side b, track 1
“Terrified of telephones and shopping malls, and knives,
and drowning in the pools of other lives.
Rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony.
Get clobbered on by courtesy,
in love with love,
and lousy poetry.
And I’m leaning on a broken fence
between Past and Present tense . . .”
Day 9
Somewhere on the TransCan headed back west
I felt lower than a snake’s belly, and we had almost five thousand kilometres to go before I could collapse on my couch, where I planned on spending the rest of my twenties as a failed romantic. The smell of gasoline and exhaust was blowing in through the back window, nauseating me, but it was too hot to have the window shut.
I was tired. Sleep was the only interesting thing left. And so I gave in to it, I surrendered under the weight of it. Cramped on the backseat, I felt resoundingly purposeless. I couldn’t even make this whole quest funny. I couldn’t hear myself retelling it—like I did with most of my debacles—it was too embarrassing.
I was having problems motivating myself to sit up, to open my eyes. My foot itched, but it seemed like too far away to scratch. My body was on strike. My head was roaring with a loud drone that drowned out even the oncoming traffic. My appetite was gone. Light hurt my eyes. My body ached from sleeping any which way. Any energy I had left, I used to preserve sleep mode. I felt guilt over Isobel doing all the driving, especially with her gimpy foot, but my guilt was buried under the obese weights of lethargy and apathy.
The next time I tried to wake up, I failed again. I didn’t know what town we were in, what province, or how Isobel could drive all this time by herself. I worried I had become narcoleptic. Another affliction for the list. I couldn’t think of anything to look forward to, except my couch. The present was only about shuffling from one area of discomfort to another.
By nightfall, I couldn’t stay in sleep mode any longer, unless I wanted to pee myself. But I was so drugged by Morpheus that I confused vinyl with porcelain.
The wet woke me up.
I sat up quickly and got a head-rush that made me gasp. I hadn’t wet myself since kindergarten. My left jean leg was soaked down the back.
“Hey, Annie, you’re up! How are you?”
“I just spilled my water, all over my lap, down my pants. Jesus, what a klutz I am! Do you mind stopping at the next nice gas station so I can change everything?” Hoping desperately she wouldn’t smell anything.
“Do you have any water left?”
“No, sorry, it’s all on my leg!” I worried a bit because I didn’t have a bottle as evidence.
“I could use a stretch myself. I think there might be a Husky coming up.”
It was annoying having one leg wet and sticky. I feared the car would start smelling; I cranked the window open wider. But as the road kept passing by and I got used to the feeling of a wet leg, I started to think that maybe it didn’t matter after all. Maybe I could just keep on sleeping. Isobel hummed along to Elvis Costello.
Eventually we stopped at a Tim Hortons. Isobel went to pick a selection of doughnut holes, a twenty-five pack, and a coffee, double double. I took my spare jeans to the toilet and awkwardly did a mock shower in the sink. I dried myself off with the scratchy paper towels and put fresh jeans on. The peed-on pair I stuffed in the garbage can. Under the fluorescent lights I took a long look in the mirror. I looked like someone headed for the undertakers; plastic-bag white skin, sunken eyes, grey lips. I had puffy eyelids, car upholstery impressions on my cheek. I confirmed also that there was a boil growing to the left of my nose, just under the surface. It throbbed. Soon Mount Vesuvius would appear on my face. I didn’t even bother putting on lipstick.
Hangovers are one thing, but road-trip hangovers coupled with depression and an attack of the uglies are lethal. I probably took too many Tylenols the night before, so now my heart was palpitating and my mouth was pasty and my internal organs were seasick.
The only truly good thing about the heaviness of depression was that I was almost too lethargic to be panicked. Which was kind of relaxing. We got back in the car. It looked like Isobel was chain-eating the mini-doughnuts. She had a white powder moustache, some chocolate sprinkles on her cheek, and a smile on her face. As I had freakishly lost my incredible appetite, she seemed to have gained a huge sudden gusto for food.
“Next hitchhiker we see, we grab if they have a licence, Iz.”
“Why?”
“I don’t feel up for driving. Think I might have the flu. We need a hand.”
Isobel looked at me like I was scary, which made me feel scared for me. A new person would help the dynamic. I could feel bleakness taking me away. What was I doing with my life? My forehead felt heavy. Isobel put Elvis C. back on, I asked her to turn it off; it hurt the boil.
“You have never asked me for no music before, the whole time we’ve been friends. Ça va?”
“Ya, I’m just real tired. Don’t worry.” I was worried plenty for both of us.
The dark thoughts blew around like a whirlwind of autumn leaves caught in a windstorm in a dead-end alley. I fixated on the idea that without Iz, I was alone. I had my parents and my loved ones, but ultimately I was alone, with no purpose. The last thing I saw before I fell back asleep was some man driving beside us in a black BMW with one hand on the wheel and an index finger planted up his nose. Picking away and staring at the tarmac ahead.
I heard voices as I woke up in Ontario somewhere. I didn’t know if we’d stopped for the night or just kept going. Groggy-eyed, needing to pee again and scared to have another accident, I sluggishly opened my eyes. The effort of it all made me more miserable. I looked out the window and begrudgingly admired the rolling hills and valleys. I had a prairie person’s envy of hills. I came out of my fog to realize there was a new person in the driver’s seat. He had a red bandanna on his head, tied pirate-style, and lots of big wooden beads around his neck. I rubbed my eyes and fought the urge to just keep sleeping and avoid having to make small talk.
“Hey, Annie, how do you like him so far? I found him at a 7-Eleven Slurpee machine in the middle of the night just outside of Sault Ste. Marie. Do you want some orange Slurpee? I got it for you.”
He threw one arm behind to shake my hand. “I’m Jack. How’s it going?”
I shook his hand and took the Slurpee Iz passed back. I liked his blue eyes. He was tanned, relaxed. He was our age or maybe a couple of years older. He had a rainbow-coloured tie-dyed T-shirt on and green shorts. He was a hippie; he had yin and yang earrings. He said he was from Edmonton originally but was living in Vancouver. He offered me a barley, tofu, and corn concoction from a Tupperware container in his pack, so very West-Coasty. The Slurpee was lovely and refreshing.
“So . . . um . . . I hope you’re not like . . . the OTHERS!” Jack joked, with his eyes deliberately bugged way out for dramatic effect.
He spoke our language! He was quoting Fear and Loathing; he was an instant friend. And now that I’d determined we were safe with him, I didn’t mean to be unsocial, but I felt another nap coming on. Sleep was my mercy. I closed my eyes again and tried a new neck position for the next session—I really didn’t need another neck kink. Luckily the bladder alert had been a false alarm. And maybe if I kept sleeping the boil would recede.
“Is she ill or something? How much sleep does she need?” I vaguely heard Jack asking Isobel.
“She’s got some serious malaise, you know how it goes . . . Things are not going so well right now, and sleep is her drug.”
I was annoyed that she was giving me away. But I knew I probably would have told him myself. I was rolling into dreamland anyway. The last thing I heard was Jack saying, “I know just what she needs. A good hut. To detox her spirit.”
“Are you some kind of medicine doctor?” Isobel flirted.
“No, I’m serious. I can see in her eyes, she needs some healing.” He had a raspy voice. Like dry firewood.
She was a good judge of hitchhikers, that Isobel.
I woke up again and it was evening, I wondered if we were in Manitoba because Neil Young was playing again. Jack was driving, and Isobel was explaining to Jack why The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a seminal film: “It positively reinvigorated the stocking industry. Women all over the world, and men, realized the garter belt must come back in vogue. And don’t forget what it did for the bowler hat haberdasheries!”
“Where are we?”
“Near Kenora, do you remember Kenora? We’re thinking of trying to find a camping spot near a lake. Jack’s got a plan for your recovery.”
“What’s that? What recovery, I’m fine . . . I’m just catching up on sleep from that night I missed.” It was annoying being a perpetual victim, even if I cultivated it myself. It made me cranky having her always superior.
“What you need is some water therapy. Some steam to liven up your senses,” said Jack.
“Like a hut?” I said.
“Ya, that’s right. Wait a minute . . . you’re not from that tribe of E-towners who get naked in winter and climb into saunas in your backyard?” Jack asked.
“Do you know Steamhouse Joe?”
“Of course, how ’bout Hot Stone Harry?”
“Uh huh.”
We figured out the many ways our circles collided. He probably had met Sullivan too, but I didn’t bring it up. I liked Jack’s energy. He came across like a plain, good-time guy. Sure enough when it was his turn to pick the tunes, he rifled through my cassettes and pulled out Marley’s Legend.
Isobel handed me some Ringolos, our last pack. I put one of each of my fingers and chomped away, feeling a bit lighter, a bit less weighted by the black dog. The familiar reggae bass soothed me. My appetite was coming back. I knew it was bad news that a guy’s attention could trigger an upswing, but at that point anything that could poke a hole in the fog was a mercy.
We stopped for some supplies, then found a campsite at a place called Raven’s Creek. Jack made a good strong fire, and we all drank some beers. We decided against hut that night because of our late start. By the end of the evening, Isobel had gone to bed, but I was so comfortable with Jack that I was telling him my problems. He was giving me one of the best foot rubs of my life.
“You’re just going through one of those times in life, floating a bit between old wounds and new fears and that existential shit we all get lost in at some point. When you wonder what the hell is the point. We’re born alone, we die alone. And we’ve got this life, and what the heck do we do with it, man? I know, Annie, I know . . .”
Jack had smoked a little weed at this point and was babbling, but we were mostly on the same page.
“You know what you need. Your own holy grail. There are no short cuts. You don’t need to be chasing rock stars, piggyback riding on their grail . . . You need to be your own rock star.
“I’m speaking figuratively, if you know what I mean . . . using rock-starness as a general catch-all,” he explained as he worked away on my feet. “You’ve got great feet, by the way . . . you definitely need to do some yoga . . . Yoga is the answer to every question . . .”
He rubbed each toe individually, calling them each a name in a language I’d never heard before: “Fumph, Kubaweiss, Applefoof . . .”
“Are you some kind of foot expert?”
“I studied a little shiatsu, you know . . . a little reflexology.”
“So what’s your grail?”
“Living and let living, rubbing a pretty girl’s feet . . . you know. No, seriously though, I’m studying to be a beekeeper and I’m aiming to make the best honey in Canada.”
I liked his patchouli flakiness and I was under the spell of his massage. This wasn’t one of those foot-rub seduction routines either; I didn’t feel like he was making any moves on me. Hippie love was exactly what I needed. Nurturing attention. Isobel might have been a bit bored, but I didn’t care.
Jack and I slept out in the open that night. We unzipped our sleeping bags and zipped up one joint unibag, pretending it was necessary for warmth. The stars were out in full regalia: Orion, Little Dipper, Big Dipper, Cassiopeia. The fire crackled. In his arms, I felt the depression lifting, I had felt it lifting all night. I had the strange sensation that my forehead actually felt lighter, no longer shrouded. My eyes were heavy with a cozy sleep. I turned on my side, and Jack spooned me.
The next morning Isobel had the coffee going and the sandwich stuff out and ready. Jack was playing Hacky Sack by the lake. It was beautiful day. We decided to just drive a half-day and try to find another lake farther west to camp at.
I was ready to take the wheel, my lethargy had been replaced with effervescence. But Jack insisted; he said the pair of us had done a year’s worth of driving in our almost cross-country tour.
As usual, nothing that interesting happened on the highway. Cars mostly overtook us. Rosimund could never really get much beyond ninety-five klicks; plenty of people seemed like they wanted to drive like assholes at one hundred and ninety. We turtled along in Manitoba, back into the heart of the prairies. The hills were way behind us, and we knew we’d be flatlining for a long while now. Ahead was a mesmerizing heat haze on the asphalt. I realized it was actually nice to have so much space on the horizon, a person could really breathe and stretch out in this landscape.
The day went by slowly. Four hundred slow kilometres took us seven hours with pee stops and stretch breaks. It was pretty quiet mostly. I liked having Jack with us. He had nice energy. I liked the look of his arm on the stick shift. I liked his sun-kissed skin. He said he’d take us kayaking if we came out to visit him in Vancouver. Isobel said she’d need to find some waterproof lipstick first and a seal-tight container for smokes. Could we have cocktails on the river?
Around five o’clock, we parked in an isolated campsite on a small lakefront near Brandon. We wanted to have every lake experience we could before getting back to city life.
I was on fire duty and had managed to get a blaze going. Jack was collecting six suitably large rocks from the beach to heat in the fire for the hut as well as three metre-long sticks. Luckily we already had a plastic tarp.
We had a perfect hut location right on the sandy little nook in front of our site. Jack started off by digging a hole in the ground not too deep and fairly wide, then placed the three sticks in a circle surrounding the hole for the frame’s structure, and then I covered them with the tarp so that it looked like a makeshift tent, which he sealed with logs. All that was left unsealed was the opening. Isobel meanwhile was chopping vegetables and garlic and wrapping parcels to be placed on the fire’s grill. She made a parcel of brie and three salmon steak ones, which we’d splashed out on in town for our last night on the road.
While we waited for the food and the rocks to heat up enough, we got out our air mattress, blew it up, and threw it in the water. The sun was still intense, so we took turns floating around in the warm shallow water. If you waded far enough, you could almost manage to get submerged up to your belly button. After about ten good minutes of floating, I realized that my shoulders were for some reason tensed up to my ears, so I consciously lowered them, which then made me fall splashing in the water. Isobel had a good laugh that made her whole body wobble so much that she fell in too with a shriek. Jack played Hacky Sack on the sand. Iz and I frolicked and swam and had water fights until we exhausted ourselves and dinner was ready.
The food was awesome. I noticed that Isobel was breaking into her dinner with incredible oomph, like I’d never seen before. She even hogged most of the cheese. I was amazed. I didn’t ask her why she was finally eating. I just watched the healthy glow of her puffed-out cheeks while she chewed and chewed. After dinner, we drank a little whisky to help digest.
The rocks were looking good and red—it was almost time for hut. It was Isobel’s first time, and she looked perturbed as I told her to take off all her clothes and climb underneath the blue tarp. Most first-time hutters found the experience a little frightening: the sudden heat, the opaque steam, scorching-hot air. Our three-man hut was fairly small, you had to crawl in and sit cross-legged and hunch-backed.
Jack and I carefully transported the rocks in a makeshift bucket/Frisbee from the firepit to the hole in the hut. I filled up a couple of empty Orangina bottles with water, took off my clothes, and crawled carefully into the hut. I had to admit, we had done a damn good job building the hut, though it was a little cramped. Funny thing about hut was that you didn’t notice you were naked. I didn’t think of it until I saw Isobel covering her breasts self-consciously. She was a skinny woman, beautiful but a bit surfboardlike with no roundy bits.
This was my first hut since the Sullivan days. I had missed it without realizing how much. I wanted her to love the hut experience as I did. I told her to breathe calmly, then I started gently pouring a stream of cool water on the burning rocks. The rocks hissed and let out a big cloud of super-hot steam. Instantly we were saturated in our own sweat. I had never been a sadistic hutter, like some who just keep pouring the water making the bouts of steam almost unbearably hot. I liked to pour a little at a time so you could enjoy each projection of steam and the after-effects of the lingering water in the air. I looked at Isobel through the fog and saw she looked confused.
“Don’t worry about a thing, you’ll learn to love hut,” I reassured her. “It’s great for the pores. Think of it like a spa!”
The steam was luxurious, I felt like I was swimming in it. I surrendered to it. I dripped and sweated and felt like I’d had a bucket of water poured over me and out of me. Jack was smiling beside me, sliding his wet hair back with his hand, his eyes closed. Isobel wasn’t saying anything; she just looked at me wide-eyed.
After a while the rocks cooled, calming down; the water no longer sizzled much when it hit them. Wisps of steam lingered in the foggy hut, which we enjoyed until the last possible moment. You could understand how First Nations people used sweat lodges as sacred ritual places.
When the air was mostly clear, instead of crawling out of the hut, Jack decided to break out of it. On the count of three we pulled the tarp free from the logs and were blasted with one of those amazing prairie sunsets of peachy, saffrony, orangey hues spanning the whole sky above.
We were wowed by the brightness and beauty of it. We whooped cement-cracking screams as we charged into the water. This was one of the best post-hut experiences I’ve ever had, in my all-time top five. Having sweated every possible toxin out of my body, I felt totally invigorated. The coldness of the water crashed with our body heat. This was living. Isobel and I even peed standing up, side by side. Jack frolicked in the surf.
Isobel went to eat what was left of the food, and Jack and I played naked Hacky Sack on the beach. I was having a ridiculously good time. I wanted to play naked Frisbee next. The vibe had subtly changed: sex was in the air. I felt desire rev me up. I didn’t feel at all self-conscious with him. It was weird. I knew I didn’t have a magazine body. My legs weren’t very long. Even with Mount Vesuvius reddening the left side of my face, I loved myself.
After Hacky-Sacking, we jumped back in the lake to clean off the sweat. It was colder now. I worried a bit about bloodsuckers. I could see that Isobel had gone to bed inside the tent. We came back and sat in front of the fire. Jack took my hand and caressed it. He was sitting on a log.
“You’re gorgeous, girl. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’d . . .”
“Me too. Let’s have another drink.” I grabbed the whisky and chugged some down. Jack had a big gulp too.
I straddled him.
He kissed my neck hungrily. I could’ve cried, it felt so good. He kept at it for ages until I was pretty wound up. His other hand stroked my hair. Our chests pressed together were warm. My wet hair dripped down my back, but the fire’s flames and our skin on skin were heating me.
I wasn’t going to fall in love with this guy. This was just for the wonderful moment. He moaned when I reached down and cupped his balls. “That’s some fine Hacky action you got down there, we could . . .”
“Oh, Annie. Wow. Can I just?”
“I’d like that a lot . . .”
He grabbed a condom out of his knapsack, ripped it open with his teeth, rolled it on, and then slipped inside me. I rocked back and forth, feeling us as one fluid rhythm. With my face buried in his hair that smelled wonderfully like damp cedar, we moved like that for a sweet while until the fever picked up. He grabbed my ass and bit down lightly on my right nipple, not too hard, not too soft. I started coming and coming and freefalling off a cliff. Inside I yelled, HALLELUJAH!!!
His grasp tightened as his orgasm thundered in just behind mine. He shook. He shook some more. He let out a gleeful “Yeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” as we rolled off the tree stump into the sand behind.
When we were done panting, I grabbed his hand and hoisted him up to go for a final skinny dip. Then we lay in each other’s arms in our unibag and slept peacefully.
We dropped off Jack in a small Saskatchewan town where he was visiting a pal of his (he was couch-surfing for the summer). He gave us some sagebrush from inside his backpack to hang from the rear-view mirror, telling us to throw away those chemical air fresheners. I waved goodbye and revelled in flashbacks of the night before. He had done me good, and I felt well and truly detoxed.
Later that day we stopped at a hardware store to get supplies for the car, some duct tape for the left wing mirror and some Krazy Glue for the gear stick top thingy that had popped off. We found a ToolMart in a strip mall called Damascus. I walked in and almost immediately felt uncomfortable. Fluorescent lighting. Endless aisles of useless stuff. How would we ever find anything? It was dizzying. Isobel hunted for a helper person, but it seemed like they were all on a break. There was one guy with a headset on and a queue of five agro-looking tool shoppers. So we combed the aisles. I wanted to get out of there quickly. I wanted to find our tools and get the hell out. They were playing something almost recognizable on the overhead speakers.
The old familiar dizzy feeling was coming for me. Isobel stalked off like a flamingo, in a new walk she was working on. She was going to find the duct tape, and I was in charge of looking for Krazy Glue.
This one came out of nowhere.
The usual shit happened:
My heart pounded. My neck sweated.
My hearing amplified.
The loudspeakers were playing the Cowboy Junkies.
I fell to the ground, almost on purpose.
Is this it?
Is this me, mad? Am I foaming? Are they going to take me away to the loony bin?
I finally just gave up.
I huddled into fetal.
There was nobody in my aisle. The floor was lino, fake wood colour. I think it must have been cleaned that morning; it smelt lemony in a hideously antiseptic way. I was oddly alert, watching all of my movements. My mind had separated from my body. I couldn’t order it to do anything, it just wanted to lie still in the fetal position.
I was in a zone. Time had stopped. I knew I was prostrate on the floor of a ToolMart. There were bound to be ramifications.
The fluorescent light pulsed in time with my boil. The product names orbed around me. UFIXIT, SQUEAK-NO-MORE, SMALL HEAD, DIBBITS . . . They fed into a river of my worst fears.
I was insane.
I was too embarrassed to shout for help. Time was going by though. I was less sure I wanted to be found. I was surprised I could be lying on the ground in a public place and nobody would notice. When would Isobel come get me? Would the store staff find me first?
I was having a nervous breakdown. Wasn’t someone going to notice?
What is a nervous breakdown anyway? For a moment I forgot myself and listened to the Cowboy Junkies’s wonderfully husky “Sweet Jane.”
My memory rewound to lying on my back as a small child, being dragged around the neighbourhood on a sled looking up at the sundogs, bewildered by the crystallized snow flakes, prisms falling from the sky. I was wearing a full body ski suit, rainbow-coloured. I had warm mittens that my mom had attached to a string and sewn into my sleeves so I wouldn’t ever lose them. I wore four pairs of socks and sheepskin wool boots. I had on full-body long johns and a turtleneck. The only part of me that was exposed were my two cheeks. My nostril hairs felt crunchy from the freezing weather. The sky was blue. The sound of the plastic sled squeaking along the pavements over smooth, hardened snow. The feeling of bumps underneath my back. Mom was taking me to the IGA for fun and groceries. I loved being carted around on my back seeing underneath people’s cars. Dogs looked huge and I liked to look at trees’ feet.
Then when I grew up and met Sullivan, I told him about my happy sled memories. Our first winter together he showed up outside my apartment with a big wooden sled and he took me to the park. It was nine o’clock and all the lessons and hockey matches were long over. We had the rink to ourselves. He put on his skates, took a massive candle out of his backpack, and skated to the middle of the lake and put it there and lit it. He had a mini-boombox too. He put on “Sweet Jane” and skated back to me. I lay flat on the sled that fit me perfectly. It was a mild night, probably around minus ten. Cold but not fuckfuckfuckfuck cold. Before we’d gone out he made me put on two pairs of long johns and two pairs of socks. We had toques and gloves, we were well geared up. He had a rope attached to the sled that he tied around his waist. He skated around and around the rink and that big candle. I stared at the stars, listened to his breathing.
“Are you sure I’m not too heavy?”
“Light as a feather. This is good training for hockey season.”
Afterwards we sat together and drank cocoa from his flask until our asses were so cold we were worried about getting hemorrhoids. We went home and shared a hot bath.
This was all wrong. I was a twenty-four-year-old woman, taken down by panic attacks. It wasn’t like my life sucked. I had loved ones. I had legs, arms, a brain.
Anger joined my fear.
I ordered myself to sit up.
I sat up.
It was that simple.
I could almost conjure what this dragon of smoke and fear looked like, like a heat haze on the horizon in a blobby translucent shape. It wasn’t even a real hallucination, I knew that, but I needed to conjure something tangible for me to scream as loud as possible at in my head: Give me your best shot, you goddamned FUCKING BULLY. You’re all smoke, you got NOTHING. What’s the worst thing you can do to me?
DO YOU HEAR ME? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKK YOUUUUUU! To my surprise I felt the dragon retreating, melting into a puddle of silent nothingness.
The adrenalin had mellowed, and I felt an endorphin surge, like you do after running. I saw some packages of Krazy Glue on the shelf right in front of me. I grabbed one and stood up.
It was easy. I was a Phoenix rising.
I smiled at the ToolMart staff guy who was walking up the aisle to check on me. His nametag said his name was Paul.
“Can I help you with anything, miss?”
“No, I just found what I needed.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
I looked up at the ceiling to see if they had surveillance cameras. They did. I was on film being a wacko.
“I just have low blood pressure. Sometimes my heart forgets to pump at all, and then I get a little flimsy. What’s it like working here?”
“Not bad, you know, I get overtime and stuff. I’d rather be skateboarding, but a guy’s gotta make the rent, y’know.”
“Ya, I hear you.”
“Do you want some water or anything?”
“Nah, I’m good, I’m gonna go hook up with my friend.”
Isobel was busy at the till paying the cashier for the duct tape.
“I just need to pop through the mall to grab some music,” I told her.
“Now?”
“Yup.”
I went to the record store and found a copy of Moondance. Reclaiming was my new agenda. Reclaiming sex, hut, and music from the Sullivan–Annie grip.
We drove through the rest of the province in silence. Hot air blasted through the windows, but I felt a hint of autumn in the air. The colours at their full peak. Overripe and bursting with green and yellow. The fields waiting for harvest. Weeds shoulder-high. I scratched my mosquito bites and listened to the tape back to back to back to back—three hundred and fifty kilometres worth (which felt like fifty-seven times, give or take). Isobel didn’t ask what it was all about. She respected my music mission.
By the third time through, I didn’t think of Sullivan. Aversion therapy was working. Plus I had gone head to head with the panic dragon and I had kicked ass. I knew I’d carved new ground that day in ToolMart.
I drove on, with Isobel at my side eating white cheddar popcorn meditatively. “You know, I could be deluding myself, but I think I’m kind of missing Finn. Il me manque.” Those wondrously green eyes of hers glistened. Was it fatigue or emotion? I wondered.
“That’s gotta be a new experience for you, I’ve never heard you express that kind of sentiment before.”
“I’m not sure what’s with me, I’m eating like a maniac, I’m thinking nostalgic thoughts about Finn. Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Whatever you do, you can’t mess with that boy’s head anymore. He’s our friend now. Buddies are sacred. Plus they’re might be a professional element to our relationship now . . . I’ve had some thoughts . . .”
“What are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to ponder more before I spilled.
We drove on in comfortable silence past towns and fields and endless highway and prairie. Old red and grey barns dotted the landscape. Grain silos and cows. The road went on and on. We drove and drove. The air cooled, the light changed. At our next pee stop by the side of the highway, something ran right past my foot as I squatted between the open door and the car. A lizard with black stripes. Was it my lucky prairie skink after all?!
Crossing back over into rat-free Alberta, we were ready to get home. The road was deforming my back. The vinyl upholstery was burning my skin. I was out of the funk, ready to get going on something, a project, a grail, something not romance-focused. Meanwhile, I romanticized my new take on life. Imagined myself as endlessly fulfilled, feisty like Ani DiFranco. An independent heroine, with no need ever for a boyfriend. Of course, in my scenario, countless men tried to woo me, but to no avail. Until the One. It was going to take some effort to recondition my fantasy life.
Restless energy in a car was no good. I needed to be out walking the streets, panic-free. Living, making the most of my life. I was going to be disciplined, only watch a maximum of three videos a week. And sit-ups, I would do five hundred a day. I was going to build up my core strength. And sun salutations too, ten every hour.
As Isobel drove past the small towns leading us back to our northern town, I had the urge to write something down, to put it all to rest. I brainstormed drivel for miles. How did they do it, songwriters?
You were a great lover
To not just me
But I love you
See you, so long
I left you in a field somewhere in the middle
Of Al-berrrrrrrrrr-ta
See you, so long
Time to keep on truckin’
I groaned. I had no sense of poetry, no musicality. For all my music-lyric education, I was goddamned hopeless. Maybe Finn could help. It could be a genre problem. I needed to choose between an angry punk song or something sweet and commemorative. I picked up Finn’s guitar and for the first time tried to play something. My fingers didn’t want to contort properly. I soon gave up. I needed serious training.
“Let’s go straight to Finn’s,” I said.
On the last leg to E-town, I lay back and made plans, plans for our reform. Discipline, hard work, less movie-watching, and lots of training. Surely enthusiasm could override lack of talent. Isobel had the obvious makings of a diva: she’d been sustaining her own fan club since she was a teenager.
The Cadillac Couches. It was the name I had secretly always thought would be perfect for a band. Everyone spends all this time with their butts happily planted on their sumptuous couches dreaming their dreams. Couches can be vehicles for transcendental visions. Mostly though, in reality, dreamers drive trusty bangers, not Cadillacs.
I thought Finn would like it too. We could go on tour and one day open for Ani. We could get a Boogie van. We would cross the country all the way to the Maritimes and back. I could break guitar strings, I could restring my guitar. I could cover my fingers in duct tape and look really tough. I could tune my guitar and tell jokes. I could rock out for real, instead of just air-guitaring. We’d have groupies, party with other musicians, write meaningful songs. We would get to Florence at last and busk! We could . . .
Maybe we’d never get out of the basement or the garage, but dreaming is free like we rock chicks like to say.
“Now, Isobel, I’ve got something serious to discuss with you. Picture this: you in a houndstooth mini-skirt, go-go boots, a leather bustier, and a plum-coloured boa, standing at the microphone . . .”
Isobel’s eyes twinkled as I filled her head with a vision of chick-rock-stardom and Edwardian corsetry with a post-modern twist.
Home
8,207 kms total!
We pulled into town at 4:00 AM, too late and too tired to go to Finn’s. I dropped off Isobel at her place and drove the few blocks to mine. I walked in to a quiet house; my roommates were asleep or out. I dragged myself into my bedroom and fell on the bed. There was something crinkly beneath my head. A pile of official-looking letters from the credit card companies and a mysterious purple envelope. Of course, Hawksley’s letter!
I turned on the light. I allowed myself a little surge of excitement, one last throwback to my former mission.
It was a form letter on Hawksley Workman official stationary.
Thank you for your missive,
dear fellow Love Adventurer.
May you travel well on your magic carpet.
May the music be your soundtrack with the angels.
XOXO H
I read it a few times. In the past I might have smelled it, or tried to eat it even, but my turtle shell had finally hardened. I was an evolved young woman, no longer an hysterical tragedian. Panic had lost its hold on me. I was going to face life again, in a new incarnation: intergalactic rock star.