Archibald Full Frontal, page 16
“Fill ’er up, Pedal,” Dan says.
“What did you just call me?” I say, confused, holding the steaming pot above his cup.
“Nothing. Er…”
Sam is folded over, holding his sides. I can make out his whole body silently throbbing with laughter. He lets out a howl. “I’m sorry,” he gasps. “It’s just … Pedal — that’s so funny…”
Dan guffaws, “I will never forget standing there yelling, ‘Maggie, pedal, pedal! PEDAL!’ Like a broken record. But you rode the brakes so hard, you wore the tires out. I can still smell burning rubber.”
I set the pot down beside me in the dirt but can’t resist a tiny smile.
“You were totally grey, from all the dust. You looked like a ghost.” Sam sighs his laugher.
“This is the kind of thing that will get funnier with time, isn’t it?”
Dan wipes a tear off his face. “Oh, I hope not.” I sock him in the arm. He hardly seems to notice. “Maggie, you are a great many things. But you’re not a mountain biker.”
“I think I can live with that.”
Thai Girl
Nine hours on a plane can do strange things to you.
I stand in the Los Angeles airport trying to shake the kink out of my spine. My head throbs. The backs of my knees ache. My toes protest in my shoes. I have a permanently sour taste in the back of my throat that no amount of sugar or sweet beverages can remove. I stare out at the darkness of the runway, eyes heavy. It is after 11:00 p.m. But I am in “no time,” a strange limbo achieved after too long on an airplane.
He had said goodbye a half-hour earlier and rushed off to find the car waiting to take him to his hotel. He was staying in Los Angeles for meetings, while I was catching a connecting flight back to Vancouver. We had half-slept on the plane back from Thailand. He had read papers, made notes. I had watched movies. And then as we disembarked, he had bent down, slightly rumpled but not unrested, and kissed me on the forehead. It had felt paternal. But I am the first to admit that airport farewells are as awkward as they come. I watched him go, hair curling around his collar, cotton shirt slightly wrinkled, leather jacket slung over his arm, carry-on case on his shoulder.
The getaway had been Michael’s idea. It had been a relief to escape the wet moodiness of a Vancouver winter. Archibald had been locked away in his office working on a new project and cursing his editor on the phone. It was painful to observe, even from the fringes. I’d told everyone I would be travelling through Thailand with a girlfriend, and it was accepted as normal, escapist twenty-something behaviour. Even my mother seemed resigned. No one seemed to have noticed that they have never met one of my supposed “girlfriends.” Only Sam knew the truth, and he didn’t seem especially thrilled when I told him.
They call my flight, and I line up to get back on the plane.
We had spent the days on private beaches, sleeping in sandy coves, snorkelling, swimming, and boating, and the evenings in the tiny resort restaurant. We lounged on the outdoor deck in a bamboo pagoda, drinking mango or pineapple shakes, eating seafood dishes, pad Thai, and coconut-laced soup. It had been my first tropical experience, and the world had seemed transformed into a lush, exotic dream. Until it happened…
I had been napping, or trying to, lying on the canopy bed with a cool cloth pressed against my head. A victim of the island’s most common malady: too much sun. Michael had taken the short walk to the main house to get us some more water. I must have drifted off, but when I woke up, I was parched, and I decided to set out myself.
At the main house, I stood under a large rotating ceiling fan, slightly dazed, while Emi, the desk clerk, found my water. Michael was nowhere in sight. Heading back to our hut, I tripped over a stone and paused to watch a large green reptile scurry across the path. Then I heard a familiar rumbling, Michael’s laughter. I looked over to its source, a nearby hut belonging to one of the resort employees. For a moment I wondered if I was hallucinating. I took a few more steps, then I noticed the door of the hut, which had been ajar, was opening farther.
It was Michael. He hurried down the stairs, the bottle of water tucked under his arm. I stepped back behind the tree line, hidden, watching. His shirt was unbuttoned and slightly askew. I felt nauseous, out of sorts. You are not well, I told myself. And then, the door opened again, and this time, a Thai girl, one I recognized as a bus girl from the restaurant, stepped out. She was exquisite, with long dark hair and glistening skin. She peered outside the door hesitantly before hurrying down the steps, adjusting the knot on her sarong as she disappeared down the path.
When I made it back to the room, Michael was there.
“There you are,” he said, brow wrinkled with worry. “I wondered what happened to you.”
I put the water down on the bedside table. “I went for water.” I said quietly. “I got too thirsty.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long. I had to take a call rather suddenly. They let me take it in the office.” He was sincerity itself. How I wished I could have believed him. How I wanted to believe him.
“That’s funny, Emi didn’t mention anything when I was at the front desk,” I said, collapsing onto the bed.
“Well, you know how bad his English is.” He put his hands on my shoulders and began to massage. “You should rest. You’re in no condition to be running errands. I’m going to take care of everything.” He stroked my hair and I noticed the smell on his hands. Light, subtle, jasmine or honeysuckle. And the jealousy became a small flame, swirling inside me.
Back on the plane, I stare out at the formless sea of clouds and stars and think of the beautiful Thai girl. I feel that unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach, like my heart is slowly being sucked through my esophagus, soon to be airborne.
And then it hits me, in true epiphany style, right between the eyes. He had not even asked me to join him in LA. I had gotten so used to his invitations, I had missed this oversight altogether. He was meeting someone else.
I close my eyes, feeling as though the epiphany has somehow managed to scald the inside of my brain. And then it sinks in, the unpleasant acknowledgement that I am disappointed — disappointed that the end is in sight. All of my cynicism and level-headedness has not prevented my transformation. I have finally stepped into the role of Miss Vancouver. I had acted the part until I became the character, and I deplored what I had become.
I catch my reflection in the tiny window. A tanned patch of face, a nose, a chin, and an eye, vaguely contoured, surrounded by darkness.
Truth and Lies
I sit in the salon chair and stare at myself in the mirror. Long hair the colour of toasted almonds and copper fire from all my time in the sun. I have grown used to the heavy curtain hanging to the middle of my back. But now I need a change.
“Are you sure?” asks Susette, my big-boned stylist with pink and purple hair. “We could just trim the ends a little. Do the usual.”
“It’s the usual I don’t want. As short as it gets,” I say with conviction.
“Okay,” she says uneasily.
“When I’m done, I want to look like someone else.”
I plunk the package of clove cigarettes Archibald has asked me to bring him from Thailand on the kitchen table. Maria has started the coffee. When she sees me, she screams “Oaaaaaf!” like a Hungarian sheep and opens her mouth so wide I can see all her steely fillings.
“Where did it all go?” she says, staring at my newly shorn head.
“In the garbage, probably,” I say, running my hand over my pixie-length hair. It feels great each time I touch it. It is a darker brown now, with all the sun-lightened hair chopped off. I still don’t recognize myself when I pass a mirror, but I feel lighter.
“All that hair. Gone! Just like that!”
“Just like that!” I wave my hand like a magician.
“It was your only beauty,” she mourns. “It was like — how do you say? Supermodel hair from a magazine.”
“Maria, are you talking to yourself again?” Archibald chimes from the balcony. He steps through the French doors and peers around into the kitchen, eyes alive with a familiar, vigorous impudence.
“Who is that?” He puts his glasses on and peers at me. “Magali, is that you?” He now calls me by my given name, my grandmother’s name. It annoys the crap out of me because it implies a familiarity, a bond I am not ready for. He takes a few steps closer to assess my hair. I brace myself, waiting for his worst. “I like it,” says Archibald. “Who’s your hairdresser? I’ve been looking for a new style, and I think wood nymph just might suit me.” He flips his head back dramatically and runs his hand through his white fluff.
“Egh, you have hardly any hair. You don’t need scissors, just tweezers,” says Maria as she turns back to her work.
“Speaking of hair, have you ever thought of doing anything with that mole on your neck?” he says. “There is such a thing as too much hair in all the wrong places. Really, it’s called e-lec-trol-y-sis,” he enunciates as though she is deaf. “You might consider it.”
Maria scowls at him and shakes her head. “Keep talking and all of those cinnamon buns go with me, old bugger.”
They continue trading insults. I sit back, happily forgotten, and it is business as usual.
“So, what happened in Thailand?” Sam asks. His apartment’s patio opens onto a plain of grass, which I am now lying on, staring up at the cobalt sky and the budding trees. He hands me my coffee and stretches out beside me, resting his coffee cup between us. I take a sip. It is strong and bitter, the way he drinks it. It is the way I like it, too. I lean on an elbow, resting my coffee against my hip.
“What do you mean what happened?”
“Well, I mean, a few days after you’re back from vacation, you make a major change to your hair. And, I don’t know … you don’t seem like a person who just had a vacation.”
“It’s a new look,” I say lightly. “All the girls are doing it.” In reality, though, I had not been sleeping well since I got back.
He is too perceptive to be taken in, but, then again, that is part of the reason I like him.
“You just don’t seem very happy. Is everything okay?”
“You mean with him?” I say.
“With everything…”
“I feel like a hairless cat,” I complain.
He laughs hard. I guess the image is too much to resist.
“You don’t … I mean you don’t look like a cat. More like a chihuahua.”
“Thanks,” I say, not quite hurt. “Thanks a bunch.”
“I’m getting used to it. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with your face.”
“Thanks again,” I say.
“That’s not what I mean. Listen, you were saying…? Before you changed the subject.”
“The trip was good. Well, it would have been good.” I watch a squirrel climb a nearby tree and think, It has more hair than me.
“If?”
“If I hadn’t seen him with another woman.” I sigh, feeling its bitter wind in my throat. “On the island.”
“With?”
“With as in naked-between-the-sheets with.”
“Oh,” he says, suddenly inspecting his jeans. “But … I mean, I thought that was part of the whole thing … seeing other people and everything.”
“It was … it is. But it isn’t working. I mean, he feels like he has to lie about it. He did lie about it. What does that tell you?”
“That it isn’t working for one of you.”
“He thinks I care if he … He thinks he has to lie to me.”
“Do you care?” It is the question I have been avoiding. He lets it dangle. I remember the feeling of seeing them together. It all comes back. I put my head down on the grass with a thud.
“I’m not sure. I just know that I don’t want lies. And I don’t want to dread the truth either.” I run my hand through my hair, suddenly missing the weight, the security, the privacy it used to give me. He is staring at me. I wait for him to say I told you so. But he doesn’t.
“I understand where you’re coming from.”
“You see a lot in the building. People coming and going.”
“Sure. I guess. I’m not exactly the doorman, but I see a bit.”
“Would you tell me … if … he was seeing anyone in particular before we left?” My throat is dry. I have to force the question and then I want to take it back.
He settles down onto his back and looks up at the sky. “No.”
“No, he wasn’t seeing anyone in particular?” I ask.
“Not that I noticed.”
I watch the lazy, swollen clouds drift through the sky, feeling relief and bitterness. I turn to look at him. He is watching me closely, scrutinizing me. I blush, uneasy, feeling like an open book. I give his hair a tug. It is loose and almost to his shoulders. I inhale his familiar smell of books, wood, and soap.
“I just realized you have longer hair than me,” I say.
“Well, that wouldn’t be hard. But then again, I hear the hairless look is in,” he teases and pinches one of my ultra-short tufts between his fingers and pulls. And we fall back into our old pattern, two friends, almost but not quite easy with one another, lying in the grass on a fading early spring day.
“Michael, I’ve been having some doubts lately…” He sits across from me, freshly shaven. “About us.” I’d ordered in Thai food but regret it now. It tastes too sweet, too sour, artificial; I have no appetite. He puts down his plate, food hardly touched.
“What do you mean?” It had taken an hour or so for him to recover from the shock of my hair before he declared that it was very stylish. Now he puts his hand over mine and kisses the top of my head and my cheek and my neck. He is in a frisky mood.
But I have resolved to go through with this wherever it led. After my conversation with Sam, I realized that I wanted clarity. And I needed something else. Something I had never needed before. What, I wasn’t sure. “I know you were seeing someone in LA, and I know you see other people in general. What I don’t understand is why you have to lie about it.”
“There wasn’t anyone in LA,” he says. “What makes you think that? I was busy working. This isn’t like you.”
“I saw your picture with that museum director.”
“Norma? She’s an old friend. We went out for dinner.”
“Michael, let’s be straight, okay? I know you. I know you like women. I know you have a lot of old ‘friends.’ And I just don’t see why you have to treat me like…”
“Like what?” he says testily, pushing his plate away.
“I was going to say like ‘one of them.’”
“One of them?” He stands up, hands on his hips. “Maggie, what is the problem here? I have gone out with the occasional woman, but you know that, and — I just don’t like to discuss it. I mean, what do you want? A list of every woman I’ve ever been with? I don’t ask you what you’re up to. Not anymore. I am glad to see you. I missed you. Has something else happened?”
That’s the trouble, I realize. He had become more relaxed about our arrangement, while I had become more uptight. “The problem is me,” I say. It’s the truth. I knew it when I heard the words. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what? You mean us? Why? Is there someone else?”
“No.”
“There is no one else for me, either. Not serious.”
“I saw the girl in Thailand. I saw you with her that day. She was practically a teenager.”
He leans on the table heavily. “Is that what this is about? Her?”
“Yes. No. Seeing you with her. Seeing you two together. It made me take stock…” I search for words.
“Look. I feel like a cad. I’m sorry. If I admit it, can we put an end to the third degree?”
I bite my lip. After all my jokes and reasoning, I had become, in the end, just another woman who wanted to be loved by Michael.
He moves behind me, puts a hand on my shoulder. His voice is attentive, concerned: “What are you thinking?”
I take a breath. “This isn’t enough. You and I. It’s just not enough.”
“So that’s it, then? Goodbye, Michael! You were the one who said you were fine with me seeing other people. Now you want to end things because you are jealous? Now you know what it feels like!”
“Yes, I do.”
“So, you want me to stop seeing other people. Say it. I want to hear you say it.” He crouches beside me, staring me down.
“I want you to stop seeing other people.” My voice is low and shaky. The words are out before I can even stop them. They are the wrong words. They aren’t what he wants to hear. But they are mine.
He strides towards the window and stares out for a minute, heel tapping. When he turns to face me, his voice is neutral, but his face is stone. “You continue to surprise me.”
“I know,” I say, heart thudding. “I surprise me too.”
“I’m a selfish person. I am less than perfect,” he says, trying to be conciliatory.
“You have your good qualities,” I say, producing a minuscule smile.
“Maggie, the truth is, if you had asked even a few months ago, I would have tried. But I would have failed. I don’t think I can change.”
“I know,” I muster, “but I have changed.” And it was the truth, the truth that had been circling me like an eagle, tracking me, harassing me, since the plane ride home.
He nods acceptingly. He has, after all, done this many more times than me. And I recall a conversation we had not even two years ago, that now felt like a decade ago, when I had predicted that we would part with “a firm handshake.” I put my hand out and he smiles ruefully, remembering too. He takes my hand but leans forward and kisses me on the mouth. I pull his St. Christopher’s medal out of my pocket and offer it to him. It is warm in my palm. “Here.”
He looks wounded. “Keep it. I wouldn’t want anyone else to have it.” He walks to the door, turns, and gives me a parting smile before he leaves.
I lie on my bed staring at the brownish water stain on the ceiling. When I open my eyes, I see the back of his curly head as he left the apartment. When I close my eyes, I see his smooth hands moving carelessly over piano keys.
