Blind Spot

by Laurence Miall

  Sharon turned to me.

  “I thought I saw you upstairs, but I wasn’t sure.” She gave my shoulder a seemingly affectionate pat. “Are you okay? You look lost.”

  “I’m not lost, I’ve been here dozens of times. You seen Julianne?”

  “No, no one’s here. I’ve been waiting, too. Do you smoke?”

  We decided to go outside for one. We exited through the front door and walked around to the alley at the back. Winter had tightened the noose another notch since my walk. The cold changed the flavour of the cigarette. It made the taste more pungent and toxic. The plumes of smoke were massive. Between us, Sharon and I obscured almost an entire car parked several feet away.

  “He’s never on time,” she said about Mike. She stamped her feet to keep them warm. “They probably got drinking at the restaurant, and now he doesn’t know where he’s supposed to be. I can’t believe it’s fucking nine thirty. He told me eight o’clock.”

  “Eight o’clock? I was told nine.”

  “Nine?”

  “Nine,” I confirmed. “That’s what Julianne said.”

  She shrugged.

  “Whatever. It’s probably him that fucked up.”

  I stubbed out my first smoke and lit up another. Having to smoke outside in shifts like this made it seem prudent to double up.

  “Do you know who else went for dinner?” I asked.

  She replied, “No one else. Just the two of them.” She gave me a sly smile. “Does that bother you?”

  “No. Whatever.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “It’s okay. They’re friends.”

  “She’s fucking hot, Luke. He’d do it with her if he could.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. She had not followed my example with the second cigarette and was now simply observing me. I seemed to amuse her.

  “He’d do it with you, if he could,” she continued. “I’d do it with you, too. You interested in joining us both some night?”

  I was amazed how calmly she proposed this.

  “That’s flattering,” I said. “But no, thank you.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Is it me you’re not sure about, or Mike?”

  Sharon laughed. She enjoyed watching me squirm.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  But inside, she would not drop the subject.

  “We’ve fantasized about having the both of you, all of us, four in the bed, and tying you up, and taking our turn with each of you. Julianne’s turned us down. But with both of you, don’t you think you’d be more comfortable with it?”

  “No,” I replied. “We’re comfortable just the two of us.”

  I ordered my second pint, relieved to step away from her, if only briefly. I had suddenly lost my sense of humour. There was too much information coming my way in such a short time. Mike and Julianne were still at dinner, alone. Mike wanted Julianne. Mike and Sharon wanted Julianne. Mike and Sharon wanted me. My intoxication was returning. I was drinking quickly. It was ten o’clock. It was unbelievable that they could take this long. And Mike had said eight o’clock to Sharon.

  Just when I had decided that there was a fresh crisis brewing, Mike and Julianne walked in, arm in arm. Dribbling in behind them were Dr. Harsh and the rest of the English posse. Dr. Harsh looked like he’d stepped out of a surreal cartoon. His glasses were fogged up, his hair was stuck on end, and his cheeks were bright red. As the fog cleared from his lenses, one giant eye and one regular eye emerged.

  Mike and Julianne separated. He zeroed in on Sharon to slap her ass. Julianne came up to me and narrowed her eyes to slits.

  “You’ve been a very, very bad boy,” she said. “Vicki says you’ve stolen my car.”

  “I did steal your car,” I said.

  She was drunk. Her eyesight was not quite fully focused on me.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “I drove out to the Brookfields. I had to talk to Jacob.”

  She heaved a deep sigh.

  “It was blizzarding,” she said.

  “I found out everything,” I continued.

  “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  She leaned forward and gave me a wet kiss. I sustained it, but hardly reciprocated.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Can we go upstairs?” I asked.

  “Now?”

  I took her hand in mine.

  “Now.”

  She nodded to her fan club, and then we retreated to a quieter corner of the upstairs lounge.

  “You should’ve asked for that key. I can’t believe how sneaky you are.” She blinked, as if slightly disoriented. We found a booth. That was something, at least. It occurred to me that she might be an alcoholic. I thought of every night we’d shared. Every single time, we’d been tipsy or drunk. And when I had discovered those emails and was in a state, what had been her instinct? To go buy more booze. I did not object to booze in principle. But it seemed to me now that there was something essentially insubstantial about her character that she sought to cover up by always being merrily liquored. But I was in no state to judge her. I was angry. Watching her enter with her arm linked with Mike’s had been too much for me. I did not give her a chance.

  “I returned the key,” I said. “I’m sorry I took it. But it had to be done. Listen to what I found out. Are you listening?”

  She was gazing at me as if having just noticed my presence. I couldn’t gauge how drunk she was. Her face was still together, still immaculately pretty, but her actions betrayed her.

  “I’m listening,” she said. “Luke, I’m really drunk.”

  “How drunk is drunk? Are you going to be alright?”

  “Can you get me some water?”

  I went to fetch her a water. The bartender looked at me like I’d insulted his mother. I had stopped being cool enough for the Black Dog several years ago, I realized. Who asked for only water at ten at night?

  When I returned, she was sinking, propping her head against the wall as if preparing for a doze. I took a place on her side of the booth and put my arm around her.

  “Come on, drink this.”

  She drank the whole thing. For several minutes, we didn’t say anything. We watched the crowd. I noticed her blinking frequently. Slowly, the blinks became increasingly infrequent.

  She turned to me and kissed me again.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I feel better.”

  Her recovery was disconcerting. It was as if she knew the drill.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  Suddenly, I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know what was important anymore.

  I started with the name “Jacob” and I stopped again. I was sweating. Of course I was sweating, I still had my winter coat on. I removed the coat — removing myself from her briefly as I did so. Then I sat on top of the coat. I was several inches above her now.

  “Are you comfortable?” Julianne laughed.

  I wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t say anything. The top of Dr. Harsh’s head had appeared at the peak of the stairs. It turned, it turned back. Now he was all the way up, and he spotted us immediately. He hurried over, and my heart sank. He climbed into the booth and nodded his head to me.

  “I didn’t get a chance to say good evening.” He shook my hand quickly. “What a night. What a terrible change in the weather. I would have hired all of us a cab. But this lot all said that we could walk, and so walk we did. I still can’t feel my feet.”

  “Where were you all?” I asked.

  “Oh, we joined Julianne and Mike at the Garneau Pub after their romantic dinner at the High Level Diner.” He grinned at me. “Have you been to the Garneau? The Greek proprietors look like they stepped off the walls of a Gothic cathedral. They tell very dirty jokes; half of them I cannot understand. Maybe that’s for the best.”

  “Aristotle was frisky tonight,” said Julianne.

  “He was, wasn’t he? He’s su
ch fun, he is. Waltzing under your arm like that. What a flirt.”

  I excused myself from the table. I needed another beer. After an excruciating wait, during which the hostile bartender served countless customers who had arrived after me, I got the Sleeman’s that I had wanted.

  I returned to the table. Julianne was deep in conversation with Dr. Harsh. What was I supposed to do? I had abandoned the idea of telling her about the Brookfields. It was my private sorrow. What I did still intend to do was ask her what the fuck was going on with Mike. What was this talk of a romantic dinner?

  Words continued to swarm about me like insects. Apparently, Dr. Harsh had once visited the final resting place of John Donne. Something had overwhelmed him as he gazed upon the marble carving of the great poet, the bronze arms folded, the bronze face, holy and serene. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Similarly, something had overwhelmed Julianne when she visited the River Ouse, where Virginia Woolf had drowned herself. I watched the older man and the young woman talk about intangible, indefinable feelings. There was a subtle dance of words going on. He was circling her, wanting to say so much more, you could tell, wanting her to know just how passionate he felt about John Donne. But she was coyly fending him off.

  “And you,” Dr. Harsh said finally to me. “What truly moves you?”

  There was a strange tone to the question. He was not his genial self.

  “What do you mean?”

  “In writing, in art, in anything?”

  “What you quoted there — for whom the bell tolls. I read Hemingway’s book.”

  “The quotation is John Donne, not Ernest Hemingway.”

  I damn well knew that Hemingway did not coin the phrase for whom the bell tolls, and he should have damn well known that I knew it. I wasn’t talking out of ignorance. I was attempting to build a link from his experience to mine, but the socially inept little runt was too stupid to see it.

  “No, I’m saying I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. The quotation, I’m aware, is Donne’s.”

  “I see,” he said, looking at me skeptically. “And how did you enjoy your Hemingway?”

  “A lot,” I said.

  “I’m not familiar with that one myself. I bruised my hands trying to thumb my way through Farewell to Arms, then I gave up. Clearly not man enough for Hemingway.”

  Julianne laughed. I was reeling. What was happening here?

  It seemed that they had turned on me.

  “I am going to the washroom,” I announced.

  I descended two flights of stairs. Once I had finished my business, I turned around, made my way through the Underdog, and suddenly found my path blocked by Mike. He pressed my hand between his two palms.

  “Sharon thinks you might be a little sensitive about me taking out Julianne,” he said. “I hope you’re not angry with me. I’m sorry. She’s a friend, you know. My best friend.”

  He had faced this right on, but his lips were still creased upwards. Did he think I’d thank him for his honesty?

  “It’s okay,” I lied.

  “You have nothing to drink,” he said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  We went upstairs to the main floor and he bought me a beer. He ordered a vodka 7 Up for himself. My chest was as tight as a drum, and yet I was drunk. I was convinced of a conspiracy going on against me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. Mike having appeared at that moment did not seem pure happenstance. Everyone was trying to convince me that everything was totally normal. But it didn’t feel normal.

  “Julianne’s with Dr. Harsh in the new bar,” I said, “in case you’re looking for her.”

  “Let us talk for a while.” He put his arm on the bar behind my back. “Julianne is a free spirit. She won’t be dominated or controlled. As her friend, I know that about her. She runs if she feels trapped.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “To help you, Luke. Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of men try to stop her from being herself, and it never works. She bolts.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I repeated.

  He patted me on the shoulder — right where Sharon had patted me earlier.

  “I’m saying it so you don’t take offense if she’s having dinner with me, or if she has a drink or two with Dr. Harsh, or with someone else. She won’t abide the jealousy bullshit.”

  “Start explaining why you’re telling me this.”

  His hand pressed tighter on my shoulder.

  “Luke, you’re getting defensive. I’m absolutely on your side. I give you this advice because I like you and I want to see you and Julianne be happy.”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice.”

  He removed his hand at last. He clapped as if applauding a joke.

  “It’s free advice! You don’t have to ask for it. It’s just given to you. Like that, see?”

  He made a wide circle with his arm, indicating the expansiveness of his generosity.

  “You ask for nothing in return,” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe that. Sharon told me what you would like to do with Julianne. What you both would like to do with her, or me, or us both.”

  “She mentioned that she mentioned that.” He was grinning wider than ever. “Sharon does not keep things to herself. But that is part of what I love about her. What she told you is one of our perverse little fantasies.”

  “Which fantasy?” I demanded. “You and her? Both of you, and us?”

  “Either, or, and,” he beamed.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Julianne has said as much.”

  “But yet you take her out anyway.”

  “We’re friends, Luke. Don’t you understand what close friends we are?”

  I didn’t reply to that. I looked at his face, at its crooked folds, and then I polished off the last of my beer.

  Dr. Harsh suddenly appeared.

  “Hello, lads,” he said. He put a hand on my shoulder and then on Mike’s. “You’ll have to excuse me briefly.”

  He vanished in the direction of the stairs to the Underdog. I had wanted to ask how Julianne was doing, but I didn’t have time. Just as I was about to go upstairs and see for myself, Mike started talking again.

  “What would have happened in the course of your Manspray contract if you had, say, become fat?’

  I thumped my glass onto the counter.

  “What?”

  “In the first ad, you were toned and all that. What if a few months went by and you got pudgy? Is there a contract you sign? Can they fire you?”

  I shook my head with disbelief.

  “This again…”

  “I’m serious,” he said, smirking.

  Dr. Harsh was with us again. “Sorry,” he said. “Call of nature. Crazy down there. I don’t understand people who leave the toilet clogged. They should call somebody.”

  He smiled at me, then at Mike.

  “People,” Mike snorted.

  “Luke’s favourite writer is Ernest Hemingway,” said Dr. Harsh.

  Mike found this very funny.

  “Is there a problem with that?” I asked.

  “I point it out,” said Mike, “only because, as you must know by now, Julianne is a serious feminist, and just the other day, she went on a huge rant about Hemingway. And it was amusing to hear you mention him.”

  I stared at the professor’s lopsided face.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’m going to go fetch her,” said Mike. “Leaving her alone up there is like leaving her to the sharks.”

  “Oh, she’s not alone,” said Dr. Harsh. “The DJ has stopped deejaying to come fill her ears with praises.”

  Mike departed and left me alone with the professor, who proceeded to talk about the many theories about the source of Hemingway’s machismo, insecurity, and madness — a lecture that lingered for several minutes on the subject of impotence. While he did so, I reached for a beer on the counter and started drinking it. After th
irty seconds, I realized that the beer was lukewarm and that it was not mine. But nobody stopped me, so I continued drinking it.

  I remember this moment very clearly. It was a crucial moment because while the professor’s words buzzed in my ears, I was deciding that no matter how bad this night might get, I was going to retrieve my dignity from it somehow. It was a moment during which my anger turned from lava to rock, from liquid to solid. I had hardened myself to doing something. And very quickly, it became apparent what that something should be.

  Coming down the stairs, re-entering the main bar, was Julianne. On her back, riding her, and pretending to whip her as if she were a horse, was Mike. It was silly fun, rowdy drunken laughs, ha, ha, ha.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  Julianne, red-faced, let Mike get down.

  “This is what we do,” Mike replied.

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but his face when he said it. I couldn’t look at a face like that without hitting it. He had released the coil of violence that had been tense inside me all day. I took him by the shirt, ran him through to the back of the bar and straight out the door. We set off the fire alarm. All of a sudden, there was a siren screaming and a pulsing yellow light bouncing off the snow outside. I hit him once in the gut. Then I hit him again. He bent over double and made a vague grab for my legs. I heard a commotion behind me, and a raucous shriek.

  “Get off him!”

  Sharon delivered me a stunning punch to the head. It knocked me to the floor instantly. She was one hell of a tough bitch. I remember looking up at her and then seeing Julianne come into the picture. I was bleeding onto the cruel snow. Drip, drip, drip. I rolled over onto my stomach. I did not want to look at her.

  33

  It was a messy end — or maybe I cannot call it the end, since I don’t know where one era separates cleanly from the next. The next one doesn’t appear to have started yet. The present is still messy, still murky.

  That night, I endured a barrage of indignation from Julianne, the proclamation of a twelve-month ban from the Black Dog courtesy of the bouncer, and after I got to my feet, I had to stagger past a thousand staring faces on my way back to the old house. Nor did the messiness end there. If I had known what a struggle it would be to navigate all the shit that was awaiting me, I might have decided to stay face down in the snow and let the cold take care of my plight.