Featherless Bipeds (10 page)

“Dak,” Zoe hisses at me from across the table when Jerry finally turns his back, “what do you think you're doing?”

“BA stands for Big Asshole,” I whisper back.

“I like him. He's introduced me to a lot of interesting people, and he takes me to cool places. And if you really care about me, you won't ruin this for me. You promised me you would give me some space.”

I'm not sure what to say to that. Zoe slides from her seat and stands up. Jerry joins her, his manicured fingers gripping at her waist.

“Well,” he says, tugging Zoe towards the door, “nice making your acquaintance, Dick”

“It's Dak, actually.”

“See you soon, Dak,” Zoe sighs.

I say to myself:
Probably sooner than you think.

Now it's a half-hour before sunset, and I've begun casually strolling up and down the beach, along the stretch of sand that both Zoe and I know is the best place to watch the sky fade into night.

“Hey!” I call out to Zoe and The Fairy when they appear from the direction of the parking area, “What a coincidence! I was just out for my nightly walk.”

“Indeed,” The Fairy sighs.

“Hi, Dak,” Zoe says. She doesn't seem surprised to see me.

“Enjoy your tour of the town?” I ask The Fairy.

“Very quaint,” he says, rocking back and forth on his heels. I detect from Zoe's expression that she is disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm for her favourite old places. Alas, The Fairy suddenly realizes this also, and, plays the sensitive guy to the hilt. “But I especially loved the company,” he says.

“I know what you mean,” I say. I'm not looking at him when I say it.

“Well, nice seeing you again,” The Fairy says, “but we've got a sunset to watch.”

“Hey, me too!” I cheer, “Why don't we watch it together?”

“We were planning on going for a swim afterward,” The Fairy says. “I notice you haven't got a swimsuit with you.”

“Just want to watch the sun go down,” I say, “then I'll leave you two acquaintances alone.”

“Hey,” Zoe says to the Fairy, “we don't mind sharing the sky with a friend, do we, Jerry?”

“No. Of course not.”

As the three of us walk towards the sunset-watching spot, Zoe tries to make light, breezy conversation with The Fairy, who is now in a distinctly sulky mood. But despite her best efforts, little things remind him that Zoe was once mine, that there are certain things about this place we share. Laughing, we duck the lighthouse beam as if it is a ghostly sabre, like we did when it was just the two of us. Jerry does not join the fun. I mention how the beach stones that clink and clatter beneath our feet would look great in the bottom of a fish tank containing two goldfish named Buster and Charlie — he hates it that I know the names of her fish, without even knowing that it was me who suggested the names. But his jealously is irrelevant. I love our surroundings about a thousand times more because of these small bonds Zoe and I share.

We sit on the sand, and the sky ignites. I hold my breath, like I do every time.

“Nothing like the sunset in Faireville,” Zoe says.

“I'll take you to Tuscany some time,” the Fairy says. “Now
that's
a sunset.”

Do I hear Zoe sigh?

“Well,” the Fairy says, standing, stretching, casting off his shirt and kicking away his shoes, “that water certainly looks inviting.”

Then they are in the lake. Zoe splashes, swims, plays with the Fairy, and I lie wordlessly near her cast-off clothing, feeling a shiver inside my chest when his laughter clashes with hers.

When Zoe emerges from the water, she is cold. Her glistening copper-coloured skin is specked with goosebumps, and her dark nipples strain against her bikini top. I want nothing more than to hold her, to share my warmth, to absorb the cool wetness from her slender body the way starving lungs absorb cool, clean air. But Jerry is beside her, the one who would casually claim her as his own, so the best I can do is offer her my shirt to dry off with.

“How was the water?” I ask. “Quaint?”

She smiles at me in that tight-lipped way of hers, and rubs the wetness from her body in a few long, vertical strokes. I put the shirt back on again, and relish the second-hand contact of water that once clung to her and now clings to me. I hold on to her clothes, help her pull her skirt back over her head and down around her waist, and we walk back to the parking lot just slightly behind the Fairy, who is not impressed. She scampers to catch up with him, but then abruptly stops.

“Oh, no!” she cries out, “I left my rings and necklace on the beach!”

Hiding amidst perhaps a billion fragments of stone and bone and earth are those few shiny items she wears on her slender fingers, around her smooth brown wrists, draped around her long slim neck, those few favoured charms that hang against her, which rest against her collarbone, which absorb the rise and fall of her breathing, tokens of family, and friendship, and maybe even love.

Jerry looks at his watch.

“We had better find them right away,” he says, “it will be dark soon. And we really should be going.”

“Don't worry,” I tell Zoe, “we'll find them.”

I will stay here until I have found her things for her. I will stay here and find these objects that have become accustomed to touching her. I will rescue them from becoming one with the stones and sand, and I will reunite them with her neck and wrists and fingers. I will stay here until the sun rises if I have to, because I somehow imagine that not even a necklace can stand to be out of contact with her for very long. He can take her home, but I will give her back what she has lost.

Jerry wanders along the beach in one direction, and Zoe walks beside me, in the other direction, as I sweep the darkened beach with my eyes. What another might overlook here, I will not. When Zoe is in the picture, my vision becomes sharp, my senses supercharged, drawing in every detail for my memory to hold on to.

I had been lying on the beach there beside Zoe's cast-off clothing, and I will recognize the place again, the spot where she stood gently-lit by the diffused moonlight, where I handed her my shirt to dry herself, where I gave her clothing piece-by-piece as she dressed again, where I watched her cover her beautiful brown skin, where my mind took photographs of the delicate material as it clung like a lover's embrace to her slender form. I will recognize the spot.

And, yes! As soon as the first photon of light bounces back from a silvery glint in the sand, I know I have found Zoe's jewelry. The shifty sand has tried to absorb a couple of her rings, but I pluck them from it, and I put them and her necklace in the palm of her hand. When she has put everything back on, I hold out the last bit of metal, the silver ring I bought for her when we were dating each other in high school. Then I remember what she told me, not so long ago: “Don't read too much into it, okay?”

I take her hand, and slide the ring onto her little finger.

As we walk back to the car, Jerry right beside us, Zoe and I exchange quick glances. I wish I could pick her up and swing her around and hear my laughter mingle in the heavy air with hers, relish the contact, breathe in the bittersweet scent of her wet hair.

But no. The other is watching.

And I still love the beach, and the sound of the current, and the light of the lighthouse, and the feel of sand under foot; and I still love the sound of distant boats, and hearing heartbeats and breathing as easily as wind; and I still love the pebbles and shells and flat, round skipping stones.

I would find anything Zoe lost if she needed me to. I would even try to find something she always wanted but never had. And maybe, if it came to it, she would do the same for me. Perhaps in some ways she already has.

Jerry helps Zoe into the passenger seat of his sports car.

“I'd offer you a lift,” he says, “but as you can see it's only a two-seater.”

Zoe pokes her head out the window. I lean towards her. She kisses my cheek.

“Thanks for finding my favourite ring,” she says.

The Fairy plods around to the driver's side of the car. “Yes, that was a lucky break, wasn't it, Dick.”

He slides into the driver's seat, starts the engine. Zoe waves at me as the two of them drive away.

“The name's Dak,” I say to myself.

When I get home, I try to write a song about Zoe, about what has just happened, but I can't do it. Even if I knew where to begin, I wouldn't know how to end it, and the words would never be good enough anyway. Everything about her is so damned elusive.

I stare at this empty sheet in my notebook for a long, long time. The blank page stays open on my desk even after I've fallen asleep in my chair.

Maybe someday I'll know what to write.

W
HAT'S
I
NSIDE

“T
his is going to kill your mother,” my dad huffs from behind his newspaper when I announce to him that, rather than returning to university in a couple of days like he's been expecting me to do all summer, I'm planning on taking a year off to play the drums in a rock band.

“She'll drop dead when you tell her.”

“Gimme a break, Dad.”

“It's true. You're her only son, Dak. Your happiness and success have been her first priority since the day you were born.”

“Playing in the band might bring me happiness, Dad. And who knows? Maybe success, too. Multi-album deals and all that. I could buy Mom a pink Cadillac.”

“Don't be a smartass, Dak. Your mother never got to finish university, so she's living vicariously through you. If you quit now, it'll finish her.”

“I'm not quitting school,” I insist, “I'm just taking a year off.”

“Doesn't matter. She only got to finish her first year, before . . . well, you just can't do it. It'll kill her.”

“Or will it kill
you
, Dad? Might not look so good if the son of the Head of the English Department at Faireville District High School quits University to play the drums in a rock ‘n' roll band, eh? Embarrassing!”

Dad drops his paper into his lap and glares at me. “Do you know what it did to her when you got yourself stabbed earlier this year?”

“I didn't exactly run myself against the blade, Dad. I was trying to help a girl who was in trouble. What has this got to do with me playing in a band, anyway?”

“You want to play loud, obnoxious jungle music in stinking watering holes for a living? You might as well have stabbed yourself. You're throwing your life away.”

“It's only for a year, Dad,” I repeat. “If it doesn't go anywhere after that, I'll go back to university”

Dad shakes his head slowly back and forth. “You don't get it, do you? You know what kind of people hang out in those rock and roll bars? Drunks and losers. Scum like that skinhead who stabbed you.”

“Ordinary people go to bars, too, Dad,” I argue. “Besides, I love playing music. It's in my blood. And I love writing lyrics. As an English teacher, don't you think you should be encouraging my writing?”

“Writing rock and roll lyrics is not
writing
.”

“Speaking of writing, Dad, did you ever get back to work on that novel you started?”

He stares through me for a moment, like his thoughts have dashed out of the room and into the drawer in his desk where his manuscript lies neglected. Then his mind returns and his face flushes red.

“You know what? Do whatever you want to do, Dak. What could I possibly know about life, right?”

He snatches another section of the newspaper from the floor beside his chair, and snaps it open in front of his face. It's the sports section, which he never reads, and it's upside-down.

“This is going to kill your mother, though,” he says.

“We'll see,” I say, walking past him with a shrug.

In the kitchen, my Mom is leaning on her elbows on the green Formica countertop, blowing cigarette smoke out through the open window. I thought she had quit smoking when she started having blood pressure problems.

“Hey Mom,” I say, coughing. “Smoking again, eh?”

“Oh . . . yeah,” she replies, hurriedly butting it out in the sink.

“Just something to do, I guess.”

“Something to do?”

I hold my breath to keep from coughing again. “Um, Mom, what would you say if I told you that I want to take a year off from school to play in a rock band?”

“A rock band?” she says, with surprise, but with none of the hostility I heard in my father's voice.

“Yeah. A rock band. With some friends from school. We're pretty good.”

Her face is blank for a few seconds.

“Hey,” I kid her, “it's something to do, right?”

“Well,” she says, lighting up another cigarette and turning to gaze out the window again, “I want you to do whatever makes you happy, sweetie.”

“Cool. Thanks, Mom.”

I walk back out to the living room, where my father is sequestered with the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper (right-side up now).

“It didn't kill her, Dad,” I say. “She's still standing.”

Since the kitchen is filled with the smoke from Mom's something-to-do cigarettes, and the rays of anger radiating from my Dad in the living room are even more dangerous to my health, I go downstairs to the basement to grab a beer from the bar fridge and leaf through Dad's collection of old
National Geographics
. Maybe if the band hits the big time we can go on a world tour, see Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and the 99.9 percent of North America I haven't seen yet.

I'm bending over to reach for one of my favourite issues — the 1969 issue on the first NASA moon landing — when out of the corner of my eye, under a pile of dusty camping equipment and other junk, I see something I've wondered about since I was a little kid: Mom's high school hope chest. I forget about reliving Neil Armstrong's first moonsteps, and take a few small steps of my own toward the big wooden box.