Rockets Versus Gravity (11 page)

When Tiffany's parents first got together, String was an associate at a third-tier firm, and Brandy Brown was one of the receptionists. It was Brandy's first and only job; she would never have to work again after she became Mrs. Foley. At cocktail receptions and expense-account dinners, String very much enjoyed telling others that his wife had been a beauty pageant winner, and when they moved into the Rosedale mansion, he displayed Brandy's Miss Theodore Buttermilk Festival Pageant sash and crown in a glass case in the front foyer, for his whole world to admire.

As String continued to ascend like a rocket up through the corporate stratosphere, parts of his beauty queen wife began to gradually descend. Despite never breastfeeding, Brandy Foley's mammary glands eventually lost some of their bounce, and despite hiring a
hundred-dollar
-
per
-half-hour personal trainer, the half-orbs of Brandy's buttocks gradually flattened into mere half-ovoids. Despite ingesting a caloric intake similar to that of the average songbird, Brandy's waistline began to thicken. And Stringfellow Foley's fickle attention began to wander elsewhere.

Brandy fought back, with everything her joint-account platinum credit card could afford. When she caught her husband's gaze lingering on the constantly smiling, aquamarine-eyed receptionist at Bloodstone-Talon, Brandy turned her brown eyes blue with tinted contact lenses, and one-upped the receptionist's sweet smile by plating all of her teeth with tile-white veneers. She paid for collagen injections to plump up her lips, and her eyebrow hairs were removed with a searing laser beam, to be replaced with thin, dark, perfectly symmetrical tattoos of eyebrows. They looked so
real
… until you got up close.

When they were dating, String admired Brandy's cheekbones, which were high and sharp; he said that they reminded him of a 1940s Hollywood femme fatale. So, while Brandy Foley was away on “vacation” in South America, she decided to have them made even higher and sharper. It was a straightforward procedure — just two bits of plastic fused to the bones beneath her eye sockets. It would only take a month or so for the incisions to heal, and she could cover the bruises with makeup in the meantime.

On the same trip, she had some bodywork done as well. By sliding two plastic bags of silicone gel under her skin, the “doctors” at the “clinic” made her breasts firm and round again, two sizes larger than they had ever been. They also looked so
real
… until you touched them. To the fingers, they felt like seamless volleyballs, covered in eerily cool human skin.

A similar process lifted and rounded her buttocks, too, into mathematically perfect half-spheres, and the “doctors” accepted Brandy Foley's money with professionally restrained glee.

To keep the remaining organic components of her body under control, Brandy endures daily cardiovascular workouts with her upgraded
two-hundred
-
dollar
-
per
-
half-hour
personal trainer, and she substitutes vitamin supplements and protein drinks for eating actual food. Once a year she pays a visit to the liposuction clinic, to have those tiny but stubborn remaining morsels of fat vacuumed out from under her skin. At the same time, after signing the usual waivers, she has her forehead injected with the botulinum toxin; sure, it's one of the most poisonous substances known to medical science, but it paralyzes her muscles and causes her frown lines to temporarily disappear!

Whenever Stringfellow Foley is invited to a “spouse event,” like Patrons' Night at the Opera House, or some Intergalactic Banking Empire's
by-invitation
-only Holiday Extravaganza, Brandy Foley dutifully attaches herself to her husband's arm, her now-blue eyes sparkling like twin Kashmir sapphires, each pearl-white veneered tooth flashing like La Peregrina. She allows the other traders and investors (with their own quotation-mark nicknames, like Harrison “Harry” Riskey and Baldric “Baldy” Gamble) to gaze down into her surgically enhanced cleavage, displayed to maximum effect by the plunging neckline of her latest shimmering Prada drapery.

Although Brandy behaves exactly as she is expected to behave, which causes the other powerful men in String's social sphere to covet his wife just the way he wants them to, he nevertheless wears the put-upon expression of a contractually obligated performer.

At the end of such evenings, when the limo brings them home, Mrs. Foley climbs the stairs to the master suite and locks herself behind its massive double doors, and Mr. Foley retreats downstairs to the fifth bedroom. Despite all of the time, effort, money, and risk invested in preserving Brandy Foley's
former-beauty
-queen form, there are rarely any attempts at ravaging.

And there will certainly be no ravaging tonight.

T
iffany waits until her father is finished his phone call, and then she says again, more insistently, “Daddy.”

“Just a minute, Princess, okay?” He dials another number, “Yeah, Gunner, it's me, String. That son of a bitch pulled out at the last minute … yeah, fucking Baldy Gamble. Yeah, yeah, it's a
three-million
-dollar shortfall. No, it's still on … bridge financing, maybe … or maybe we just up the ante on the minor investors, I dunno. Start working the phones, though. Yeah, I'll be in the office in half an hour.”

He hangs up and begins jamming his rings back onto his swollen fingers. “What is it, Princess?”

Tiffany hates being called “Princess” only slightly more than she hates being called her actual name. What were they thinking when they named her “Tiffany”? It would have been just as subtle to name her “Holt Renfrew” or “Porsche Cayenne.”

“Um … well, Daddy … it turns out that I need to have forty hours of community service to graduate this year, and, um —”

“We can get you into business school without all that
do-goody
-good crap on your resumé,” her father snaps. “Mention that I'm your father on the application, and you'll be in. My name's engraved on the patron's wall, for Chrissakes!”

“Well, um, the hours are actually a requirement for me to graduate high school, Daddy.”

Her father shoves documents into his Italian leather briefcase. “Aw, don't worry about it, Princess. I'll call the school and demand that they sign off on it. Thirty thousand a year ought to get us that much.”

“Well, no, that's not what I want. I thought that maybe you could help me find somewhere to volunteer. Your firm donates to a lot of charities, right? I know you're busy, but maybe you could give me some names, and I can contact them myself.”

Stringfellow Foley sighs; if his life depended on it, he couldn't name any one of the charities that his firm donates to. Bloodstone-Talon's accountant takes care of that, mostly to bring the firm's net income down to a lower rung on the tax-bracket ladder.

Cleverly, Tiffany adds, “I was hoping I could count on you, Daddy. Mom hasn't been much help so far.”

Stringfellow Foley rolls his eyes at the mention of Tiffany's mother. “I'll get my assistant to make some calls for you, okay?” Then he grabs his briefcase and rushes past his daughter, saying, “Gotta go, Princess. I've got some fires to put out at work.”

Just outside the den's double doors, Tiffany hears her mother's Joan Collins voice echoing from the walls of the two-storey front foyer. “Will you be home tonight,
dear
?”

“Not likely,” her father says.

Tiffany hovers inside the den; if her mother is about to initiate a battle for marital supremacy, she would prefer to witness as little of it as possible. Witnesses always get called upon to testify later.

Her mind replays an image of her mother with mascara running down her face, pleading to Tiffany with upturned palms: “Is it too much for a woman to want her husband to
be
with her? Am I being unreasonable, Tiffany? Tell me, am I?”

She can also hear her father's barking counterattack: “Who does she think pays all of her bills, Princess? Me, that's who. I've gotta work double time just to pay down her credit cards!”

Tiffany lets out a slow sigh of relief when she hears the front door close as her father leaves them once again.

Then she notices the ring left behind on her father's desktop; Stringfellow Foley has so many, it's easy to lose track of one. It's the silver ring that she found in the sand at the beach when she was a little girl, the one that her father immediately claimed as his own, the only one he wears that isn't made from gold or platinum, the only ring that isn't festooned with diamonds or precious gemstones.

Tiffany plucks the ring from atop the glossy hardwood and slips it into her front pocket. The time has come for her to take it back.

J
ust a ten-minute walk from the turreted Victorian mansion where the Foleys sometimes live together, the Queen has settled in for the night under the bridge, beside her borrowed Loblaw's shopping cart.

After scanning for raccoons and other scavengers, and after pulling the threadbare tarpaulin over her face, she finally allows the hot tears to cut clean paths through the valleys of her dusty face. Gripped tightly in her right hand is a small, gold-coloured brooch in the shape of a chubby Siamese cat, with a faux ruby for a belly. The gold is only spray paint, and the jewel is just plastic, but tonight this is the Queen's most sacred treasure, the talisman that will pull her through this dark time.

Simon picked it out from inside his begging cup, handed it to her, and said:

Queen Elizabeth One had a Siamese kitty,

and here is another for the Queen of the City.

The Queen misses Rhymin' Simon. They were useful to each other.

Half-life (noun):

The period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half.

O
utside, the air temperature has dropped, and the sky churns smoky grey. There are not many women and girls on the sidewalks now, and the few that remain have tied up their hair, put their long coats back on, and replaced their high heels with tall autumn boots.

James doesn't remember much of his commute home. There is the vague recollection of descending the escalator into the white-tiled glare of Eglinton station and floating through the rush-hour crowd unnoticed, as if he were already a ghost.

When a print ad for some community college assaulted him with the slogan
“It's Your Life!”
from the arched ceiling of the subway car, James shouted back at it, “It
is
my life!”

People moved away and avoided making eye contact with James, so he probably wasn't a ghost just yet. He closed his eyes and almost blacked out. It's a good thing he was holding on to the pole so tightly.

Now, as James stumbles into the tunnel that leads out of York Mills station, he can hear the radio in the ticket booth behind him. In a flat tone, the news reader says, “Today's sudden heavy precipitation and extreme temperature drop represent a record-breaking weather change for the region.”

“Record-breaking,” James repeats.

He rides the long escalator up toward the surface, but it still feels like he's descending.

No music plays. James Yeo's mental soundtrack has gone silent.

When he reaches the surface, the automatic doors whish open, and wind and rain strike James like a cold-handed slap.

He steps outside, looks for a bus. There are none to be seen. He would flag a taxi, but their top lights are all switched off, their back seats occupied with people wearing that smug
I got here first
expression. There is never an empty cab in weather like this.

James presses forward against the wall of wind as he climbs Wilson Road. The briefcase containing his laptop computer, marked
PROPERTY OF RISKEY AND GAMBLE
, dangles from his right hand, and a belligerent gust of wind bangs the case against his knees. Razorblade raindrops slice at his face, tears stream from his eyes, and his surroundings become an Impressionistic blur.

A horn blares, and tires hiss against the glazed tarmac as James stumbles from the sidewalk and into the road.

The driver rolls down his window and hollers, “You fuckin' idiot! You wanna die?”

James steps up onto the sidewalk and shouts, “No, I don't want to die!”

It becomes his mantra as he pushes forward, uphill against the rain and wind.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

T
he alarm panel does not screech when James pushes open the door of the
stucco-and
-fibreboard McMansion full of Premium Selling Features. He thinks he remembers arming it before he left this morning, but sometimes he forgets. Sidney yells at him when he forgets.
Good GAWD, James! Have some respect for our investment!

Rain drips from the tip of James's nose, from his earlobes, from his dangling fingertips. Water pools on the mosaic-patterned foyer floor (another Premium Selling Feature).

Does he hear voices upstairs?

James stands still and listens closely.

Definitely. He definitely hears a voice. And another.

Thieves. There are thieves in the house! They've disarmed the alarm, and now they are upstairs, probably rooting through Sidney's jewellery.

James's jaw clenches and his eyes narrow. His vision refocuses, from a ghostly,
brink-of
-death blur to predatory sharpness.

You picked the wrong fucking house on the wrong fucking day, fuckers.

He drops the
Property of Riskey and Gamble
laptop case on the floor, shrugs off his sopping sports jacket, and steps out of his saturated loafers. He will sneak up on them, take them by surprise. His wet socks slap the floor, so he tugs them off. Barefoot, like a tribal warrior, he'll slink upstairs, and then …

A weapon! I'll need a weapon.

James's old intramural baseball stuff is still packed in boxes in the garage, so he won't be able to use the bat. He could tiptoe into the kitchen, slide the meat cleaver out of its wooden block … but that could get messy. James would prefer something big and heavy, something that bludgeons rather than slashes, something that will cause bruising rather than bleeding. Even in his adrenalized state, James fears reprisal from Sidney should he stain the imported rainforest-hardwood floorboards or the heated mosaic tiles with the blood of the intruders.

The snow shovel!
It's still leaning against the sandstone wall outside. James hasn't put it away yet. Sidney has already yelled at him about it.

James reaches outside and grips his weapon of choice, then gently pulls the door closed. As he tiptoes toward the stairs, his mental soundtrack starts playing again; Joan Jett's “I Love Rock 'n' Roll” thunders inside his cranium. James doesn't know why his brain chose this particular song, but he doesn't have time to think about it right now.

As he reaches the second-highest step of the grand spiral staircase (another Premium Selling Feature), James can feel his pulse throbbing in his grip around the shovel handle.

Prepare to die, fuckers.

“Come on,
fuck me
, Baron!” one voice says.

“
Ohhhh
, those panties are
sweeeeeet
,” says the other.

James's breath catches in his throat. His grip on the snow shovel loosens.

“Valentine's present from James,” she says. “They dig in a bit.”

“Oh, that makes them even better.”

“What? That James gave them to me? Or that they dig in?”

“Both.”

“You're so
baaaad
,” she giggles. “Want to see what's underneath?”

James's vision blurs again. He sways back and forth atop the penultimate stair.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Roland Baron cries out. “Bald as an eagle!
Jusssssst
the way I like it!”

“You know bald eagles aren't actually
bald
, right?” Sidney says. “They have feathers.”

“Bald as a little girl, then,” the Red Baron counters.

“Not sure I like that, either.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, let me do something that you
will
like …”

James hears giggling, and then fabric slipping, and he wonders if the
three-thousand
-dollar duvet cover and
dry-clean
-only sheets have fallen on the floor.

“Hey, what … where are you taking me?” Sidney yelps.

“Out onto the balcony,” wheezes the Red Buffoon, “We're gonna do it
Romeo and Juliet
style!”

“No no no no no no no! It's right over the driveway! What if James comes home?”

What if James comes home?
Now he understands. She
wants
him to catch them, to confront the Red Buffoon, to save her, to be Her Hero once again.

“Come on, baby,” Roland Baron says. “It's
romantic.
”

“It's dangerous,” she says, in that scolding tone that James has heard many, many times before.

“Dangerous is
sexy
,” the Red Buffoon rasps.

James grips the handle of the snow shovel and steps up onto the top floor landing. As soon as Sidney says “No” once more, as soon as she cries out for help, James will run right in there and clang the Red Buffoon on the back of the head. James will save her, and everything will be okay.

But Sidney doesn't say no. She doesn't cry out for help.

What she says is this:

“Ohhhhh … okay. Let's do it, Romeo. It's the year of living dangerously, right? Grab another condom, though.”

“I'll bring
three
!”

Through the bedroom doorway, James can see their backsides, his hairy and hers smooth, reflected back at him from the mirror on the Mission-style dresser, which was a wedding present from James's parents. It has been in the family for five generations. Both of James's parents cried when they handed it over. Sidney never thought it quite fit the décor and has been planning to replace it with something else, something more
chic
, ever since.

In the mirror's reversed image, James watches his wife and his nemesis scamper toward the bevelled-glass doors and out onto the balcony.

James can't look, but he can't look away.

Sidney leans over the balcony, her hair rippling in the light breeze.

The Buffoon barks like a drill sergeant cliché, “Who's the Red Baron?”

“You are!”

“And who's the Red Baroness?”

“I am!”

“Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!”

“Oh … oh oh oh oh … oh, damn! Oh, damn!”

When the Red Baron starts singing an
out-of
-breath, off-key version of Queen's “We Are the Champions,” James decides that he has seen and heard enough.

I
n the kitchen, there is a used condom draped over the edge of the quartz-topped kitchen counter. James picks up a torn-open gold-foil packet from the floor.

“Ribbed for her pleasure,” he reads. “Spermicidal lubricant.”

There is also a note, written in Sidney's impeccable handwriting:

Don't forget to go to Priya's place tonight !

DON'T FORGE
T
!

James folds the note in quarters and tucks it into his right front pocket, then, between the thumb and finger of his right hand, he twists his wedding band back and forth until it pops over the knuckle of his ring finger.

James never liked this ring; it's the same sort of huge,
gold-and
-platinum, jewel-encrusted, attention-seeking sort of thing that Harry would wear, which wasn't surprising, given that Harry had chosen it for James.

The ring clanks atop the quartz where Sidney's note had been, beside the empty gold-foil condom packet. Maybe Roland will like it.

James drifts into the foyer and wipes up the puddles of rainwater from the mosaic-patterned floor. He reaches into the closet, retrieves his comfy hiking boots and his battered old leather jacket, and puts them on. He places the snow shovel back outside the front door.

And then, before the prints of his toes have evaporated from the steps of the spiral staircase, James Yeo is gone.