New Canadian Noir
Page 25
This blonde though, Mindy, she just cant fight the cold no more. And here I am and cant hardly move the fingers to play a chord and the guitar gone all out of tune, gone right sharp you know. Next thing Mindy is saying how she’s going inside out of it and there’s this look across the table, this sly grin, but here I am playing the gentleman I guess, not taking the bait when she’s dangling it there like that. Christ, how are you ever gonna get a piece of random ass if you’re going around trying to make the ladies think you’re not some sleaze looking for a piece of random ass? It’s an awful conundrum, as my old grandfather used to say. So there I am anyhow, letting the moment slip through my fingers, watching her hips swaying towards her door, hoping she’ll take the leap and turn around and invite me in or some such shit. But she’s got the class this one. Mindy. Blond big-titted American girl. PTSD. Fuckin hell, Dad, go for it, you wanker. But then she’s gone, the door clicked shut behind her, and I’m standing in my own bathroom hardly able to even look at myself in the mirror. Fuckin dunce.
I calls down to the boy’s mama and she answers after a few rings, all groggy and crooked and shit. Wants to know what’s wrong, what’s up. For the life of me I dialed out of habit, you know, like reaching out in those moments when you just cant face up to the loneliness. It’s even on the tip of my tongue to hint around and see if maybe she wants to climb the fence to the pool and hit that hot tub, you know. Call the big time-out on the whole modern family scenario and just have a bit of the other kind of fun for once. But I cant ask her that, I cant. First off she’d only fucking laugh at me, or accuse me of drinking or something, and secondly even if she did say yes, yes I’ll meet you at the fence in ten minutes, even if she came at me with that, well I knows full well I wouldnt show up as the same person I envisions myself to be in that situation. I wouldnt bring it, you know, how you always wants this second chance to be the man, be the better lover, the one who cracks it all wide open, go back and remind her of everything she coulda waited for. If you hadda just held your guns, girl, this is what you’d have these days. What’s wrong, girl? Swear you never saw a real live sex machine before. Ahhh Christ on it. I hangs up on her, pretty much. Mumbles shit at her. I puts my ear to the wall then and has a listen for what Mindy might be up to, see if I cant catch the rhythm of the bedsprings squeaking, picturing her working the handle of her curling iron up in herself, on her hands and knees in there with her arse stuck up in the air just driving it home, fucking herself senseless with a ketchup bottle, anything she can get her hands on, wishing she could build up the gumption to just come tapping on my window, no talking necessary, just right down to it, fuck each other blind for three straight hours. No strings attached. Yeah, go on over, Dad, knock on her door all friendly like. The Friendly Newfoundlander. Fuckin hell. That’s what you gets out here in the world. First off you’re right proud when someone somewhere knows where Newfoundland even is. You forgets how fuckin delighted you were to get on that plane and leave it all behind for a while. Then they patters on about seals and fish and maybe high steel and the bumpty Irish accent thing. And you can swallow all that. But then this missus in this little desert gift shop we stopped off at earlier today, she says to me, she says, when I was telling her about back home and stuff, she says Oh yeah, the friendly Newfoundlander, I heard of you guys. She heard all about us. And I caught myself steaming, you know. I stood there and I felt like saying Friendly? Looka here, missus, I knows Newfoundland boys who’d skin you and skull-fuck you and bury you out in the desert for fun. Chalk it all up to a wild night on the beer. Dont tell me about the friendly Newfoundlander. Last going off, the dregs of my drugging days, I watched two mama’s boys from out around Gander Bay, two brothers, break every fuckin bone in some young fella’s face with two halves of the same hockey stick. Passing a crack pipe back and forth over his bloody moans and talking about some female parole officer they knew, how they’d like to find out where she lived and gangbang her. All a big laugh. Friendly Newfoundlanders. What’s his face, sure, there last year, chopped his girlfriend up and stuffed her into a suitcase. Kept her head in the freezer next to the hamburger meat. Friendly enough he was, wasnt he?
There’s a thump now, she’s still up over there, Mindy. Now she’s clearing her throat in that way, you know, that way people does when it’s not about clearing their throat but more or less letting someone else know they’re up and on the go and looking to communicate something. Fuckin hell boys. Friendly Newfoundlander she wants? I looks down and sees my pants around my ankles and the lad standing to full attention and my right hand is just a blur. Dont know how I made that jump, and it’s a bit of a sin you know too, that that’s all it takes, to hear a woman clearing her throat through a hotel wall. Sad aint it? How hard up we gets sometimes. Kinda pathetic. She’s over there thinking what a fuckin slowpoke I am, not to just have followed right on in behind her when she gave me that look. Rather go on back to his own room and jack himself off. Fuckin ladies’ men through and through, them Newfoundland boys. Hell with this I says. What have I got to lose to march over there and put it to her that I’m into having a bit of easy fun? What have I got to lose? All the chitchat small talk is taken care of, we already knows each other’s life fuckin stories. She knows the score. All’s left now is to dirty up the sheets. And say she sneers and shakes her head and sends me away, so what? So I’ll come on back to my room and finish myself off anyhow. Worth a try aint it? Worth a try, worth a try. Big-titted blond American gal with PTSD. Hell with this.
I bends over to pull up me trousers and tuck myself in when I hears the tap on the door. But is it my door? I listens again. The clock ticking, something squawking out there in the desert night, some creature. The fridge groaning. Then the rap-tap-tapping again, on my door. Fuckin right I says again, fuckin right. You knows she’s gonna come to her senses after a while. Sure aint we all red-blooded mammals? Dont we all need a piece every once in a while, for whatever reasons? Random piece of ass out there in the world. No one’s shame but your own. I shouts out towards my door, I says Gimme a second! I steps out of the trousers altogether. I slaps the head of my lad a few times and gives the balls a good twist just to get the blood pumping through again. I feels a bit foolish walking across the floor with no pants on and the lad pointing straight up like that. My hand reaching out. A shadow bent across the curtains. I turns the handle and lets the door swing open.
AFTERWORD
CANADA POST ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
I have to admit, I wondered about it – this idea of collecting Canadian noir stories.
After all, that kind of thing isn’t really Canadian, is it now? The tradition of noir comes from other places, evokes other things: the lens of Fritz Lang following whistling child-killer Peter Lorre through the shadowed passages of Weimar Germany; the words of Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, telling the downfall of weak men at the hands of bad women, in the dusty corners of America. We Canadians, with our pristine lakes and mountains, and devotion to Peace, Order, Good Government…aren’t we a little too good – or at least, goody-goody – for that kind of thing?
But really, I didn’t wonder about it for too long. By the evidence in recent years, Canada’s a perfect setting for noirish storytelling.
Alberta’s booming on the fragile economy of boom-town resource extraction and transient workers. Montreal, not too long ago, revealed itself to be a nest of kickbacks and corruption worthy of a James Ellroy novel. And the late Elmore Leonard is probably the only one who might have kept up with the reversals and plot twists of the Rob Ford cocaine saga in Toronto.
The storytellers in New Canadian Noir didn’t go for those headline-driven noir stories, though, and I hope you’ll agree that their stories – stories that cross genres and settings – are the stronger for it. To single one out would be to single them all, but I don’t think there’s a genre that hasn’t felt the cold touch of a noirist’s pen in this volume.
That’s the beauty of noir. It’s a thing one might call a genre, but one
need not. Noir is a state of mind – an exploration of corruptibility, ultimately an expression of humanity in all its terrible frailty. Sometimes that frailty is unbearably sad; other times, blackly funny. But in these stories, it is ever present.
David Nickle
AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES
Colleen Anderson is the author of the collection Embers Amongst the Fallen and the co-editor of Tesseracts Seventeen: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast to Coast. She was born in Edmonton, grew up in Calgary and now lives in Vancouver.
Keith Cadieux of Winnipeg is the author of the novella Gaze, which was short listed for a Manitoba Book Award and long-listed for the 2010 ReLit Award.
Michael S. Chong is a writer living in Toronto. His stories have been published in Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories, the Crime Factory specials Kung Fu Factory and Pink Factory, and K.A. Laity’s anthologies Weird Noir, Noir Carnival, and Drag Noir.
Kevin Cockle lives in Calgary, and often incorporates Calgary-inspired economic themes in his work. Author of over twenty stories published in a variety of markets, Kevin has dabbled in screen-writing, sports journalism, and technical writing to fill out what would otherwise be a purely finance-centric résumé.
Patrick Fleming has come to realize, after living in Toronto for just over a decade, that his ratty little heart will always belong to that vital stretch of downtown running from St. James Town to Moss Park.
Chadwick Ginther is the author of the Prix Aurora Award-nominated fantasy novels Thunder Road and Tombstone Blues with Ravenstone Books. Originally from Morden, Manitoba, he now lives and writes in Winnipeg. www.chadwickginther.com @chadwickginther
Ada Hoffmann is an autistic computer scientist. Raised in Kingston, Ontario, and now living in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, she uses her spare time to write fiction, some of which has been anthologized in the annual series Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing . www.ada-hoffmann.com @xasymptote
Joel Thomas Hynes is a multi-disciplinary artist from Newfoundland, now based in Ontario. He is the author of numerous books and stageplays, including the novels Down to the Dirt and Right Away Monday. He’s written and directed two award-winning short films, released an EP of all-original music, and is currently a writer-in-residence at the Canadian Film Centre.
Claude Lalumière is the author of Objects of Worship, The Door to Lost Pages, and Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes and the editor of twelve previous anthologies, including, most recently, Super Stories of Heroes & Villains. Originally from Montreal, he’s now based in Vancouver. www.claudepages.info
Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island, and at twenty-one now lives in Edmonton. He won the 2014 Dell Award and received the 2012 Rannu Prize for Writers of Speculative Fiction. www.richwlarson.tumblr.com
Laird Long pounds out fiction in all genres. Big guy, sense of humour. Born in Duncan, British Columbia, bred in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He’s the author of the Clint Magnum mystery No Accounting for Danger.
Edward McDermott spends his time writing; when taking time off from his creative pursuit, he enjoys sailing, fencing, and working as a movie extra. Born in Toronto, he is currently sailing off the Florida Coast. Perhaps in the Bahamas. www.edwardmcdermott.net
David Menear has spent most of his life between Toronto and Montreal but has also lived in London, the U.K., and Divonne, France. Currently he is back in Toronto, writing hard and playing tennis with enthusiasm and mediocrity. His short-story chapbook, One Dead Tree, was released by DevilHousePress in June of 2014.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, and lives in beautiful British Columbia with her family. Her first collection, This Strange Way of Dying, was published in 2013 by Exile Editions. Her debut novel, Signal to Noise, will be released in 2015 by Solaris. www.silviamoreno-garcia.com @silviamg
Michael Mirolla describes his writing as a mix of magic realism, surrealism, speculative fiction, and meta-fiction. A linked shortstory collection, Lessons in Relationship Dyads, is due in autumn 2015 from Red Hen Press. Born in Italy and brought up in Montreal, Michael now lives in the Greater Toronto Area. www.michaelmirolla.weebly.com @MichaelMirolla1
David Nickle is a Toronto author and journalist, and the author of numerous short stories and several novels. His most recent books are the story collection Knife Fight and Other Struggles and the novel The ‘Geisters.
Corey Redekop has published the much-admired, award-winning bookworm blockbuster novel Shelf Monkey with ECW Press (2007) and the even-more-celebrated, award-nominated zombie satire Husk (ECW Press, 2012). Born and raised in Thompson, Manitoba, Corey now nests in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he works as a librarian (for the money) and writer (for the glory). www.coreyredekop.ca @CoreyRedekop
Alex C. Renwick has a love of Vancouver rain that springs from formative years spent baking in Texas. Her fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery magazines and Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Her collection Push of the Sky (as Camille Alexa) was nominated for the Endeavour Award. www.alexcrenwick.com
Hermine Robinson lives and writes in Calgary, where the winters are long and inspiration is plentiful. Her story “Tipping House” won the 2013 FreeFall Magazine’s Short Prose competition.
Kelly Robson moved to Toronto after twenty-two years in Vancouver, and discovered that, no matter where she lives, she’ll always be an Alberta girl. She had the great good luck to be Chatelaine’s wine and spirits columnist from 2008 to 2012 and absolutely adores Okanagan wine. www.kellyrobson.com
Shane Simmons is a comics creator and screenwriter who also writes stories for anthologies. He was born in Lachine, Québec, and has lived on the Island of Montreal his entire life. www.shanesimmons.com @Shane_Eyestrain
Dale L. Sproule is the author of the collection Psychedelia Gothique. He was born in Alberta, grew up in British Columbia and Alberta, and now lives in Ontario. His stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s mystery magazine, Northern Frights, Tesseracts, and Pulphouse. He also sculpts – at least somewhat in the Inuit tradition. www.psychedeliagothique.com. www.dlsproule.blogspot.ca
Simon Strantzas is the author of four acclaimed collections of short fiction, including Burnt Black Suns with Hippocampus Press in 2014. His work has appeared in various “best of” annuals and magazines. A native of Toronto, he lives there still with his somewhat understanding and altogether forgiving wife. www.strantzas.com
Steve Vernon grew up in Northern Ontario and visited Nova Scotia at the age of seventeen and never found his way back home again. He has lived in Halifax for the last four decades and has established a reputation as being one of Nova Scotia’s liveliest storytellers. www.stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com
Annual Literary Competitions
(open to Canadians only)
Exile’s $15,000
Carter V. Cooper
Short Fiction
Competition
$10,000 for the Best Story by an Emerging Writer
$5,000 for the Best Story by a Writer at Any Career Point
The 12 short-listed are published in the annual CVC Short Fiction Anthology and the Canadian journal ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly
Details and Entry Forms at
www.TheExileWriters.com
Annual Literary Competitions
(open to Canadians only)
Exile’s $2,500
Gwendolyn MacEwen
Poetry Competition
$2,000 for the Best Suite of Poetry
$500 for the Best Poem
Winners are published in ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly
Details and Entry Forms at
www.TheExileWriters.com
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