The living room had a Danish modern couch with matching chairs and coffee table, on the mantel ceramic black panthers and above it a gold landscape: gold lake, gold tree, a gold man and a gold woman in a gold pagoda. And Connie’s grandmother, her hands folded once again like a society hostess at a soirée.
“Bon après midi,” she said.
“Bon après midi,” replied Cyril. He put his hand on the newel post carved like a pineapple and went up the stairs after Connie.
“Thinks she’s France Nuyen.” Connie took a key ring from her pocket and gave it a jingle. “I like keys,” she said. “And locks. Something about them.”
“An answer and a question,” said Cyril without thinking, and it occurred to him to draw locks and keys, that you could do a whole series of locks and keys.
This arrested her attention. She extended the key toward his chest and making a single click with her tongue gave the key a twist as if opening him up.
Connie entered her room. Cyril hesitated: he’d fantasized about her room: the look, the smell, the very air, convinced it must be a dimension beyond his most erotic visions, a boudoir of silks and oils and incense. The first thing he saw was himself in a full length mirror, the second thing was a sword at his neck.
“En garde, English pig dog.” Connie’s left hand gripped the sword and her right perched on her hip. Her chin was high, her left knee bent. “Cool, eh.” She lowered the blade and leaned on it like a cane.
Cyril felt his neck for blood. “Where’d you get that?”
“It’s an épée.” She sliced the air making the blade sing.
“It’s dangerous.”
“Elle est très dangerous,” she corrected him.
On the wall half a dozen swords lay in a rack. Broad blade, narrow blade, curved blade, scimitar.
Connie stood before the mirror making faces at herself. Left eyebrow up, left eyebrow down. Right eyebrow up, right eyebrow down. Sad face. Happy face. She screamed silently, then let her head fall back and laughed silently. Finally she gave her cheeks a vigorous rub between her palms then clapped her hands together. “Come on.” She slid the window up and climbed onto the roof. Cyril leaned on the sill and looked out and discovered that it was a long way down, with the jutting pickets of a fence waiting like fangs.
“Hey.” She was straddling the ridge above him, wiggling her toes. Letting her head fall back she emitted a yowl like a newly escaped soul.
He groped his way up onto a roof mountainous with ridges and slopes, and found Connie lying in a valley and staring at the sky. He stretched out next to her, their shoulders touching, the asphalt shingles hot beneath their backs and the rest of the world far away.
She said, “The Big Bang happened but didn’t happen anywhere, space was born with the Big Bang. Something can happen nowhere.”
Cyril tried grasping that.
“We have to free ourselves from the restraints of three dimensional space.”
Cyril stared into the boundless blue and felt his brain straining to comprehend the concept. The restraints of three dimensional space… He wondered if God set off the Big Bang the way he and Gilbert set off firecrackers at Halloween, for the hell of it, for the noise and the light and the plain old fun of seeing what would happen. Maybe God was a bored old guy looking for a diversion from the monotony of eternity. His hand was only inches from Connie’s hip. What would happen if he put it on her thigh, or—and here the world reeled—undid her zipper? The very thought made his pants tighter. He slid his hand closer.
“Sometimes I come up here at night.”
His hand crept closer still.
“I’d sleep up here but I sleepwalk.”
He imagined her walking in her sleep, arms out like a zombie. “Do you wear pyjamas?”
“Cyril,” she said, mock appalled. “Now and again. I suppose you’re going to tell Gilbert.”
“I don’t tell Gilbert anything,” he lied, even as he vowed never to tell him this. Then he told her how Gilbert was looking for a way to commit suicide.
She considered this a long time, which caused Cyril a spasm of angst thinking Connie might approve, that it might make Gilbert interesting. She said, “He asked me out last week.”
It was as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. His fingertips clutched at the gritty shingles to keep from plunging off the roof into the sky.
She patted his knee. “Hey, don’t worry. It’s no contest. I said no.” Then she added, “Maybe he could do a swan dive from his roof.”
“Maybe I’ll push him off,” said Cyril, who was not at all shocked by Gilbert’s betrayal. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried stealing from him. They were best friends but they were competitive. Who was taller, who was stronger, who could spit further, piss longest. “Why does your grandmother want to be France Nuyen?”
“Because France Nuyen is beautiful and exotic.”
Cyril’s mother said invite Connie to supper. He was wary. His mother hated Russians and Germans, and was sceptical of Austrians, Hungarians, Rumanians and Turks, and despised the Commies, so what did she think of the Chinese?
Connie expressed no reaction when she entered the Andrachuk’s living room and saw a weeping Virgin the size of a garden gnome on the cabinet in the corner, the dozens of Virgin Marys on the mantel, the painting of the Madonna and Child, the Bibles and the candles, the Nativity scenes embroidered on the cushions. Seeing it through Connie’s eyes it took on a strange and alien aspect, and Cyril found himself sniffing the air fearing it smelled of the cabbage his mother insisted on cooking. When his mother entered the room she halted at the sight of Connie, who was wearing a short-sleeved white blouse, pleated plaid skirt, flat-soled black shoes. Cyril waited fearfully. His mother’s chin was elevated and her eyebrows up. She smiled and opened her arms and embraced Connie. Soon they were chatting like old friends, the weather, the neighbourhood, Connie’s plans.
“Vould—would—you like tea?”
“I’d love tea.”
“Cyril,” she said, not looking at him. “Tea.”
He retreated to the kitchen and made tea, returning a few minutes later to find his mother and Connie on the couch, knee-to-knee, holding hands. He set the tray on the table. The teapot was in the shape of a pumpkin with matching cups.
“Pour.”
He poured.
“Ekting,” she said, nodding as though it was an interesting concept. “You get job, ekting?”
“Ma.”
She turned and considered Cyril. “What job you will get?”
“I’m fine.”
She nodded, the corners of her mouth down, eyebrows up, as if to say that was an amusing opinion though as naive as every other idea in his head. She turned back to Connie. “He has no direction. His brother is CGA.”
“CGA.” Connie nodded as though, like ekting, that too was an interesting concept.
It was a Wednesday evening in August. Paul had moved out at the beginning of the summer yet still showed for supper three or four times a week. This turned out to be one of those evenings.
“Acting?” said Paul over the boiled potatoes and roast pork. “Acting like what?”
Cyril gripped his butter knife ready to stab him.
Connie regarded Paul with lidded eyes. “Like a queen, of course.” And then, waiting just long enough for awkwardness to set in, she added, “Either that or I’ll open a laundry.”
No one breathed much less spoke. Then Connie laughed. Paul was so surprised his habitual sneer melted and he too laughed, long and loudly.