The thing with Bond girls—the ones that don’t die—is that they usually end up helping Bond in some way or other. And although she would never know it, Nadia was going to help me. She didn’t have to shoot any henchmen or pilot a plane away from an exploding island. All she had to do was feel, and I knew from personal experience that she was more than capable of doing that.
She was having a lazy day, by the look of it. Dressed—like me—in her pyjamas, snacking on a bowl of chips, watching MTV Cribs on a TV the size of some of the homes I’d visited in South America. I floated beside her, wondering what her life had been like in the last two years, and it was only when I swirled my hands through her aura that I realized she was pregnant. I drew back, a little surprised, but happy for her, even though I couldn’t see a ring on her finger. That didn’t matter, of course, but I thought it probably mattered to Nadia. I want to be your Soul, she had said to me, and I remembered the dream she had picked out for us: Marvel and Calypso, and our garden made of sand.
Nadia wanted it all. She always had.
I flowed through her and found shades of anxiety and excitement. I took a small portion of each for my wall—I had to have Nadia in my wall; she was such a big part of my life—and gave her a generous cut of assurance. Forgiveness, too, and no small amount of love. She sat upright on the sofa, the chips spilling from her lap, one hand clutching her breast. I imagined the memories crashing through her mind. The same ones that had crashed through mine, over and over again.
I can’t tell the future, I said to her. Not one of my amazing superhero abilities. But I have a feeling you’re going to be just fine. Both of you.
Time . . . ticking surely away, but I couldn’t resist a curious ex-boyfriend moment. I drifted up to her bedroom and looked for evidence of the father—the man who may yet put a ring on her finger. Maybe a photo on the nightstand. Nadia cheek-to-cheek with some dude who looked like Matthew McConaughey. Or even, if I was lucky, her Facebook open—soppy messages and countless emoticons decorating her wall (a different kind of wall, but still a symbol of her life), along with pictures of the blissful couple at family gatherings or on some trendy rooftop bar. Yeah, I was curious, you’re damn right. And maybe hurting a little, if I’m being honest. But I mainly wanted to make sure that the dude checked out . . . that he looked cool.
I found nothing, though. Her bedroom looked hauntingly similar to how it had when I’d been dating her. Same pale green walls. Same furniture.
Are you alone, Nadia?
If she was now, I knew she wouldn’t be for long. The men might come and go, but in about six months she’d have someone she could love forever, and spend the rest of her life with.
And she would be their soul.
An open notebook on her desk caught my attention. I ghosted over to it and saw that Nadia had half-filled one of the pages with her loveable, looping script. She’d written BABY NAMES along the top, underlined with three wavy lines. Beneath this: GIRL on the left side, BOY on the right. The list of girls’ names stretched to the bottom of the page. Madelyn, Zoey, Amy, Chiara . . . But there was only one name in the running for a boy:
Westlake.
I smiled . . . started to drift away. Hey, I thought. Maybe he’ll grow up to be one of Gladys Knight’s Pips. And I was just about to move on—I had one last thing to do—when I was stopped solid by a sound from downstairs. Instantly chilling, yet undeniably beautiful. I thought my ethereal presence would turn to ice, fall heavily from the air, and shatter into so many pieces.
She was playing it again . . . Beethoven’s Sonata pathétique.
Our song.
I went from being able to span the world in half a second, to having no control whatsoever. I was lifted, twirled around, swept downward, turned upside down. Like that feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump. Before I knew it, I was swaying into the music room, with its funky artwork and rich lavender smell. Nadia sat at the Steinway in her Hello Kitty pyjamas, her fingers barely touching the keys, yet evoking such inspiriting sound. A blend of subtlety and power that filled the room with life. I drifted above the raised lid and looked at her. Delicate and composed. Elegance soaring from her. And again, the music overwhelmed me. The creation of heat. Nuclear fusion. It had formed a miniature sun before, but now it was helping to form my wall.
I took every note—every beat of passion—and gave back a wave of good feeling.
The ultimate SuperPoke.
Her breast and shoulders trembled, but her fingers didn’t falter. She turned her wet eyes to where I floated above the piano, and I saw her smile for the first time since that morning in Tofino.
I reached for her—my fingers, so lightly, outlining her body, but still not as lightly as she touched those keys.
Thank you, I said. Not exactly a Bond-style one-liner, but it was all I had. All I needed. Nadia responded by playing the final note, and before it had faded from the lavender-scented air, I was gone.
Back home, my family had brushed the leaves from my hair and shoulders and moved me back into the groovy room. They were gathered around my bed, even Hub, who looked on anxiously. My eyes were closed and my chest heaved as I laboured for each breath. Niki was hugging Dad, both of them in tears. Mom held my hand and waited.
“Okay, baby,” she said. “We love you so much. It’s okay.”
“Look at him shaking,” Niki said. “It was supposed to be peaceful. You said he wouldn’t feel anything.”
Dad held her and said nothing. Mom squeezed my hand harder.
“Okay, baby . . . okay.”
I left their grief and pain behind and went searching for the final piece of my wall—the one thing I had refused to embrace, and an essential part of all life.
It was easy to find. I knew it would be.
He had been waiting for me all along.
I’m here, I said, feeling the sand between my toes, the stale air rushing over my naked skin. I’m not running anymore.
He comes in all forms. I have seen him as small as a spider, and as large as a mountain. With wings, and without. Breathing fire, and wrapped in ice. Sometimes he is seductive, and sometimes cruel.
But now, for the first time, I was looking at his true face.
And it was perfect.
Hello, old friend, Dr. Quietus roared. His mouth crashed and foamed.
I pulled my shoulders square, grabbed my board, and stepped toward the ocean.
28. On Death.
I remember the first time I went surfing. Fourteen years old. Cocoa Beach, Florida. We’d been on vacation, had spent some time at Grandma Soul’s commune before taking a week at the beach. Being fourteen, I was given something of a free rein (provided I stayed within sight of our apartment), so figured I’d go down to the beach and check out the honeys—their tanned bodies peppered with sand, bikinis riding up the cracks of their asses. I spent more time watching the surfers, though. Bringing the waves in, landing aerials. Then jamming the tails of their boards in the sand and hanging in packs on the beach, chilling out and swapping stories. I loved the image, too. Sun-bleached hair and toned bodies, rope necklaces, baggy shorts, or wetsuits that they’d roll down to their waists when they weren’t in the breaks.
I decided . . . that was the life for me.
I persuaded Dad to buy me a board. “Where the hell are you going to surf back in Canada?” he asked. A reasonable argument, but I would not be swayed. He got me a 6’6” thruster from Ron Jon’s. Not much, but I loved that board, man—think I rode more waves on that than any other. Wiped out on more, too. I used my allowance to buy the essential accessories: a decent leash, a shoulder bag, a block of Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax, and a rope necklace, of course. I went down to the beach—shaking off Dad’s offer to come with—but I was too afraid to go in the water. I thrust the tail of my board in the sand and sat in the wedge of its shadow, watching everybody else. That was as close as I got to being a surfer that day.
The
following day, though, I moved a little closer to the action, and eventually got talking to an older surfer named Vix. A real cool dude—looked like Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. He looked at my board and asked why I wasn’t getting it wet, and I told him that I didn’t know where to begin. Dude gave me a few pointers from the safety of dry land: how to wax my board, popping up techniques, where to place my feet. Then I took to the water for the first time. I managed to body-surf several waves and—kook that I was—break a few rules of surfing etiquette, but try as I might, I couldn’t pop up. Couldn’t spring to my feet and stay there. I’d get to one knee and—whoosh—wipeout, baby. It got later. The sun painted a tangerine stripe across the western sky. The tide rolled in. Most of the surfers had packed up, went off to shower and eat and party. But I kept trying . . . trying. Eventually, with a rash on my chest and my whole body aching, I gave up. Slumped out of the water with my head low and threw my board into the sand.
“That ain’t no way to treat a stick, man,” a voice to my left said. Made me jump, too. I snapped in that direction and saw Vix sitting on the fringe of the beach, all but hidden in the sea grass swaying behind him. He looked at me and smiled. His crinkled eyes caught the setting sun, as bright as new pennies.
“Surfing sucks,” I said to him.
“Are you kidding me, man?” he said. “When you get up on a wave . . . man, feels like you’ll live forever.”
“But I can’t get up,” I groaned. “Been trying all day, and my arms are killing me.”
Vix smiled wider and shrugged. “Well, one thing I know . . . you’ll never get up if you quit.” He looked at the ocean, his eyes on fire. “It’s like learning to walk, man. First time you try, you fall on your ass. Second and third time, too. Then eventually you get up, and you stay up. And that’s not just walking, man, or surfing. That’s life. The whole goddamn ride.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, you guess,” he said. “Pick up that stick, man, and come back tomorrow. If you can get to your feet and stay there as a baby, you can for damn sure do it as a young man.”
I nodded, picked up my board.
“You can’t be afraid, man.” Vix said, and looked at me. “Not if you want to be alive.”
So I went back the following morning. Vix wasn’t there, but the ocean was. Like it always has been, and always will be. I put my board in the water and within a few sets, I was on my feet—a little wobbly, for sure, but on my feet.
And alive.
So alive.
You fall on your ass. You get up . . . and eventually you stay up.
I haven’t backed down from a wave, or a challenge, since.
Surf’s up, superhero, Dr. Quietus said. Show me what you’ve got.
It wasn’t your beach in paradise, I can tell you. The sea was so dark, and the sand so pale, that it looked like I had fallen into one of those nightmarish art house movies shot entirely in black and white. Eraserhead Goes Surfing, perhaps. The sun was a blanched eye boiling in a sky the colour of burned chrome, and the air smelled not of salt and seaweed, but of decay and smoke. At least the beach was sandy (littered with small bones, but sandy), although off to both sides I saw spikes of rock, like giant broken bottles. Easy to imagine the ocean taking me, smashing my body into them, ending me forever.
Definitely not paradise.
He spoke with the ocean’s voice, heard in every crashing wave: This is it, Westlake Soul. Cresting, breaking hard, and spitting cold spray. This is the end.
Khalil Gibran, the noted Lebanese poet, wrote, “You would know the secret of Death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?” Vix had told me the same thing, although less poetically: You can’t be afraid, man. Not if you want to be alive. I had, since my accident, resisted death . . . run away. Better to turn my face. To hide. But the secret of death—or any inevitability—is to not be afraid of it. Nothing is accomplished through fear. Once tamed, anything is possible. Anything. That’s not only the secret of death, brothers and sisters . . . it’s the secret of life, too.
The whole goddamn ride.
I stepped closer to the water. Felt the wind skimming off the backs of waves.
That’s it, the ocean said. Come to me.
No one else on the beach. No one to save me this time.
I was on my own.
Come . . .
I nodded and my hair blew across my face and the ocean was black and wild but I wasn’t afraid. I kept walking, my board tucked under my arm. My first board, of course—the thruster from Ron Jon’s that I had learned on.
This is it . . .
I stepped into the water. Cold surf bubbled around my ankles. There was no need to read the breaks; it was all heavy, and I wasn’t backing down, anyway. I pushed off and paddled out to deeper water, body-surfed the first few waves to gauge speed and power. My board shook beneath me and I gripped the rails hard. The ocean boomed and I saw shapes in the surf. They looked like pale hands, drowned faces.
I’m ready for this, I said.
Dr. Quietus laughed. He raised his black arms and brought them down hard.
It was like the horizon hunched its shoulders. From left to right, as far as I could see, a growing ridge of water, rolling toward me.
Here I come, Westlake Soul.
Swelling, filling the sky.
You don’t stand a chance.
This was the wave—the end. One way or another. I was either getting the better of it, or I’d be cremated with Angus Young’s guitar pick by the end of the week.
It came at me like spread wings. Unthinkable span. I faced the beach and started to paddle, trying to get up enough speed to glide into the wave. My stiff arms ached but I didn’t stop. Worked harder when I felt the wave behind me. It sounded like war. Grenades exploding. Guns firing. Missiles hitting their targets. I heard screaming, too. There was a mile of water beneath me and it was packed—I was sure of it—with screaming bodies. I paddled harder and felt the push behind the board. The power was incredible but I managed to pop to my feet in one fluid motion. I carved the face and dropped down, hard as a block of granite. The board kicked beneath me and I came close to losing it, but shifted my weight at the critical moment and maintained balance.
Cold spray in my face, biting my skin. It stung my eyes, tasted like sulphur.
Dr. Quietus roared and reached for me with thick, dark arms. I caught a burst of speed and almost lost it again, but drove into the flats to hit my bottom turn. I ascended the wave and, with growing confidence, launched into an aerial. I soared, twisting three-sixty through midair—weightless, like I’d hit orbit—and saw the wave falling beneath me.
Falling . . .
But I was flying. Breathlessly high and with a booming heart.
One last gnarly trick.
I looked down and saw that the ridge of the wave had become the top of a wall. My wall. Rebuilt. Towering and powerful.
I grabbed my board and flew over it—came down on the face of a different wave.
Cool and blue.
A different ocean.
29. Down.
I spilled from my board, hit the water and went deep. Could’ve kicked to the surface, but I enjoyed the feel of the ocean around me too much. So cool. So alive. It streamed into my hair. Into my eyes and mouth. Around my muscles.
It felt like being held.
I went deeper, through schools of fish like mirror shards, and pods of singing humpbacks. Down, into a layer of darkness, and beyond . . . where lobates flowed around me like natural satellites, and were dragged deeper by my diving mass.
30. And Out.
My name is Westlake Soul, and these are our final moments.
Westlake . . . baby . . .
Bottom of the ocean. Darkness all around, but a whisper of light above. Like a window that has been painted black, all but the thinnest crack. And I can see out, at the sky, perhaps. Surf City Blue.
I should swim closer . . . take a look.
Open my eyes
.
Soon.
For now, though, I like how the current rocks me from side to side. It feels so different. Cool, for one thing. Comforting, too. I know that if I project from my body—with the last of my superhero power—I will see Mom holding me. She will be stroking my face with one hand. The other will be curled into mine. Tears falling. Salt water on my lips.
Baby . . .
I’ll feel her love—a breathtaking miniature sun—and remember what she asked me when the ocean was cold and dark.
What do you want, Westlake?
I will surface. Grab her hand and squeeze firmly.
“More,” I will say, and open my eyes.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
You don’t write a novel like Westlake Soul without a little help and love en route. Not if you want it to be worth reading, at least. I owe so much to the following people, who gave me their help, or love (and in some cases both), and without whom this novel would have been very different . . . and certainly not sitting in your hands.
The Ontario Arts Council, for their generous support and continued good work; Claude Lalumière, for his help with the French translations (many humorous e-mails were exchanged, believe me); Mark Morris and Joel A. Sutherland, my wonderful beta readers, who offered excellent suggestions and proved themselves as essential as I knew they would be; the three doctors (in no particular order): Dr. Tressa Amirthanayagam, who cast her expert eye over an early draft, and whose enthusiasm buoyed the numerous revisions; Dr. Andrew Marsh (a real life super genius), who patiently provided information on such topics as bioresonant energy and quantum entanglement, and in a way that I (not a super genius) could grasp; Dr. Paul Hosek, who does fantastic work with PVS patients every day, and who proved invaluable—as a doctor and a reader—in ways I can’t even begin to describe.
