I put Sophie down and head into the living room. Angie has fans in every corner of the house, a small one spinning on the kitchen counter and a standup pointing out one of the open living room windows, sucking the hot air out of the house. The only movement in the room comes from the propellers and the screen saver on the laptop, a twirling planet in a black cyber sky. I sit down at the computer and find a new message from Thom headed: The Useless Bungling of Wes’ Own Ineffectual Life.
The new message reads: Dear Asshole, have you ever considered the fact that my very purpose in life is to be the existential thorn in your side? You left me with no choice since the day you cut off your own balls and became a so-called reasonable adult.
For the past week, he’s been trying to convince me to call in sick so we can meet up in Osoyoos a day early. The lake cabin has been a summer ritual since we met in first year. The message goes on to question, for the hundredth time, my decision to flee Vancouver for Kamloops and leave him to drink cases of beer all by himself. He blames me for the broken coffee table and overflowing recycle bin.
I reply: Dear A-hole, have you ever wondered if the reason you seek my company is that you cannot, for even a single moment, stand yourself? This is the nature of our relationship.
When I met Thom we were both first-year students at the University of British Columbia. After our English classes we’d end up at the same pub and eventually we ended up at the same table. I was with him the night he met Veronica at an art show in the student union gallery. She was showing some photographs and we had stumbled in at the sight of free food on our way back from the pub. Thom spent the entire night standing at a table stuffing his mouth with spinach phyllo pastries and drinking glass after glass of cheap red wine in plastic cups, wine he knew would make him angry enough to kick over every garbage can he spotted on the way back to his place. Veronica went home with him despite it all. She says she likes to photograph his tragic face. When they say goodbye, she grabs him by the chin and pushes his lips into a pucker she kisses. Mornings she wakes him up by straddling him and taking his portrait. “For a project I’m building,” she says. Twice he’s had to shell out a considerable amount of money for broken lenses after he wacked the camera out of her hands in a groggy, flash-stunned confusion. It was Veronica who introduced me to Angie, made her appear at our table one night as if by magic. She said, “Wes, this is my friend Angie. You don’t want to fuck this up.”
Mostly Thom is happiest lying on the rotten sofa on their front porch, smoking weed and reading. The two of us never talk about work or offer details of our day to day, and in that way we can exist together in a world separate, a world perhaps a bit loftier, a bit brighter than the one we live in, a life we would have dreamed up after a lecture in Comparative Literature and a row of pitchers at the pub. Occasionally — though I can’t be sure — I think Thom forgets I have a child. He likes to talk about ideas. He likes to argue — is happiest, even, when arguing. He likes to remind me that I wasted my MA and subsequently my contemplative life. He likes to remind me that he can drink me under the table. This is the way I see Thom at this very moment: in his living room, pacing the creaking floorboards, practically climbing his bookshelves stacked with the Western canon, fist in the air for reasons fair or concocted, a neat row of beer bottles arranged in patterns along the coffee table, trying to engage in debate the figure of his girlfriend hunched over a computer, photo editing. He’ll argue with himself, if no one else will listen.
The last time we were all at the lake cabin was almost two years ago. Angie was pregnant but not telling anyone yet. Thom and I spent the weekend getting absolutely bombed, drinking whiskey and coke out of plastic cups and barbecuing on the beach. I was feeling celebratory — in sharp contrast to Thom, who was bemoaning the fact that I was dropping out as an unclassified student and moving to Cornwall to start flight service training.
“What!” Thom had said, shaking his head. “What a waste! But marriage will do that to you.”
“Thom, God! Please don’t start,” Veronica put her hand on Thom’s neck. It was hard to tell if she was going to strangle him or give him a massage. “Can’t we have a holiday without badgering? For once!”
“He’s not even part of a program, Thom,” Angie said. “Don’t be sad because your friend’s getting a life.”
Angie had spent the day in the lake, swimming, while I watched her from the dock, drinking. She’d aim straight, swim far out to some hidden point on the horizon. Eventually I was drunk enough to follow her into the water, my messy hands slapping the water like dull blades. I played that game with her, grabbing her ankles underwater and pulling her under, the game she hates, putting those messy hands all over her body, the smooth skin over her shoulders and along her neck, her waist, her thighs, my fingers running under the edges of her swimsuit. Later she leaned against me, legs stretched out on a chair in front of her, hair still wet, my hand resting on the inside of her thigh and twitching to move farther up.
“Marriage will do what to you?” I said. I felt like humouring Thom. I felt better than him.
“Smarten you up. Smarten you silly, maybe.” Thom smirked into his plastic cup. There wasn’t much left but ice. “We won’t be doing that song and dance.”
“Marriage is hardly a song and dance,” Angie laughed.
Veronica stretched her arms far above her head and yawned, making a point of being bored with Thom.
“Oh, it is. Mostly a dance, though.” Thom stood up from the table, curtsied and did a lively soft-shoe.
“Sit down, you idiot,” Veronica said, shaking her head.
“I think I’ll have another,” he said to himself as he opened the two-litre of coke with a hiss.
“Have a glass of water, Thom,” Veronica said.
“It really has though. Changed your whole look. The look of you.” Thom was staring at me across the table with disgust. “You’re a different person.”
“Fuck off.” I was smiling.
I felt sorry for Thom that night, and for Veronica too, because of her association with him. My pity grew out of Thom’s own pity, out of Angie’s secret and our own happiness. The entire scope of our lives together stretched out before me that night, clear as a backyard surrounded by a blanket of trees and a sky full of stars. And that night, sitting across from Thom, my hand on Angie’s thigh while she sipped her water with lime, I found it all incredibly funny.
I WAKE UP IN the chair in front of the computer and make my way through the dark house to the bedroom. Angie’s set up a fan in this room too, pointing it at the bed so the breeze makes ripples across the sheets. She settles herself closer to me as I get in.
“What happened?” she mutters into the pillow.
“She went right to sleep.”
“At work, I mean?” Angie raises her head and tries to find my eyes in the dark. She always seems to know when something is off. It will never be possible to lie to her.
“Water bomber crashed into the side of a mountain.” I lock my hands behind my head and look over at her. She’s in one of my threadbare shirts. It’s worn soft, with holes in the sleeves.
“Jesus.” Angie raises herself on an elbow. “Your call?”
“The whole thing was over in under a minute.” I lift up the shirt and run my hand over her stomach.
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
We have sex and we both come fast, which is the way it always is now, infrequent to the point of desperate mutual hunger. I come so hard it almost hurts, as though I’m being sucked right into her body, bound so tightly by her flesh I cease to exist. She asks me if it was good, better than any waitress I could get in town, and I laugh off the snarky comment. I tell her it was better than good.