Bow Grip (8 page)

Their room had a tiny little kitchenette, the remnants of their spaghetti dinner still on two plates. There were crayon drawings stuck to the mini-fridge with magnetic letters, and three different cereal boxes tucked into one corner of the counter, next to a toaster. Kelly and Raylene were living here in this one big room, with the headlights from the highway scrolling like a lighthouse across the wall over their headboards. A scruffy bit of lawn outside the barred window where the tourists let their poodles shit before loading them back into the minivan.

I dumped the bag and basket on the bed, disturbing a pile of stuffed animals that had been arranged on the pillow. Raylene pushed past me to come to their rescue.

“Sorry, kiddo. Didn’t mean to bump anyone. I’ll get out of your way. Nice to meet you.” I stepped towards the door. “Nice to meet you both.”

Kelly was scraping the leftover spaghetti into a plastic bag and putting the dishes in the sink. Under the fluorescent tube in the kitchen, she looked older than she did outside. She had pulled her hair behind her ears, revealing a cluster of earrings, maybe eight or so in all.

“You wouldn’t mind lending me a cigarette before you leave, would you?”

I took my pack out and shook three smokes out of the tin foil for her.

“Thanks, James.”

“It’s Joseph.”

She followed me outside, placing one cigarette between her lips and unfolding a lawn chair she had stashed behind her door.

“Read your books, Bug. Mommy’s having a smoke. No TV, okay, honey?”

Raylene nodded, still in her puffy coat, sitting on her bed with her feet hanging over the edge.

“And no boots on in the house.”

“The carpet is sticky by my bed,” Raylene said in her small voice.

Kelly pulled the door shut and sat down in her lawn chair. “Don’t mind her. She doesn’t like it here much. Do you have a light? I left my pack at work, in my locker.”

I lit her cigarette, then mine. Stuffed my one hand into my pocket, leaned my ass against the concrete wall between her front door and the parking lot. Couldn’t blame her for wishing she lived somewhere else.

“We’re not going to be here much longer, I keep telling her. I’m saving up.”

I nodded, stared at the red end of my smoke.

“I work at the Bay, downtown. Part-time cashier. Plus at the Esso, three days a week. You?”

“I run a garage in Drumheller. I’m just in town for a couple of days. Little holiday.”

“A holiday at the Capri?” She smiled and blew a perfect smoke ring. “Figures. All the nice guys only stay one or two nights. Just the losers move in here.”

“How many people live here full-time? I never heard of that before. Forty-nine dollars a night? That must get expensive.”

“Is that what that cheap fucker is charging you per night? That guy, I tell you. You should try to talk him down a bit. That’s almost what he charges the Americans. I pay the monthly rate. It’s way cheaper. Cheaper than that shitty basement suite me and Raylene were in at first, until we
came here. Least this place has no mice, and the hot water works. We’re on the waiting list for this co-op, a place for single mothers. I’m a single mother. It has a courtyard, and a weight room, and ping-pong and everything. We’re getting a puppy. We got another six weeks in this dump and then we move in there, on New Year’s Day. Home sweet home.”

“Sounds nice.”

“You don’t talk much, do you, Joseph?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“I like that in a man.”

“I’m old enough to be your father.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I lit two more smokes and passed one to her. She squished her first butt out with her flip-flop.

“Besides, since when has that stopped your average man?”

“We’re not all like that.”

“I hope the fuck not. I wouldn’t know, though. I’ve got real bad taste in men.” She lowered her voice, looking towards the closed curtain, then back at me. “Raylene’s daddy is in Toronto, with one of the girls I used to work with. A friend of mine. Ex-friend of mine, I should say.”

“Were you two married?”

“Would that make it suck any less if we weren’t?”

“Course not.”

“Common-law. Same thing. Besides, we have a kid together. That means more than married any day, at least to me it does. Why? You married?”

“I’m divorced.”

“How many kids you have?”

“None.”

“See? You guys can both go your own way now, no strings. Not like me and Tony. That bastard’s gonna be in my life for-fucking-ever. Or at least his mom will. She doesn’t think I can take care of Raylene all by myself, but I’m showing her, we’re fine, and no thanks at all to her bastard of a son. I’m working two jobs, plus I’m getting my dog-grooming licence at the vocational school one night a week.”

“I guess I should be glad Allyson and I never had a baby. We wanted to. I mean, we were trying.”

“You had to try to have a kid? I wish. I had an IUD in when I got pregnant with Raylene. Can’t take the pill. Makes my ankles swell up like water balloons.”

“That can’t be good.”

“It’s not, believe me. Anyways, too bad about you and your wife. You woulda made a great daddy.”

“You don’t know that. You just met me.”

“A girl can tell these things, just by looking. We’ve got a special antennae for it. I should go in. We borrowed a VCR for a couple of days from a guy at work.
The Little Mermaid.
Thanks for the smokes. See you around.”

Kelly folded up her lawn chair and went inside. I wondered, if she really did possess a special asshole antennae, how come she hadn’t used it when it mattered.

I
t was full on night by the time I got back to my own room, and the red light on the phone was flashing in the dark. The room was chilly and smelled like disinfectant. I turned up the electric heater under the window and it made a buzzing sound, like a tiny airplane was in the room with me. I dialed zero for the front desk. It was Lenny himself.

“Messages for 119? Just the one, where did I put it? Here it is. Allyson called you back. She’s out for the evening. Wants you to call her in the morning. You got enough clean towels?”

I told him I was just fine, thanks, and hung up the phone.

I was laying on my bed, my coat and boots still on, when someone knocked once on my door. It was Hector.

“Joseph. I’m heading up to the Wong Kee for the all-you-can-eat deal. Would you like to join me? The food is pretty good, and I’m buying.”

“Sure, Hector, that’d be good.” I hadn’t thought of dinner yet, and some company would be nice. Ally couldn’t stomach Chinese food. The MSG always made her break out in a rash.

Hector had a suede coat on, the exact same colour as his brand new workboots. He had shaved, too, and smelled like cologne.

We took Hector’s truck, a little Datsun about twenty years old, painted that green colour they made them back then. Still in good shape, no rust.

“Diesel costs more these days than gas.” Hector turned the key and waited for the glow plug to light up. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I bought it.”

“I used to drive a truck just like this when I was a kid. It was my first set of wheels. I loved that little truck. Mine was white.” I ran my hand over the gearshift, remembering how Sandra Jennings used to bitch about catching the hem of her skirt on it when we were fumbling out of our clothes, how the streetlight would light up the beads of condensation dripping down the windshield like pearls. It struck me that I hadn’t been laid in over a year, and all of a sudden this seemed wrong to me.

Hector saw me eyeing a notepad and pencil taped to a string, stuck right on the dashboard.

“That’s for when I think of things I want to write about while I’m driving.” He flipped over the top page of the pad, to hide what was written.

“I met another one of our neighbours tonight, after I had that drink with you. The single mom and her little girl.”

“Kelly and Raylene. She’s quite a remarkable young woman. Let me guess. She borrowed a cigarette from you?”

I nodded.

“That’s how I met her, too. I don’t think she can afford to smoke, poor girl. Raising the kid up all by herself.”

“I’ll never understand how a guy could run off like that, and leave his own wife and kid to live in a motel.”

“It sounds to me as though she’ll be better off without him around anyway. He’s a meth head.”

“A what?”

“Crystal meth. Nasty drug. Both those kids are better
off without that business around. Kelly’s got a good head. They’ll be fine on their own.”

“Maybe, but they shouldn’t have to be.”

“People make their own beds though, too, Joseph. She obviously made some bad decisions somewhere along the way. Life has consequences. Sooner she figures that out, the better. Who’s to know what passes between two people, anyway? What she was like to live with? All we ever hear is one side of the story.”

We were parked outside the restaurant now. Hector turned off the ignition, but didn’t take his hand off the key, just sat there, waiting for me to respond.

“So don’t you think sometimes it’s just the one person’s fault?” I said at last. “All of a sudden one half of a marriage decides, for whatever reason, that they can’t be there anymore, and they just take off, and none of it was the other person’s fault? That the person who got left behind just got screwed, like, and they didn’t bring it upon themselves somehow?”

Hector pulled his key out of the ignition. “Do I ever think a divorce is the fault of only one half of the equation? I’d have to say hardly ever. Very rarely.”

We sat there for another minute, both of us staring straight ahead into our own thoughts.

“Let’s go eat, Joseph. Lock your door. You’re in the city now.”

Hector was right. The food was good and cheap, and we both stuffed our faces without hardly stopping to talk at all. The place wasn’t long on ambiance. The waitress had long dirty blonde hair and mostly sat behind the take-out counter in the corner, talking on the phone. Every once in a while she’d set the phone down and make a quick round
with the ice water to appease the few tables that had anybody eating at them, and then return to her stool to talk, the phone cord coiled around her fingers.

Hector insisted on picking up the tab, even tipped the phone-talker a fiver, which I didn’t think she deserved. She did get off the phone to take our money, I will give her that.

On the way back to the motel, Hector pulled over at a 7-Eleven and came back with two pouches of Number Seven tobacco, one of those little rolling machines, and a box of cigarette tubes.

“Does rolling your own save you much money? Seems like a pain in the ass to me.”

“I like to roll my own. I like the ritual. These are for Kelly.”

I looked sideways at the old man. “I thought you said she had made her own bed?”

“I did. Didn’t say a guy couldn’t give her a hand up here and there, though, slip her a few luxury items. It’s not like the deadbeat that knocked her up is helping her out.”

“How come you’re living in a motel, anyway? Can’t you find a little apartment for cheaper? More space?”

“What’s wrong with the Capri? It’s clean enough. I don’t need much space. Besides, this way I don’t have to wash my own sheets and towels. I’ll probably buy a little place when I figure out where I want to live. What I want to be when I grow up.”

“You could have a little more privacy in an apartment, is all, I guess. Quieter.”

“Who says I want privacy? I like my room. I get out to eat, I meet people. No people friendlier than folks who think they’ll never see you again.”

“That right?”

“Absolutely. You haven’t travelled much, have you?”

“Been to Mexico once, on our honeymoon.”

“Oh, you have to travel. Travel alone. That’s how you have the greatest adventures. Even all through my marriage, I still travelled alone, for work of course, and then some. Sometimes my wife came with me, but sometimes not. Those were the best trips. Europe. Southeast Asia. You should get off the continent. Do you good.”

“You were married? You never mentioned her.”

Our headlights rolled over the motel parking lot, scared a big tomcat into the shrubs.

Hector coughed a little. “No, I didn’t. That’s a whole other story. We’ll save it for another night. Sleep well, Joseph.”

Hector went straight into his room. A few minutes later, I heard music through the wall. He was listening to Nina Simone. Sounded like, “Oh Sinner Man, Where You Going to Run To?”

T
he next morning, Kelly was sitting outside on her lawn chair in her Esso uniform, rolling cigarettes with her new machine. A cup of coffee was steaming on the cement new machine. A cup of coffee was steaming on the cement ledge next to her.

She waved hello as I jumped into my truck. She was wearing eyeshadow. Looked younger than before, like a teenager.

I rolled the window down. “I’m out for the day. You need anything?”

“You going into town? You could drop me and Raylene off at her daycare, if you’re not in a hurry. It’s about twelve blocks. I have to be at work at eight. We can be ready in two minutes.”

“Take your time, Kelly. I’m not in a rush.”

Raylene still looked half asleep under her toque and winter coat when she came out. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying.

“Joseph’s going to give us a ride, so you’ll be early for daycare. You’ll have time to play on the swings. Say thank you to Joseph,” Kelly said as she squeezed in beside me so that Raylene could have the spot with the seatbelt, but Raylene wouldn’t speak. Instead, she breathed a circle of fog on the passenger window, then drew a shape of a tree in it with her tiny finger.

“Sorry, Joseph. She’s not a morning person. Neither of us are.”