Haunt your home like a spectre. Do not speak or acknowledge your lover when spoken to. Spend entire days standing in the corner. In time, she may come to believe that you died and she simply forgot. When finally you do pack up and leave, your lover will be grateful.
I’ve peed on cars. I’ve peed on my damn shoes while attemptin’ to hit cars. I’ve peed in kitchen sinks. Went once in my snowsuit. Wasn’t always drunk neither. Just not too good at holdin’ it in and it’s like they say when you gotta go you gotta go. Never my intention to make such a mess but there it is. Just can’t stand the discomfort I guess. Used to keep empty bottles in my car and fill ’em up without ever havin’ to pull over. Not a skill I’m proud of but a skill all the same. Would’ve made a good long distance trucker or somethin’ but I have this bad hip and long distances always got the better of me. Put me to sleep too. Hit that highway and I’m out cold.
There was this one time a friend and I drove out to California. I slept most of the way there and did it again on the way back. Felt kinda bad about that. Not much of a wingman I guess. Some people take their long-distance drivin’ as a point of pride. People take pride in all sorts of things. Growin’ up I was told by my preacher that pride was a sin. You hear all about folks takin’ pride in their work in their kids in their gardens and I can’t bring myself to call ’em sinners. But what else do you call ’em?
I once participated in one of those movements you see in them big pentecostal revival tents where the congregation falls to the floor and flops around like fish so overcome they are by the holy ghost. Well I was a full blooded sinner and wanted to get clean so I went down floppin’ around there with ’em. Couldn’t do it except for that one time even though it felt pretty good. Just couldn’t bring myself to act the part but that once.
Life is acting though ain’t it? The social contract and all that. Keepin’ hid from people what you really think. Smilin’ an’ laughin’. Somethin’ I never mastered was that laugh folks do when somethin’ profoundly unfunny is said. Seemed to me like the more important the joke-maker was the louder the laugh he got. Everyone around’d be hootin’ an’ knee slappin’ and I’d stand there blankfaced and untickled. I’d like to say that’s why I never climbed any social ladders so to speak but the truth is more honestly that I prefer it down here where no one’s lookin’. Keep your nose clean an’ your head down. I heard that expression from I don’t know where but boy I sure liked it. Became my whole philosophy.
Much as I can I keep my head down and my nose clean. Can’t say the same about my damn shoes but I’m workin’ on that.
He stumbled out of the club and tripped over the curb as he howled at the moon. A paparazzo snapped his pic and slunk off into the night.
The only thing better than spotting a star in L.A. is seeing one fall.
When my father died he left me a mess to sort through. The tax people were owed some money and I had the undesirable task of cataloguing my father’s things to see what I could sell. After he and my mother split he’d moved into his own place. I had never been invited over to this second home because of a fight we had—unrelated to my parents’ divorce—that we never got over. I referred to it as his second home because he’d lived in the first one since he was a child, having inherited it when his parents died in a plane crash. He’d let the house go to my mother in the divorce. Said he’d grown tired of it.
There was nothing worth anything in this second home, though. Nothing that I could sell. I knew this the moment I stepped foot in the place, but I spent an hour pretending to consider the value of a few knick knacks and odds-and-ends because I felt that if my father was watching he would have been insulted if I wrote off his life so quickly. After my appraisal I was hungry so I went into his fridge, which turned out to be a mistake. The crisper was filled with moldy and rotten produce and his condiment jars were missing lids for the most part. I had the thought, “So this is what killed him”, even though I knew he’d been hit by a drunk driver.
Given the condition of his fridge, I was afraid to sit on the furniture. The wooden rocking chair seemed the least suspect, as it was only covered with a blanket. I removed the blanket and upset a sheet of dust that hovered in the sunbeams and settled all over the room. I held my breath until it hurt, trying not to inhale any of it. I sat down and took the place in. There was no television or radio. No books or magazines. There were just stacks of these little pocket-sized notepads piled up on the coffee table. I grabbed the top one and opened it. It was filled with enigmatic, bullet-pointed sentences.
I grabbed another notebook further down in the stack and flipped it open. It contained the same nonsensical bulleted gibberish.
I wondered if the man who wrote these little messages was the same man I’d shared a home with for twenty years. The man I had lived with never wrote a complete sentence his whole life. The only reason I knew this was his writing was that I recognized it from the half-completed crossword puzzles he left open on the coffee table that I’d finish after he’d abandoned them and gone off to tend the yard—something else he wasn’t particularly that good at.
I closed the notepad and tossed it onto the table. Trying to glean any meaning from these sentences seemed as futile to me as seeing one’s future in tea leaves.
I wasn’t going to spend any more time on it, but as I sat there I couldn’t stop the subconscious nagging. My brain was trying to form connections. I picked up another notepad and read on. There seemed to be not a theme so much as a tone. The words Bad Buddhism flashed across my mind’s eye. Maybe that was it. Maybe in his later years my father found a kind of religion in writing nonsensical yet calming messages to himself. I remembered the fight that had kept us out of each other’s lives all these years. I told him I hated him for passing his rage onto me. I blamed him for my own failed marriage. Thinking about it I wanted to be angry at him all over again. But instead I flipped through the notepad I was holding until I found a blank space. I pulled a pen out of my jacket and made a bullet.
The last thing he remembered was tightening his grip on the steering wheel. The image of his unfastened seatbelt flashed before him, the empty buckle grinning a wide, stupid grin that he’d like to fill. He had the flash of a thought that maybe if he held the wheel tight enough, he could brace himself against the force of the collision, the way one grips the crossbar of a rollercoaster to prevent from falling out during the loop-the-loop. It was useless, though. He was thrown through the windshield and landed on the boulevard, his head coming very close to colliding with a Yield signpost.
He should have died. In fact, he was (technically) dead for a minute there in the ambulance. His heart stopped for a full spin around the undamaged watch that clung to his fractured wrist. The paramedics tried to pound the organ awake, but they were pretty sure they were knocking on the door of a dead man. They were readying the paddles when his ticker started keeping time again—just like that. The seasoned paramedics shared a “how-about-that” glance, real quick across his body, like blink and you’d miss it, and then set about stablizing him.
All that time and for three months after he was out cold, dreaming about something that faded and was lost the moment he awoke to the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. There were no Get Well cards or flowers because he was more or less alone in the world and had always preferred it that way. But waking up alone in a strange place with a question mark over his head made being alone feel very lonely.
The attending nurse brought him up to speed and regaled him with the rather miraculous story of his survival. “You shouldn’t be alive,” he was told. It was something he heard too frequently during his recovery.
There was no one there to pick him up upon his release from hospital so he took a cab home and found a note taped to his door informing him that his neighbour, an older woman he’d conversed with regarding the weather on a few occasions, had been collecting his mail for him.
“And I knew about the hidden key so I let myself in.” He was sitting at his neighbour’s kitchen table, having a cup of pretty bad coffee and looking at the mail stacked between them, wishing to grab it and go. She was in the middle of justifying her reasons for entering his home. “I wasn’t sure if you had any pets or plants and I’d seen you hide the key under that fake rock, so I felt it was my duty to—”
“I don’t have any pets or plants,” he said.
“I noticed. But when it got cold a little ways back, well…you know it isn’t a good idea to leave a house to the cold like that, so I lit your pilot light and—”
“I guess I should be getting home. Thanks for the coffee.”
***
Sitting at his own kitchen table, he sorted the stack of mail into junk, bills and other. It was mostly junk and bills, but he did find one letter of interest, sent Overnight Delivery from his aunt in Florida. It was an invitation to attend his twin sister’s funeral, which he was three months late for.
After the initial wave of grief had subsided, he looked again at the invitation and noticed that the funeral was right around his accident. He called the aunt—who was at first mad at him for not attending—and after some catchup about the goings-on of some cousins he didn’t care too much for, he got the date and cause of his sister’s death. She had died, approximately, at the same time his accident occurred; cause of death unknown. That is to say, she died due to heart failure while walking her corgi, but why, no one knew. She was, according to the aunt, perfectly healthy.
He hung up and went to the bedroom. The bed had been stripped of its linen and the pillows were on the floor. Most likely the neighbour’s doing. He was too tired to make the bed up so he lay facedown on the exposed mattress, staring at the wall. He focused on the dull whiteness of the paint and on slowing his breathing. Somewhere beneath the quiet of his in- and exhalations he heard the steady sound of his heartbeat.
Howard Blunko awoke to the smell of dust. He reached over to his bedside table and grabbed a tissue to clear his nose. He blew until his sinuses were clear. He breathed in deeply, but there was no change–the smell of dust persisted. Thinking perhaps that it was just his bedroom needing a good vacuuming, he went to the kitchen, a room typically bursting with aromas, but it too smelled of dust.
Howard set to work making breakfast, thinking surely the smell of food cooking was the solution. When the frying pan was hot enough, he scooped a generous heap of butter onto it. The butter sizzled. It was a pleasing sound. He cracked two eggs into the pan, seasoning them with salt and pepper and a little basil. He popped two slices of rye bread into the toaster and stood there waiting, watching the eggs as their translucent membranes turned solid white. Once they were done, he set them aside on a white plate. The toast popped and he buttered both slices with room temperature butter. Then, he divided the eggs onto the toast, one egg per slice, cut a tomato into slices, salted the slices and carried his plate over to the table and sat down. All the while he had been breathing more or less through his mouth, afraid to stimulate his olfactory sense until the meal was ready. He exhaled until his lungs were empty, then brought his nose to about six inches above the plate and inhaled slowly and deeply as he rose to his full and proper sitting height. He pushed the plate away and felt miserable. His breakfast smelled like dust.
Howard sat quietly until his food was cold. Finally, he decided that aromatic or not, he needed to eat it. He finished the cold food not enjoying it in the least. He rinsed off his plate and sat it next to the sink. Maybe the persistent smell of dust was due to some debris that needed to be dislodged. He wondered. He went to the washroom and hung his robe on the back of the door. He turned the hot water to max in the shower–pointing the shower head towards the tub surround–and got in. He breathed in the steam as the water splashed down at his feat. He breathed the steam in for several minutes, then began a rather unmusical rendition of throat-clearings and nose-blowings until he was certain that his passages were completely cleared of foreign matter. He adjusted the water temperature and rinsed himself off. He lathered and brought the soap up to his nose. It should have, according to the box, smelled of a glacial river, but it didn’t. Just dust.
Trying to cheer himself up, Howard thought about something he had heard–that when a person loses one of their five senses, one or more of the other remaining senses can become heightened. But Howard didn’t know if his sense of smell was truly lost, or just fixated.
***
After several days without any improvement to his condition, he decided to take the afternoon off from work to go to the walk-in clinic near his home. He waited for several hours. It was winter after all, and coughs and colds were in abundance. He was at last called in to see the doctor where he waited for another twenty minutes in a smaller, more blindingly lit room until the doctor arrived.
“What’s the problem?” the doctor said, clicking open a window on his computer.
“Everything smells like dust.”
“What kind of dust?”
“I don’t know,” Howard said. “Are there different dust smells?”
“Sure. Desert dust, animal dust, vacuum dust, dust after a rainfall.”
“Oh. Rain dust, I guess.”
“Any increased vision? Hearing?”
“No. I wondered about that–”
“Troubling. Very troubling.”
“Is it bad?” Howard asked.
“It isn’t good. If you’d said desert dust, then I could help you, but rain dust….”
“What’ll happen to me?” Howard inched to the edge of his chair.
Howard left the doctor’s feeling hopeless. He’d been told there was no cure for what he had. His condition might change, it might not. Wait and see. Howard got on the bus and was jostled toward the back. He ended up wedged between a woman in a thick, dirty coat and a tall man who made a harrowing attempt to read the paper while standing. The rank smell of body odor slowly crept in and overcame him. Howard cringed.
There is a very long, very old bridge that I can see from my spot at the library. It crosses the Loire river, which is not unlike the Red River in both its speed and colour. The bridge is called Pont Wilson. Wilson is probably someone’s name and since everything here is named after someone, it’s probably named after this guy Wilson, but I don’t know who he is or what he did. I could look it up, but I’m not going to right now. This bridge is pretty wide and what’s funny about it is that they’ve only designated one lane for vehicles. So if you’re a car and you want to take the bridge south to head towards the city centre, you’re cool, but if you need to cross the Loire heading north, you’d better find another bridge. The middle part of the bridge is reserved for the trams which run north and south. You can walk on that part, but you’d have to move out of the way a bunch so as not to be hit by a tram. They don’t go too fast, but they weigh a lot and if they hit you you’d probably feel pretty stupid. Plus there’s a huge portion of the bridge reserved for foot traffic and a whole separate portion for bicycles. This way everyone gets fair use of the bridge. Except for cars. Like I said, they get one lane. But you know, cars have it pretty good everywhere else, so I don’t feel too sorry for them.
The library where I sit overlooking the river and the bridge is my library. I call it mine because it’s less than a ten minute walk from my apartment, and I kind of feel a sense of ownership for everything I can reach by foot. It’s a wonderful place to sit and read, and there are only a handful of problems with it. For one thing, it’s closed Sundays and Mondays, which forces me to haunt some other establishment where it’s customary to purchase something if you want to sit and read. The other problem is that all the books are in French. Not a big deal though–I brought a bunch of my own. One nice thing about the library is the DVD section. I can borrow two DVD’s at a time at no charge. This was especially handy during that first month when our internet was in the mail. I still borrow a film now and then because Netflix doesn’t have everything. The last complaint I have is about the people whispering. There’s a lot of whispering.
When I was in Winnipeg I bought an umbrella at Winners. It was a good umbrella and it was on sale and I read that Tours gets a lot of rain so I thought, boy, you’re really thinking ahead old man, good job. Rosie laughed that I bought an umbrella in the winter, but I told her, just wait, it’ll all make sense. It turns out that it does rain a lot here and if you have one of those tiny purse-sized umbrellas you’re okay as long as there is no wind, but when the wind picks up, look out. That’s why Rosie had to replace her tiny umbrella before we’d even been here a month. I shared my sturdy umbrella with her on the day that hers broke and I think it made sense then why I’d bought the umbrella. To be fair to Rosie, she laughed because I already had an umbrella, but that umbrella was obtrusive. I’m glad I brought this normal-sized umbrella because the streets here are narrow.
There is a young man walking through the library carrying a book bag that reads, Britney Spears Changed My Life. All I can think is, I hope that’s true.
When you get a good seat at a coffee shop you kind of want to spend the day there. There’s this place down the street from me called La Petite Atelier. I’ve been going there since the first day we arrived in Tours. In fact we went there our first evening in order to borrow their Wifi and do a money transfer. They put mint in their water. It’s a nice touch. Plus the coffee is good so I just keep going back. I suddenly wondered what the hell Atelier meant so I looked it up. It means “a workshop or studio, especially one used by an artist.” I don’t know if putting mint in the water constitutes artistry, but like I said, the coffee is pretty fucking good.
It’s hard to find spicy food here. We have a pretty good spice rack going on in our apartment, but I still haven’t found chili powder. That’s not the whole truth. I did find chilli powder, but it was way more than I was willing to pay. I think that if something is out of your price range than that thing doesn’t really exist. Like in Rome, I saw a guy driving a Ferrari, but I didn’t really see the Ferrari. All I saw was a price tag with way too big a number on it, so I had to look away and tell myself I didn’t see a Ferrari. That’s why I’m saying that I haven’t found chili powder yet.
The man with the Britney Spears bag took a book from a section called Romans de l’Imaginaire. Before I look it up I’m going to guess that that means Imaginary Romans. I looked it up. It means Fantasy Novels. I guess Romans means Novel. I was pretty close on the Imaginary bit, though.
I have an island. I’ve only been there a few times because it’s the kind of place you’d really only visit on a warm, sunny day and there hasn’t been too many of those. But I plan to go there a lot in the spring. I brought a picnic lunch there one day. Sunburned my nose, too. My lunch was a sandwich. The bread and cheese here … well, it goes without saying.
In french, umbrella is parapluie. That’s different than parasol, which is a beach umbrella. I said parasol and Rosie told me that that meant beach umbrella. Now I know the difference.
I drink a lot of wine. It’s the cheapest kind of booze you can find and it goes with almost anything. It’s a nice routine to pick up a bottle of wine and a baguette on my way home from the library. You could live off of that. I don’t live off of bread and wine, though. I eat lots of other things, too. I haven’t had tacos since December. I miss tacos.
Those are some thoughts and experiences I’ve had so far in this city. When I feel like it I may talk about our trip to Italy. I don’t know. There’s bound to be more to talk about, but it’s a little city and the pace of life is slow. We’ll see what happens.
“There is no reason not to predict and prevent your own death when you can self-diagnose with WebMD.”
“You’re right. He only has himself to blame.”
“It was definitely Crohn’s that got him.”
“Could’ve been lupus.”
“Lupus, sure. And it’s so treatable.”
“It’s disgusting,” my mother said every time we came home from my grandparent’s after Sunday dinner, hanging our clothes in the garage to air them out. Her father was a two-pack-a-day smoker with leather skin and a handkerchief he used to hack into. “Smoking is a nasty, disgusting habit,” she said. I agreed with her, but I still wanted to try it.
I decided one day after school that I’d built up enough nerve—I was going to walk to the gas station, putter around, pay someone a dollar for a cigarette and smoke it on the knoll overlooking the highway. But by the time I got to the gas station my nerves were shot. I couldn’t approach a stranger to ask directions, never mind bum a smoke off one. I spent the dollar on a candy bar and left.
As I walked home, my hand turning over the unused pack of matches in my jacket pocket, it occurred to me that I was not above finding a cigarette butt and smoking that. I made a detour and slowed my pace as I got to the path that cut through the park. Off in the distance I could see the pinks and blues of fall jackets, boys and girls clambering over the playground, technicolour pendulums on the swing set. I hung back from the park and scoured the path that ran along the man-made lake. All I found were a few butts that had been smoked down to the filter. I would learn one day how expensive cigarettes were and why a thrifty person wouldn’t waste, but at the time that was no consolation for my wasted effort. I cursed the smokers who hadn’t even left me enough tobacco for one experimental puff and went home dejected.
As I think about what it was that made me want to smoke, I’m stumped for answers. It wasn’t from peer pressure—none of my friends had admitted to trying it. I still wore sweatpants, so it certainly wasn’t that I was attempting to look cool. Perhaps the problem in trying to understand the motives of my twelve-year-old self is that motive is a grown-up concept. I think about all the times my parents asked me why I did something that I wasn’t supposed to do and how often the answer was, “Because.” If I’d been the sort of kid who talked back I might have asked them, “Why do you need a reason for everything?” I understand now why they needed an explanation, but at the same time I love that there wasn’t one. With so little mystery left in the universe it’s a small relief to me that people remain plenty mysterious.
J Edward Benoit 