by Eva Crocker
We had to wait a long time for the car to warm up. Kris’s cheeks glowed pink from the cold rain; I leaned over and kissed her. She turned her head and caught my bottom lip between her teeth.
On the drive home Kris said, “Something feels weird.”
Kris was always turning down the radio to listen to the car or sniffing the air and asking, “Do you smell something burning?” We drove slowly for a while. I could tell by her face that she was trying to diagnose the problem. I stayed quiet.
“I think we have a flat, does it feel like we have a flat?” Kris asked.
As soon as she said it, I felt it: the equilibrium was off, like being in a listing boat. We pulled into the Mary Brown’s parking lot. Kris got out and walked around the car. She paused by the back tire on my side, then walked up to my window and tapped it with a knuckle. I rolled the window down.
“It’s flat,” she said.
I nodded grimly. Kris stood by the window, a mush of freezing rain sliding down her chest, while I stared up at her from the warmth of the car.
“What should we do?” I said eventually.
“I’m going to put on the spare,” Kris said. “Pop the trunk.”
I’d never dated anyone who knew how to change a tire and had everything they needed to do it on hand. I offered to help but Kris sent me into the Mary Brown’s.
“Go warm up,” she said.
The restaurant closed in a half hour and the kid at the register seemed to be the only one working. I saw his face fall when I pushed the door open. Probably he had prematurely cleaned the kitchen equipment.
“We got a flat,” I told him.
He looked pointedly at the illuminated menu above his head.
“Just a small taters, please.”
I was the only person in the restaurant. “Last Christmas” by Wham! was playing and the air smelled of grease. I watched Kris through the window. She took a stack of flyers sealed in white plastic bags out of the trunk and dropped them into the slush. She knelt on the papers and turned her body towards the tire. I saw her bent arm rise and fall as she worked the nuts on the hubcap. Eventually she stood and bounced on the wrench with one foot.
When the fries were ready I pumped ketchup into a white paper cup and took my tray to a booth. After the first bite of taters my mouth was coated in slippery, stale grease. I felt it on the back of my teeth.
I watched Kris get a spare tire out of the trunk. “The donut.” Who taught me that? Probably my grandfather. When she’d lowered the car back into the slush and all her tools were loaded in the trunk, Kris came to get me. I had half a box of cold taters in front of me. She stood at the edge of the table, took three taters at once and plunged them into the ketchup cup, making the sauce pour over the rim like a science-project volcano. She had black grease on her hands.
“Help yourself,” I said.
“Oh, I will.”
“Do you want anything? They close in five minutes.”
“No.” She took three more taters and swabbed the ketchup cup with them.
Kris was completely drenched, her clothes hanging heavy from all the rain they’d absorbed. I could feel the boy at the counter watching us.
“Finish those, I’m done with them.”
“Yeah?” She sat in the seat across from me.
“You must be freezing.”
“Not really, I’m warm from doing the tire.”
“You will be, though,” I said.
“Probably.” She picked the last crispy bits of batter out of the cardboard box.
I said “Thank you” to the kid at the counter as Kris shook the tray against the flap in the garbage receptacle. He followed us to the door and locked it behind us.
It had been two weeks since the police had come to the house but when we pulled up at home I still found myself checking the parking lot for cop cars. First for unmarked cop cars and then, wondering if Holly was home, for Dave King’s brand-new silver Yaris. Neither were there.
All the lights were off downstairs and Holly’s shoes weren’t in the porch. I put all our clothes in the dryer, underwear and dirty socks and winter coats in one big snarl. The zipper from one of our coats made a ticking sound as it tumbled around in the dryer. We got straight in the shower. I knelt in the hard tub and kissed up and down the insides of Kris’s thighs while she ran her nails over my scalp. The parts of me that were outside the circumference of warm dripping water got cold and goose-pimpled but I didn’t care. I heard the front door and sat back on my heels. “Holly’s home.”
“Okay,” Kris said, looking down at me.
I put my face against her warm thigh again but dread was sliding through me. I hadn’t seen Holly since we talked about her glasses on the phone. I hadn’t sent any money. Maybe she was just here to pick up some things and go on back to Dave’s. I moved my face into Kris’s crotch, spread it with my fingers and started sucking but I was listening for Dave’s voice, straining to hear Holly’s footsteps. Kris reached outside the shower and braced herself with a hand on the edge of the sink. She bent her knees and back a little to make the angle easier on my neck, then she pushed her crotch into my face. I saw her eyes were closed and her bottom lip was moving. I focused on her exhales and tried to match them with my tongue. Eventually she pushed my forehead away gently and straightened up.
“You’re done?”
She nodded, but I couldn’t tell from her face if she’d come.
It was hard to stand up, my knees ached. Kris stretched the arm that’d been outside the shower across her chest, twirling her wrist. I heard the drawer in the bottom of the oven screech open.
“I can’t believe the water’s still warm,” she said.
“We have oil heat,” I told her. “The water never gets cold.”
When I shut the shower off I heard a man’s voice, followed by Holly’s. I couldn’t make out the words but it sounded like they might be arguing. I lifted folded towels off the tarnished gold rack that’d been in the bathroom when we moved in. The towels were white and stained with bright pink splotches from when I washed them with red dish towels.
“Holly’s got someone over,” I said.
Kris wrapped the towel around herself and tucked a corner in by her armpit. I opened the door to the bathroom and cold air flooded in. We walked down the strange, windowless hallway between the bathroom and kitchen. I opened the second door; Holly was ripping open a bag of frozen fries with a big knife. Dave was standing in the centre of the kitchen. I thought, they must be sleeping together.
“Just tell me how to help,” he was saying.
Holly whirled around. She’d dyed her hair washed-out pink.
“You changed your hair,” I said.
“Yeah,” Holly said.
Dave looked at the floor, to avoid looking at Kris and me in our towels.
“This is Kris,” I said.
“Hi,” Kris said.
“Hi,” Holly said.
Dave looked up and nodded.
“I think we’ve met, maybe at Pleasant Street,” he said to Kris.
“Nice to meet you again, then,” Kris said.
Holly didn’t say anything. She stood with the bag of fries in her hand and the knife pointed at the ceiling.
“Okay, well,” I said and walked towards the stairs, Kris following me. When we stepped onto the dark staircase, the cooking noises resumed. I wondered if Holly was surprised that I was with a woman — we’d never talked about relationships. Maybe Viv had told her about Kris. The thought of them hanging out together without me made my lungs sting.
In my bedroom I flicked on the light, revealing the mess of dirty laundry spread around the floor. I hadn’t been watering the geraniums, lots of the flowers had dried out on their stalks and lost petals. The broad, velvety leaves had patches of yellow.
“That was awkward,” Kris
said as soon as I closed the bedroom door.
“Yeah.”
“What’s her problem?”
“Maybe she was tired from work.” As I said it I felt hot guilt spreading through my chest.
“Our clothes are still in the dryer,” Kris said.
“Fuck.”
I opened my closet and took out my lime-green bathrobe.
“Wait here,” I told Kris.
“Obviously.” She sat on the bed, wrapped in the splotchy towel.
“I’m sorry, it’s so cold in here,” I told her. “There’s wool socks in the top drawer, if you want to borrow a pair.”
I had to walk through the kitchen again to get to the laundry area. The light was on in the oven, illuminating a tray of fries. Holly and Dave were sitting side by side at the table, reading something on Holly’s phone. Dave looked up and nodded at me as I walked by. Holly ignored me, lazily stroking the phone with one finger. She tugged Dave’s sleeve to draw his attention back to the screen.
When I walked past again with an unruly mound of clothes pressed into my belly, they both ignored me. A sweater sleeve flopped around my thighs, a hot zipper pressed its teeth into my neck.
“’Night guys.” I tried to make my voice friendly. I should be grateful she hadn’t said anything in front of Kris.
Upstairs, I dropped the laundry on the bed and Kris picked her hoodie out of the pile. She zipped it shut around her, then shimmied the towel out from underneath. Her legs were thin but muscular and covered in dark, curly hair.
I dropped my towel on the floor and climbed into the bed. I wormed my legs around under the blankets, knocking warm laundry onto the floor. Kris picked her underwear up and stepped into them.
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
“I don’t have to,” she said.
I lifted the covers and she climbed in.
One of the cats was scratching at my bedroom door but I left him in the hallway. I heard Holly and Dave on the stairs, then their voices mumbled past the door. I could hear them more clearly through the bedroom wall. Sometimes an individual word was audible but not enough to give a sense of what they were talking about. I pressed my face into Kris’s neck, flattening my nose against her skin.
I heard my phone vibrate on the floor; I must have dropped it down the side of the bed. There were three separate sets of twin vibrations. Three new texts. Most likely Viv. I left my phone down in the crack amongst dust-covered socks and books I’d never finished. I wanted to concentrate on how good it felt to have Kris’s small, strong body in my arms.
The bare bulb dangling from the ceiling was bright. I tried to tune Holly and Dave out but it was impossible to stop straining to understand. Kris laid one of her legs on my belly, pinning me to the mattress. I closed my eyes but the light burned on the other side of my lids.
“Are you sleeping over?” I asked.
“I find it hard to breathe here,” Kris said.
“So you’re leaving?”
“No, I’ll stay, go turn off the light.”
I got out from under the warm covers. I turned off the light but the room stayed bright because of the streetlight in the parking lot. I heard the coughing woman’s deep, body-rattling hacking coming from the fire escape. I walked naked across the room and tugged the cord that lowered the blind. The bottom of the blind smacked the window ledge, shaking loose a shower of brittle geranium petals. I got back in bed and rubbed my cold feet on Kris’s calves.
“I have to tell you something weird,” I said, curling in tighter, pressing my face into the stretch of skin between her breast and collarbone. Her breathing was shallow and scratchy. “Don’t be freaked out, it’s just some kind of misunderstanding.”
I started telling her about the search. Kris sat up — then we were both sitting in the dark. I was cross-legged with the blankets around me.
“You should go to the media,” she said.
“And say what?”
“That they searched your house for no reason. All the stuff you told me,” she said.
“I don’t really understand the situation. I should have asked more questions,” I said.
“What does ‘illegal digital material’ mean?” Kris said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well that’s another thing, they didn’t explain anything to you.”
“I just want it to go away, I don’t want anything to do with it.”
“Call VOCM first thing tomorrow morning,” Kris said. “Then file an official complaint. Or do the complaint first, whatever.”
“Holly is moving out,” I said, lowering my voice. “She hasn’t been here in days, she blames me. She basically, she insinuated that I did something.” I didn’t mention about the glasses, about the money I still owed her.
“You need to file a complaint, Stacey. Are you going to?”
“Yeah maybe. I’m tired.” I reclined into the pillow and tugged on her arm but Kris wouldn’t lie down. She looked at me like someone scolding a child.
“They’re probably watching everything I do on the internet,” I said. “They might be watching the house.” I wanted to say about how the woman at the supermarket had frightened me. And the drone. That I wasn’t eating properly because I didn’t like standing with my back to the door to cook. And not eating was making it all worse.
“Don’t you think that’s wrong?” Kris said.
“Yeah, but it’s probably not illegal. You know what I mean? It doesn’t matter how I feel.”
I stretched my legs out and reached for my toes. I regretted telling her.
“Go to the media then,” Kris said.
“Anyway, I just really don’t want to think about it right now, come down here,” I said.
I wrapped my arms around her waist. She lay down next to me and I put a leg across her hips. I closed my eyes, thinking how good it felt to be close to another person’s warm body. After a moment she said, “You kind of have a responsibility.”
“What?”
“To file a complaint.”
I rolled off her. “Oh my god, people have way worse experiences with the cops. Did you read about the violent arrests of peaceful protestors at Muskrat Falls? It’s in the news, all kinds of stories like that. Endless stories that are far, far worse. ”
“Yeah, exactly, you’re in a good position to say something about this particular thing. The thing that happened to you. Let this be one thing they don’t get away with, so they think twice in the future. About all the ways they abuse their power.”
We both lay on our backs in the dark.
“It’s my choice,” I told her.
“Yeah, I know.”
“So respect my choice.”
“Okay.”
And then after a moment, “Anyway, I’ll think about it. I am thinking about it.”
“I really find it hard to breathe in here.” Kris rubbed her chest below her throat.
Twelve
In the morning, Kris had to go out to Stavanger Drive to pick up a package from the UPS depot, a special bike part. There was a big sale on at Mark’s Work Wearhouse and she dropped me off there while she went to collect her mail. The store was packed with people trying to finish their Christmas shopping.
A woman in a blue hijab took a rubber boot off the shelf and stepped into it. A mother held up a black hiking boot with bright purple laces for her teenage daughter to see, nearly whacking me in the face with it.
“It’s waterproof,” the mother said, turning the boot from side to side in the air.
The girl was stone-faced. The mother put the boot back on the shelf. There was a red circle on the ankle. Fifty percent off.
“You can save up and buy boots with a heel later. That’s not what we’re here for,” the mother said. “We’re here to find practical, warm, dry winter boots.”
&n
bsp; The boot was perfect. Butchy but with girly purple laces. I waited for the mother and daughter to move on so I could see the price marked below it on the shelf. More than I’d planned to spend. I crouched and leaned in to read the sizes on the boxes stacked beneath the display boot.
I found a bench with a puffy leather seat and laced the boots. I stuck my legs straight out in front of me and admired them. They felt good, a warm, fleece lining. I threaded the laces through the two top holes and tightened them around my ankles. I dug my heels into the carpet and swayed the boots from side to side. Soft butch.
I took the boots off; they fit into the box like puzzle pieces. Toe to neck and neck to toe. I carried the box to the front of the store. There was a long line of people shaped by a maze of hip-height elastic belts stretched between plastic posts. I stood behind the mother who had been advocating for my boots. Her daughter was carrying a pair of flat-soled nude boots with fake sheep’s-wool lining. Compromise boots.
I took my phone out and started calculating how much my boots would be with the discount. A young guy with an iPad was pacing back and forth outside the elastic belts.
“Excuse me?” He stopped beside me.
“Hi,” I said.
The daughter with the nude boots turned to watch our interaction.
“Would you like a thirty-percent discount on your purchase today?” the guy asked me. He wasn’t handsome but he was clean-cut and you could see muscles under his checkered dress shirt.
“I just need some information, no payment at all,” he said.
“Can I still get the storewide discount?” I asked.
“No problem at all,” the guy said.
The line had grown behind me.
“I can have both discounts?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “Zero fees to register.” His finger hovered over the screen.
“Okay.”
“You want to do it?” His blond hair was gelled into business-school spikes.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’ll have to step out of the line,” he said.
I was so warm in my coat and there were only three people ahead of me now.
