I got to the Narrow early, waited at the bar for a table to open up. Business was conducted around me, the circulation of dollars and beers. Mark Lanegan on the sound system, “Ode to Sad Disco.” I was watchful for Nagy or Chambers.
Sonia’s words had stung. I chased a double Bulleit with a bottle of beer and wondered what exactly I’d expected out of helping her: gratitude, sex, an alleviation of guilt? It didn’t work like that. I thought of Shay, the woman I’d seen briefly last year. I’d wanted to help her, too. Shay’s demons had been different than Sonia’s, and no amount of care, of love, could rid her of them. Maybe Sonia was right, and I was addicted to playing savior. I wanted to believe there was more to me than that—but maybe that was the point.
Dana Essex showed up on time, wearing a pleated skirt and a tawny jacket which she slipped over her stool. She seemed amused by the surroundings.
“I’m not much of a beer drinker,” she said. She ordered a gin Collins and I bought another Kronenbourg.
“You look like you’re surviving,” I said.
“I’m enduring,” she said. “Like Dilsie’s family. My affection for Tabitha was a bit abstract, I recognize that.” She took a long drink and shuddered. “Tonight I’m going to enjoy myself.”
Liquor loosens tongues. By the second round Essex was holding court on various authors, most of whom I’d never heard of. She seemed shocked my reading list hadn’t included Tomas Tranströmer, that my exposure to Atwood and Richler had been strictly compulsory.
“But you do read?” she asked.
“Sure—books on boxing, the odd crime novel.”
She brought her lips together in what was either distaste or resignation. “Have you heard of Mo Yan? Elfriede Jelinek?” I hadn’t. “Nobel winners. And unread by almost all North Americans. Unless we’re giving an award to a pop singer, we pay it no heed. Why does the only truly international book award mean nothing to us?”
“Why would you trust a book award given out by the guy who invented dynamite,” I said, “when none of the books involve people dynamiting things?”
She shut her eyes, laughing. “You may have a point,” she said. “Tabitha never read anything but those eight-hundred-page fantasy novels—unless it was some anarchist tract assigned by Paul Mastellotto. And my ex-husband, if it wasn’t Restoration poetry or the contemporary English novel—which reminds me.”
From her purse she produced a slim volume.
“Ishiguro,” she said. “Slow-going but worth it.”
“Thank you,” I said politely.
“He writes with an English sensibility, Ishiguro, and yet his books build to these moments of sadness and recognition. You’re familiar with mono no aware?”
“Will you think less of me if I say no?”
She shook her head earnestly, happy to explain. It was a Japanese term, an apprehension of the transience of all things. I drank my beer and enjoyed listening to her digress.
“In the West we ask impossible things from our artists,” she said. “Everything is disassembled and commodified. People take quotations from Shakespeare’s characters and repeat them as if they’re words of infallible wisdom. They miss the inherent irony of a line like ‘To thine own self be true.’”
“Those rubes,” I said.
“Sorry to drone on.” She took up her new drink and tasted it through the half-sized straw. “I must be a complete boor.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s interesting. Tell me more about Shakespeare.”
She thought for a while and abruptly resumed laughing.
“I just remembered how a graduate instructor of mine referred to him,” she said. “It was after a few drinks in a bar similar to this. We were talking about the Anti-Stratfordians, the dullards who think Shakespeare was too uneducated to be the writer he was.”
“So who do they think wrote Hamlet and all that?”
“There are a few candidates, all invariably drawn from the upper crust. My friend responded that they’d be horrified to know the real Shakespeare. And I of course asked what he was like.”
“The answer?”
“‘A tight-fisted, status-obsessed, alcoholic pussy hound with questionable sexual history’ is how she phrased it.”
Around midnight Dana Essex complained of a headache. “It’s the air,” she said. “Mind if we walk a bit?”
“There are other bars around, quieter ones.”
“How far away is your place?”
“Half hour,” I said.
“And you have alcohol there?”
As we walked she slipped her arm around mine and leaned against my shoulder. I thought of the first time I’d seen her, how indeterminate she’d looked. Now she seemed more sexualized. More playful, too. It was a costume she was trying on, one that didn’t quite fit. But then neither had the other.
At my door she kissed me. We stumbled into the dark apartment and as I reached for the lights I felt her hands ensnare mine. Her lips moved over my face and neck.
“Bedroom,” she said. I nodded in the direction.
Unbuckling my pants she said, “This isn’t payment. I don’t want you to think I’m thinking about it that way.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about this since I first saw you. I felt the same way about Tabitha. You’re both strong and self-assured. I want this to be perfect. I want this to please you.”
“All right.”
“Tell me what to do. What you want, how and where. Tell me, Dave.”
In the end I didn’t need to say anything.
Later, with the morning sun making overtures through the blinds, she got up naked and retrieved the book. She wanted to read to me. I liked the sound of her voice and the play of her free hand over my body. We made love again with the reading light above us. After, lying on our sides, I saw someone looking back at me, a person, a woman I’d never seen before.
It was noon before I could summon the energy to fall out of bed. She was still asleep, her breathing cool and measured. My phone was vibrating in the pocket of my jeans, which had been abandoned in the kitchenette. I put water on the stove, slid into the pants, and afterwards decided I should answer.
“It’s Kay,” she said. “I’ve been hitting your buzzer for the last twenty minutes.”
“Come around the patio side.”
She did. I opened the sliding door. We stared at each other from opposite sides of the screen.
“Company,” I said.
“Ah.” She smirked. “I was wondering what I’m supposed to do, now that Tabitha’s found.”
“Good work on that,” I said. “You can relieve Greg from out front of the house.”
“Sure. Or I could just hang out here for a little while—”
I shut the door.
Dana Essex emerged from the bedroom wearing a T-shirt. She smiled awkwardly and maneuvered around me to the washroom. In the mirror she inspected the love marks on her shoulders and throat. “You wouldn’t have an extra toothbrush?”
“Under the sink,” I said. “Breakfast? I make a pretty decent instant oatmeal.”
The kettle whistled and I took care of it.
“Thanks,” she said between rinses. “I have proposals to mark and a lesson plan to write. But I enjoyed that.”
“Some other time,” I said.
“I hope so.”