They passed under the Lions Gate Bridge and eventually reached Third Beach where they sat on a log and watched the sun and clouds compete for control of the sky. A woman threw a stick for a dog which plunged splashing into the water. Another cheered and clapped and threw stick after stick for her dog yet it refused to get wet. The air was rich with brine and foliage, English Bay dense with freighters, and across the water the heights of West Van showed scraped patches of new housing developments like so much mange on a bear’s back.
“Hey, Picasso.”
Cyril saw Chantal, the bead-haired native model from his drawing class, walking arm-in-arm with Novak. Chantal gave a jaunty wave and Novak a courtly nod, and Cyril could see why Novak would choose her over his mother—if indeed she’d have had him—nonetheless he felt, even now, years later, indignant on her behalf.
Connie was impressed. “Aren’t you cool.”
The light fled across the water as a cloud slid over the sun. “So, do you have a date tonight?” he asked.
“Yeah, with Robert Lomax.”
He smiled then gazed out at the changing sea. “I was thinking of after.”
She regarded him as though looking through a window onto a room she was sceptical of entering. “That would be nice.” She held out her hand and he took it and they sat in silence. He felt her hand gripping his tightly, like a child fearful of losing her balloon, and he was happy.
“You’re not seeing anyone?” she asked, pointedly looking away to the left.
“Not really,” he said, pointedly looking away to the right. “You?”
“Off on, on off. Mostly off. Not easy being a traveling player.”
He nodded, cautiously encouraged. “You got a standing ovation.”
“We got a standing ov. And no review.”
“Four hundred people applauding isn’t enough?”
“It’s never enough. That’s the trouble. I should go to AAA. Approval Addicts Anonymous. Hey…” She found an ice cream wrapper, smoothed it on her knee and wrote her address in Los Angeles and gave it to him. “In case you ever, you know, pass through town.”
Cyril nodded deeply and made a show of folding it away in his pocket even though the numbers were already stamped into his mind.
That night he sat in the same row and watched the play again. It was a bigger crowd and there were people seated on either side of him. Last night he’d inhabited the world of a stranger, alone and anonymous and uncertain; now he knew things none of these people did and felt powerful in this new and special status, especially when he overheard remarks about Connie as people read the biographies in the program.
“She’s from Vancouver.”
“She’s the next Nancy Kwan.”
“They say she’s better. She’s got edge.”
“Edge?”
“It.”
“It?”
“Positively oozes It.”
But his calm confidence began to sour the more he listened. Where was he in all of this? She was passing through, pursuing her career, and he was banging nails and drawing boxes.
The lights went down and the sounds of the Hong Kong bar rose and the curtain opened and there was Suzie Wong dancing with a sailor. Cyril slid deeper into his seat and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. She was leaving tomorrow, less than twenty-four hours. He imagined her life over the following weeks, Toronto, Montreal, New York, hotels, theatres, cabs, cafés, and all too many admirers who had all so much more to offer. At the intermission he left the theatre and walked the same streets he’d walked the night they—the night she—had seen Psycho.
He was waiting at the exit when Connie appeared and the instant he saw her he knew something was wrong. He approached warily. “What?”
She looked small and haggard and there were tears in her eyes. “What do you mean, what?”
“It was too hot,” he said, thinking she was insulted that he’d left. “I went for a walk. I missed the second half.”
But she wasn’t listening, she wasn’t even there. “I blanked,” she said, staring as if shell shocked. “Just flat out blanked. It’s never happened before. Ever.”
“Con’. Hey.” A couple of cast members including her leading man stood by the theatre entrance.
She didn’t respond, she was looking at Cyril, not accusing but wondering, at herself, at him, at the predicament. “I thought of you,” she said. “On stage. I thought of you. And then…” She put her fists to her forehead. “The reviewer’s gonna kill me. He was there. He interviewed Scotty just now. Oh, God.” Her hands dropped to her sides and for a moment Cyril feared she was going to fall to her knees.
“Con’?”
“Be right there,” she called, impatience edging her voice. She faced Cyril and took both his hands and he knew it was over.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“Not really.”
“I meant—” But what had he meant?
“I gotta keep my head on straight here.”
“I understand.”
“It’s not just me. There’s others. This whole tour.”
“Sure. I get it.” He nodded vigorously to show he got the idea, that he grasped how important this was, and that he wasn’t clinging, that he was not a burden.
“It’s just like last time,” she said, wondering at some strange déjà vu, and Cyril saw them condemned to travel off through the night on separate paths perhaps to meet up again in another ten years. She touched his face as she had on the occasion of their last farewell, in the IGA, then she began to cry and they embraced and he felt the leather jacket crinkly and sensual, and he held her tightly and kissed her neck and she twisted in his arms and kissed him long and hard on the lips and then she was walking away.
He watched her. “Hey.” She stopped and turned. “We’re not finished, you know.” His tone was not pleading or ominous but a statement, a calm observation of fact.
Her voice was small. “I know.”
TWO
THREE DAYS LATER Cyril and Gilbert were on a bus heading for Mexico.
Cyril was unshaved, unwashed, red-eyed, hungover. Gilbert was sporting his Fu Manchu and wore a half dozen candy necklaces of the sort they used to steal from the corner store.
Gilbert had spent much of the past decade driving a taxi, losing on the stock market, losing at the racetrack, losing on pyramid schemes, failing at becoming a private investigator, failing at writing pornography, failing at selling real estate, and failing at marriage. Yet his optimism remained undiminished. As he pointed out to Cyril, his portfolio of life experience was growing ever richer and his potential all but unlimited.
“And now we’re heading for Mexico,” he said as though it was the crowning achievement.
Mexico, Antarctica, it was all the same to Cyril.
At Bellingham a young marine got on. When he took his seat he nodded through the window to his parents and then faced forward and looked neither left nor right the entire way to Seattle where, exiting the bus he addressed the driver as sir and when asked said he was flying to Saigon. The driver saluted him and the marine saluted back and the driver said, “Do a job there, son,” and the marine said, “I aim to.”
Cyril watched the fellow heave his duffel bag onto his shoulder and go out the station door. He imagined his life for the next year, or however long a tour of duty lasted, and wondered if he’d ever return to board a bus back up to Bellingham where his parents would be waiting. He envisioned training camp, the heft of a rifle, the feel of combat boots as he marched into battle and faced enemy fire, smelled cordite and napalm and maybe got hit, and he saw himself wrapped in bandages in a hospital in the jungle breathing the pinched smell of disinfectant.