By the end of June, a Friday night routine has established itself. Maureen comes over first, sometimes with Darrin, sometimes without. Those two are on and off. Sherrie starts seeing a new guy and mostly vanishes. Smell ya later, Sherrie. Jamie shows up when he finishes work. He sometimes brings one of his buddies, like his friend Winston, who has long black curly hair and dark, sleepy eyes and speaks with a dreamy, half-stoned intonation. He and Jamie were coworkers at Sherlock’s. Now Jamie bartends at West Side Charlie’s and Winston is back at school with a radio show on the campus station. Everyone comes over and drinks in the kitchen while Nan watches TV in the living room. They sit on the front step if they want to smoke. They wait until they’re gone out to smoke anything else.
Then one night, Nan changes the game. The house is walking distance to downtown bars, but Jamie lives in Mount Pearl. For him to cab it home costs at least fifteen dollars. Nan won’t hear of it. “Stay here, my love,” she says. “Any friend of Immy’s can stay here. Drive down, park your car out front and go home after breakfast. Anytime.” She flings open the hall linen closet and produces two folded afghans and a pillow for the sofa. “Here, Jamie,” she says. “Take the couch.”
The couch sits in the living room, right next to Imogene’s bedroom. She nods in agreement. Rivers of possibilities trickle through her. Late night conversations could turn intimate, gratitude could turn to affection, drunken horniness could take over. A random storm. The power goes off. They need to use body heat to stave off hypothermia.
But on the first sleepover, Nan interrupts their whispering, puttering by on one of her nightly trips to pee, her purple terrycloth robe pinched together under her chin. Jamie feels guilty about waking her. “What a sin, poor Agnes.” The next time, he crashes as soon as they come home. Imogene does the same, waving good night to his beauteous frame standing in loosened clothes and sock feet.
The third weekend, they go dancing. Jamie lifts her off her feet, spins her around. No guy has ever attempted to pick her up before. Liam tried once and said she was too tall. Jamie grabs her around the waist, he lifts and dips her. She throws her head back and laughs, she presses her breasts into him. She lets her face slide in front of his and their lips meet. They kiss quick and soft. But on the taxi ride, Winston ends up sitting between them in the back and he comes back to the house for another beer. He’s high as fuck at the kitchen table, talking about his dead grandfather until almost four a.m. When he leaves, Jamie is ready to pass out. She doesn’t even get a goodnight hug.
“Sorry about Winston,” Jamie says. “Sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop talking.”
“No problem,” she says, and goes to bed. But an hour later, she wakes, twitching herself conscious with an electric awareness that pervades everything. He is here, asleep and touchable in the next room. She closes her eyes and sees the living room, the early morning light hinting at the edges of the drapes, outlining all Nan’s crap. The green ceramic cats in their stretching poses, the collection of tiny souvenir spoons mounted on a wooden cut-out of the map of Newfoundland, the silver-plated picture frames with Pop and Nan on their wedding day, Maggie holding her real-estate licence, baby Imogene in the jolly jumper. And Jamie on the couch, bundled in one of Nan’s multicolour crocheted afghans like a Klimt painting, all angelic face and rumpled dark hair. Ridiculously lovely. Most people are all snores, drools and farts when they sleep, just releasing their day’s worth of penned biology. Yet somehow Jamie Clark, balled up, reeking of booze and cigarettes, manages to look like the Christ child.
Once, she got up early and sat in the recliner by the couch with a book on her lap, pretending to read. Just to feed her eyes on him, like a sex offender in an elementary school parking lot. She rationalized it as a way of purging herself; if she could stare at him non-stop for a good solid stretch, her system would be cleansed somehow. He woke up and she pretended to be absorbed in her book. “Oh, you’re awake. I couldn’t sleep, came out to read for awhile, heh-heh.” So, so stupid. Days later, the memory popped up at work and she physically cringed, shuddering over the cart of books.
Now it’s Saturday morning, 5:34 a.m. on the clock radio. Jeans on the floor. Crystal ashtray by the bed overflowing with ashes like grey potpourri. Soon, Nan will get up. She moves slowly, but makes sure to bang the plates on the table and stir her tea like she’s playing a gong. “Oooh, Jamie, did I wake you? How was last night? Tea?” All to get him up so she can talk about the way the downstairs tenants get on or the criminals in the neighbourhood or the lax attitude of city council. Jamie will chat with her in his politely teasing manner. Imogene will join them. He will smile at her.
But maybe he knows. After all, he plants himself here in her territory and everyone already thinks they’re screwing. His brothers grin and wink when she’s around. A man goes downtown with the same woman every weekend and he doesn’t come home—what else could possibly be going on but cheap, fun, drunken intercourse?
Maybe he wants them to think that. Maybe he wants them to think that because he wants it to happen. She could make it happen. She could get up and go out in the living room and do something, touch him, kiss him. No explanation necessary, no planning, no words even. Maybe all she has to do is say, Jamie, you can crash in here if you want. Maybe she is wasting precious opportunity in this timid heap of herself.
She sits up and her brain groans. Her hair in her face reeks of cigarettes and she pushes it away and her fingers smell like cigarettes and she is an idiot who knows nothing and never learns. She still wears the ribby shirt from last night, the kind of tight one, black—she hoped it was slimming and made her tits look rounder. At least she made sure to sleep on her stomach. One time that fall, she threw up in her sleep. She could have been dead on her back, like Jimi Hendrix or Bon Scott. She imagined Nan finding her pale, greenish corpse. Nan, screaming her face off. Imogene scraped the puke into a grocery bag and hid it at the bottom of the garbage.
She retreats under the covers and closes her eyes. They kissed last night. For a second. This is good. But he was dancing with everyone. He swung Maureen around too, swung her so her legs flared out. And other girls too. He does what he wants. If he wanted her, she’d know. She may be a drunken twit, but she’s not delusional. Her hangover wiggles itself deep into her guts.
But it feels right, says her head, in its thick, polluted state. When Jamie and she are together, they fit. They turn to each other at the same time. They hug hello, they sit close. The other day, he squeezed her hand. “You’re the best, Genie,” he said. “I never feel pressure when I’m with you. You’re a sanctuary.”
The digital clock says 5:51 a.m. She closes her eyes. Next week, if he stays here next week, she’s going for it. She pictures herself floating, beyond her bedroom walls with their nicotine-tinged eggshell tones and chipped gyprock, up along the stucco ceiling of the living room, where she can hover and regard her friend for the work of art he is. If she stays still, the pain fades and she can detect all available sounds. A car passes outside, something rattling in its guts. If she stays still, the pain fades and she might hear the gentle cadence of his breath. In the distance, she hears the foghorn, sighing to itself.