“So you’re working on the ‘Lady’ sonnets,” he says. “Let me know if there are any points you’d like me to elucidate for you. Something from the horse’s mouth, to flesh out your thesis. As it were.”
“Well, it’s not exactly them I’m working on,” she says. “They’ve been done quite a lot.” She looks down at the coffee table; now she’s blushing in earnest. “As a matter of fact, I’m doing my thesis on C. W. Starr. You know, Constance Starr, though I realize that Starr wasn’t her real name — on her Alphinland series, and, well, you knew her at that time. At the Riverboat, and all of that.”
Gavin feels as if cold mercury has been poured through his veins. Who let this creature in? This defacer, this violator! Reynolds, that’s who. Was treacherous Reynolds aware of the harpy’s true mission? If so, he’ll pull out her molars.
But he’s cornered. He can’t pretend this matters to him — to be cast as a mere secondary source in the main action, the main action being Constance. Constance the fluffball, with her idiotic gnome stories. Constance the flake. Constance the bubblehead. To show anger would be to reveal his soft underbelly, to pile more humiliation upon the primary humiliation. “Oh yes.” He laughs indulgently, as if recalling a joke. “And all of that is right! So much all, and so much that! It was all and that from morning to night! But I had the stamina for it then.”
“Excuse me?” says Naveena. Her eyes are shining: she’s getting some of the blood she came for. But she won’t get all of it.
“My dear child,” says Gavin. “Constance and I lived together. We shacked up. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. And though that age hadn’t fully dawned, we were very busy all the same. We spent a lot more time taking our clothes off than putting them on. She was. . amazing.” He allows himself a reminiscent smile. “But don’t tell me you’re doing serious academic work on Constance! What she wrote wasn’t in any way. .”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am,” says Naveena. “It’s an in-depth examination of the function of symbolism versus neo-representationalism in the process of world-building, which can be studied so much more effectively through the fantasy genres than in its more disguised forms in so-called realistic fiction. Wouldn’t you say?”
Reynolds clacks in, carrying a tray. “Here’s our tea!” she announces, in the nick of time. Gavin can feel the blood pounding in his temples. What the fuck was Naveena just saying?
“What kind of cookies?” he says, to put neo-representationalism in its place.
“Chocolate chip,” says Reynolds. “Did Naveena show you the video clips yet? They’re fascinating! She sent them to me in a Dropbox.” She sits down beside him and begins to pour out the tea.
Dropbox. What is it? Nothing comes to mind but an indoor cat-poo station. But he won’t ask.
“This is the first one,” says Naveena. “The Riverboat, around 1965.”
It’s an ambush, it’s a betrayal. However, Gavin cannot choose but look. It’s like being drawn into a time tunneclass="underline" the centrifugal force is irresistible.
The film is grainy, black and white; there’s no sound. The camera pans around the room: some amateur starfucker, or was this shot for an early documentary? That must be Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee onstage, and is that Sylvia Tyson? A couple of his fellow poets of those days, hanging out at one of the tables, in their period haircuts, their downy, defiant, optimistic beards. So many of them dead by now.
And there he is himself, with Constance beside him. No beard, but he’s got a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and an arm casually draped around Constance. He isn’t looking at her, he’s looking at the stage. She’s looking at him, though. She was always looking at him. They’re so sweet, the two of them; so unscarred, so filled with energy then, and hope; like children. So unaware of the winds of fate that were soon to sweep them apart. He wants to cry.
“She must be tired,” says Reynolds, with satisfaction. “Check out those bags under her eyes. Big dark circles. She must be really whipped.”
“Tired?” says Gavin. He never thought of Constance as being tired.
“Well, I guess she would be tired,” says Naveena. “Think of all she was writing then! It was epic! She practically created the whole Alphinland ground plan, in such a short time! Plus she had that job, with the fried-chicken place.”
“She never said she was tired,” says Gavin, because the two of them are staring at him with what might possibly be reproach. “She had a lot of stamina.”
“She wrote to you about it,” says Naveena. “About being tired. Though she said she was never too tired for you! She said you should always wake her up, no matter how late you came in. She wrote that down! I guess she was really in love with you. It’s so endearing.”
Gavin’s confused. Wrote to him? He doesn’t remember that. “Why would she write me letters?” he says. “We were living in the same place.”
“She wrote notes to you in this journal she had,” says Naveena, “and she’d leave it for you on the table because you always slept in, but she had to go to her job, and then you would read the notes. And then you would write notes back to her that way, underneath hers. It had a black cover, it’s the same sort of journal she used for the Alphinland lists and maps. There’s a different page for every day. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, that,” says Gavin. He has a dim recollection. Mostly he can remember the radiance of those mornings, after a night with Constance. The first coffee, the first cigarette, the first lines of the first poem, appearing as if by magic. Most of those poems were keepers. “Yes, vaguely. How did you get hold of that?”
“It was in your papers,” says Naveena. “The journal. The University of Austin has the papers. You sold them. Remember?”
“I sold my papers?” says Gavin. “Which papers?” He’s drawn a blank, one of those gaps that appears in his memory from time to time like a tear in a spiderweb. He can’t recall doing any such thing.
“Well, technically I sold them,” says Reynolds. “I made the arrangements. You asked me to take care of it for you. It was when you were working on the Odyssey translation. He gets so immersed,” she says to Naveena. “When he’s working. He’d even forget to eat if I didn’t feed him!”
“I know, right?” says Naveena. The two of them exchange a conspiratorial look: Genius must be humoured. That, thinks Gavin, is the kindlier translation: Old poops must be lied to would be the other.
“Now let’s see the other clip,” says Rey, leaning forward. Mercy, Gavin pleads with her silently. I’m on the ropes. This teen princess is wearing me down. I don’t know what she’s talking about! Bring it to an end!
“I’m tired,” he says, but not loudly enough, it seems: the two of them have their agenda.
“It’s an interview,” says Naveena. “From a few years ago. It’s up on YouTube.” She clicks on the arrow and the video starts to play, this time with colour and sound. “It’s at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.”
Gavin watches with mounting horror. A wispy old woman is being interviewed by a man dressed in a Star Trek outfit: a purple complexion, a gigantic veined skull. A Klingon, Gavin supposes. Though he doesn’t know much about this cluster of memes, his poetry workshop students used to attempt to enlighten him when the subject came up in their poems. There’s a woman onscreen too, with a glistening, plasticized face. “That’s the Borg Queen,” Naveena whispers. The wispy oldster is supposed to be Constance, says the YouTube title line, but he can’t credit it.