Rockets Versus Gravity (13 page)

“She's been sending me to your place so she can fuck Roland Baron.”

“What? Her … um …
mentor
?”

“I caught her with him tonight.”

“
That
guy?”

“In our bedroom. On our bed.”

“Oh, James.”

“So we can do whatever we want to, Priya. Sidney can go to hell.”

James pushes Priya's legs open and descends between them.

Her back arches against the sofa cushions. Little waves ripple through her stomach muscles.

Then Priya pulls herself away from James, crawls out from under him up onto the arm of the sofa. She pulls the bathrobe around her body, steps backward onto the floor, ties the purple terry-cloth belt tight around her waist.

“No, James,” she says. “Not like this.”

“But Priya —”

“Not like this.”

James rises from the couch, reaches for her.

Priya steps back from his outstretched fingers. “I can't be your revenge fuck, James.”

“What?” James yelps. “Revenge f—? What?”

Priya is crying again. “I can't be your revenge fuck. I won't. Not after everything else. It has to be more than that.”

“Priya, it, it
is
more than that!”

She pulls the bathrobe tightly around her torso, tugs it down to cover anything that might still be exposed.

“James, you have to go. It's been a bad day for both of us, and you have to go now. Okay?”

“Priya —”

“James, you have to go.”

“Priya.”

“James, you have to go now.”

He wants to kiss her as he passes her, only on her forehead, or maybe on her cheek. But he doesn't. Any kind of kiss means something completely different now.

As he recedes clumsily through the narrow hallway, James's hip sends a flock of Priya's lingerie fluttering over the railing. His shoulder bumps femme fatale Bette Davis, knocking her frame crooked against the wall.

As he passes Priya's bedroom, he sees
Un bar aux Folies Bergère
, with that pensive, distant expression on the woman's face. He glances back to see Priya standing in her small,
kitsch-jewelled
living room; she has the same expression on her face now, too. And
James finally understands what it means.

On the cramped landing, he pulls on his hiking boots, tugs his leather jacket around his shoulders. As he descends the narrow staircase, he turns sideways to avoid bumping the salvaged Manet, van Gogh, and Goya reproductions.

He reaches for the doorknob, but then he hesitates, turns around, looks up.

Priya is standing at the top of the stairs.

“I meant to give you something,” she says, “before we got carried away.”

She tosses something small from the top of the stairs. James catches it with both hands.

It's a ring. A simple silver ring. James holds it up to the single dim light bulb that hangs above his head. The ring is engraved inside. It says
Forever More
.

“I found it on the sidewalk downtown. I thought that you might like it.”

“I do.”

It nestles comfortably into the groove left behind by his discarded wedding ring, covering that bloodless wound. The ring is maybe a bit loose, but his fingers are cold; it will fit perfectly when things warm up again.

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

James stands at the bottom of the stairs, and Priya stands at the top.

Finally, she sighs. “
An Affair to Remember
.”

“I'm not sure that this qualifies as an ‘affair,' Priya.”

“The movie,” she says. “Remember?”

Of course he remembers. They saw it together at the repertory theatre after putting on the last coats of Sangria Red and Ocean Blue.

They loved that old cinema — the flickering pink neon tubes outside, the burnished brass concession stand, the pastel-coloured paint peeling from the art deco friezes inside the cool, musty womb of that decaying theatre.

Priya had smuggled a mickey of Crown Royal into the mostly empty movie house, and she'd emptied it into the bucket of watery soda-fountain cola they bought at the concession stand. She and James sucked on their
wax-paper
-cup highball through two
red-and
-
white
-striped plastic straws, like kids on a date in a bygone era.

The scent of Priya sitting next to him in those crushed-down velvet seats was more intoxicating than the whiskey. Rather than wearing boutique perfume that costs as much per ounce as precious metals, Priya dabs vanilla extract on the back of her neck and behind each ear. When she leaned against him to sip that rye and Coke, her left breast would brush James's right forearm; James knew that she was wearing that sexy transparent black bra beneath her blouse (he had watched her pluck it from the railing). It took all of his fortitude to prevent himself from kissing her vanilla-scented neck and earlobes.

James looks up at her now, standing there in her purple bathrobe at the top of the narrow staircase.

“I remember,” he says.

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. They were both engaged to marry other people, but they fell in love with each other anyway. They would meet again in six months at the top of the Empire State Building if their love was meant to be.

“We'll meet at the top of the CN Tower in six months,” Priya says. “If we both still feel the same way, we can take it from there. Okay?”

A jolt flashes through James's body.
Six months?
He doesn't have six months. He is not going to play the
I think I might be dying
card now, though; how desperate and pathetic would
that
look? So he simply says, “I don't think I can go six months without seeing you, Priya.”

She sucks in her lower lip, the way she does when she's trying not to cry. Even from this distance, from the bottom of the staircase, even in this dim lighting, with her face lowered into a shadow, James can see it.

“Six weeks, then,” Priya says. Then, with a flourish of her purple bathrobe, she turns and disappears.

James turns and pushes open the front door, and it sings out that lonesome high note, as always.

From behind the mould-scented curtains, the voice of Priya's landlord crackles like a dusty record. “Priya's repairman! You leavin' now, son?”

“Yes, sir,” James says.

“Everything fixed now?” the old man wonders.

“No. Not everything.”

James hovers at the foot of the stairs and contemplates ascending.

D
apper Dan's voice scratches the air like 80-grit sandpaper. “You know, Clementine, you can count the number of perfect days in a year on the toes of one foot.”

As she wheels the old warrior out from under the awning and into the sunlight, Clementine wonders why he said “the toes of one foot” instead of “the fingers of one hand.” At least he is using her actual name today; sometimes she is “Mary,” since apparently Clementine reminds Dan of some woman from his war years, where his memory has been spending a lot of time lately.

“Some days are so cold it's cruel,” Dan continues, pausing to inhale the fragrant summer air. “And then some days are so hot it sucks the life right out of you. Some days you get soaked with rain, and some days you get pelted with snow and ice.”

His tone of voice adds a certain authority to everything he says. It reminds Clementine of a recording of some important speech, delivered through a crackling old radio with the tone knob cranked over to the bass side.

“Some days the wind gets up and tries to knock you down, and some days the air is just too still, like it's waiting to pounce. Some days are so humid the air feels thick and congealed, like a bowl of reheated soup. Some days are so dry your skin cracks and blisters, like an old workboot.”

Dan's seasoned, saddle-leather voice makes it seem to Clementine as if he is imparting some ancient wisdom to her, some metaphorically encoded philosophy of life, even when all he is doing is making small talk about the weather.

“But days like this one,” he continues slowly, sustaining the note of each vowel, stretching each syllable as if he's playing a jazz solo on a tarnished saxophone, “days like this one are a true rarity.”

Dapper Dan and Clementine drift for a moment in the sweet, beautiful silence, until it is shattered by Sheila, the supervising nurse, who clangs the time-change bell as if she's rattling a battle­field sabre. Sheila runs the veterans' wing of the Faireville Nursing Home as if it's a strict military unit, which the facility's former-soldier patients neither want nor need.

Dan chooses to ignore the jangling bell. He says, “We should savour this day, Clementine, to show our appreciation. We should linger in this day, to show our gratitude.”

“And to whom should we show our gratitude, Dan?” Clementine says, knowing that Dan has proclaimed himself to be an atheist; she has observed that most old warriors either believe in God completely, or not in much of anything at all.

“We should be thankful to nature, I suppose,” Dan says. “Or to the universe, perhaps. Or to chance, maybe. To fate. To luck. To chaos. To whatever force it is that makes anything happen in this world.” He turns to glance up at Clementine, who is leaning on the grips of his wheelchair; he knows that his favourite nurse comes from a strictly religious family, so he offers, “Or to God, I suppose, if that's what you choose to call it.”

Clementine closes her eyes and draws a long, slow breath in through her nostrils. The sound of her own breathing reminds her that she is alive. She would love to linger all afternoon on the sun porch with Dan, but now Nurse Sheila is screaming at her through the sliding doors of the veteran's wing.

“
Gawd-damn
mit, Clem!
Gawwwwwd-DAMN
IT! How many times do I have to call you inside, Clem? Do the rules not apply to you?”

Clementine hates it that Sheila always calls her “Clem.” She isn't fond of the name Clementine to begin with, but
Clem
sounds like the name sewn onto the patch on a pair of used worker's overalls in the discount bin at the Sally Ann store. That's probably the way that Sheila sees her, though: as just another labourer.

Sheila is a registered nurse with a university degree, while Clementine only has a college-level licensed practical nursing diploma. Sheila holds this distinction over Clementine's head the way that a duchess might use her title when dealing with a household servant. Clementine has to swallow it, though; Sheila is her direct superior, and she needs this job. Clementine has a son to feed and clothe, so Sheila knows that she is not going to talk back or give her any trouble.

“Come on, Clem, let's move it!”
Nurse Sheila screeches.
“You're not a fancy city girl any more. You gotta get your hands dirty like everybody else.”

Clementine used to believe that attending university made one more mannered and sophisticated, but Nurse Sheila's behaviour has crushed that illusion. University degrees don't necessarily make people more moral, either; Clementine was fired from her job in Toronto when a flustered doctor, with multiple degrees hanging in his office, mixed up a couple of patient files and needed someone to blame. Clementine had to come crawling back to Faireville, which was the last thing she ever wanted to do.

Sheila continues, in love with her authority. “
He's scheduled for his bath right now, Clem, not tomorrow! You're putting us behind schedule! Bring that dirty man inside right now!”

“I like what
any
red-blooded man likes,” Dan says, “but I am
not
a dirty man.”

“I know,” Clementine tells him. “You're a gentleman, Daniel.”

She also knows that he is still a “red-blooded man”; she has seen the longing in his eyes as he watches her walk away. Maybe she sways it a little more than usual for him, the way that she suspects women might have done back in the forties, during Dan's most virile years.

Dapper Dan likes it when Clementine calls him “Daniel.” He also likes it when she calls him a “gentleman.” She is the only person who calls him either anymore.

“Well,” he says, “
this
gentleman does not want to be given a bath by
that
cantankerous bull moose.” Dan glances up at Clementine again. “Couldn't you do it for me instead? I promise I'll be good.”

“Sorry, Dan,” she says. “Not allowed, I'm afraid.”

The last time she washed Dan, his erection sprang up through the water's skin like a purple-headed sea monster, parting the seas inside the geriatric washtub with Biblical drama.

“Well … well … wow!” the nurse's aide had exclaimed from the other side of the tub. “That is … ummm … that is … truly a medical oddity, isn't it?”

It truly was.

After that, Clementine was permanently excused from bath duty by Nurse Sheila.

“That is indeed a shame,” Dan says now, the dark pools of his eyes absorbing the details of Clementine's face: that slight concave imprint above her soft upper lip, her marble-sculpture cheekbones, those cornflower-blue eyes, and her dark eyebrows, arched slightly upward in the middle.

He sighs.
So much like Mary. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. My saviour, Mary.

And then:
Snap out of it, Daniel. That was a lifetime ago.

“Well, then,” Dan says, smiling up at Clementine again, “if we can't spend any more time together during my bathing ritual, could we perhaps savour this perfect day together for just a minute longer?”

Clementine doesn't mind indulging him, even if it means catching some hell from Sheila. Although he is almost one hundred years old, she likes the tone of his voice and the twinkle in his eyes. She imagines that he was quite a charmer in his day.

Nurse Clementine and Dapper Dan watch the cottony clouds drift past in the surreally blue sky, and they each give their own kind of thanks.

Nurse Sheila's shriek once again pierces the silence like an air-raid siren.

“
Gawd-dammit
, Clem!
Gawwwwwd-DAMMIT
!”

And thus the moment is called to an end.

Clementine wheels Dan inside and hands him over to Sheila.

“Tomorrow's my day off, Dan,” she says. “See you on Monday, okay?”

Dan watches Clementine's behind sway beneath the skirt of her pastel-yellow nurse's uniform as she walks away.

“You're a good reason to stay alive,” Dan says to himself, drifting backward.

D
apper Dan watches the upside-down valentine-heart of Mary's behind lift inside the skirt of her royal-blue uniform as she stands on her tiptoes to reach the top shelf.

“Mmmmmm, Mary,” Dan says to her, “you
do
know how to wear a skirt.”

“Shhhhhh!” she hisses at him, as flames dance in her blue eyes. “Someone might hear you!”

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” Dan says, while glancing around the empty room. “There's nobody here but you and me.”

“I see they brought some new planes in,” she says, in a faux-official tone. “Will you and your crew be flying in one of them? I'd say you boys have earned some new wings.”

A handful of newly built Lancasters were indeed delivered to the airfield earlier in the week, and a few of them came equipped with the new Rose Brothers tail gunner's turret. The Rose turret has greater visibility than the usual Nash and Thompson he's become accustomed to, and it's got bigger, .50-calibre guns; those will definitely make a bold statement the next time the nose of a Luftwaffe night fighter drops into Dan's gunsights.

The best thing about the Rose turret, though, is that it's so much roomier inside. For a tall guy like Dapper Dan, it would be like flying first class; folding himself into the cramped Nash and Thompson makes Dan feel like a giraffe in a goldfish bowl. To keep his legs and feet from cramping, Dan sometimes has to take his feet off the footrests and move them around inside the tiny
Perspex-and
-steel bubble, just to keep his blood circulating.

On the last mission, after they had dropped their load, a Junkers Ju 88 night fighter dropped down right behind the Lancaster, its twin propellers spinning on either side of Dan's peripheral vision, so close that Dan could see the pilot's face. Shells from the Junkers's 20-millimetre cannon streaked past, between Dan's turret and the Lancaster's twin tail fins.

Dan usually fired his Browning
three-oh
-threes in short, controlled bursts, but the sudden attack jolted him so that he blasted through the nose and canopy of the Ju 88 in a steady, rattling stream, and he kept firing long after the burst of crimson smeared the glass of the pilot's canopy. The Ju 88 finally bucked up in the air like a panicked horse and then disappeared down and out of Dan's sight in a wide arc of oily smoke.

Afterward, Dan's legs were numb from the thighs down. He put his tingling feet up on the guns, only for a moment, but by that time the Brownings were hot enough to cook a steak well done. As it turned out, they were also hot enough to burn the heels off Dan's boots, too. Thanks to the stench of cordite fumes that saturated the air around him, Dan felt the heat on his heels before he smelled the smoke.

So Dan has come to the supply depot counter to get some new boots. It's as good an excuse as any to visit Mary during the daylight hours, too.

On any mission over enemy territory, Dapper Dan spends hours at a time cramped inside that tiny bubble hanging from the tail of the Lancaster, separated from the rest of the crew by closed armoured doors, his only human contact being the intermittent, disembodied crackle of voices over the intercom. Being the rear gunner on a bomber is kind of like being the goalie for a hockey team; it is a job for an individualist. Still, whenever he is on the ground again, Dan craves the kind of human contact that only Mary can provide. She warms him, she soothes him, and she brings him back to life again.

“What size are you?” she asks him now. “Eleven? Twelve?”

He leans his elbows on the counter and winks at her. “You know what size I am.”

First Mary giggles, and then she scolds him. “Stop it, Dan. I mean it! Anyone could hear you.”

She bends over to unfold a stepstool, and Dan says, “Mmm, Mary!”

She wags a finger at him. “Stop it, you!”

“Quite contrary,” he teases.

Mary tugs a pair of standard-issue, slip-on, fur-lined flying boots from the highest shelf, then steps down and strides over to Dan, slapping them down on the countertop.

“Try these on for size,” she says.

“How about a pair of those lace-up officer's boots instead?” he says. “Won't I look dashing in a pair of those?”

“You're already dashing enough, Dapper Dan,” she says. “If you were any more handsome, I don't think I could resist you.”

Dan puts on a hurt expression. “You mean you can resist me?”

“Shh! Anyone could come in at any time. A superior officer, for example —”

“Come on, Mary! You can spare a pair of those lace-up boots for me, can't you? Every man on the base wants a pair.”

Every man on the base wants Mary, too. Dan knows how lucky he is to have somehow won her favour. He wants the boots for a good reason: when he gets back from tomorrow night's raid, Dapper Dan is going to propose to Mary, and he wants to look as absolutely dapper as possible when he does it.

Her suddenly serious expression is amplified by her marble-sculpture cheekbones. “I know that it's cold inside your turret up there,” she says. “I've heard of other men freezing their toes off when their heated slippers stopped working. I don't want that to happen to you.”

“Aw, Mary,” Dan says, “There's no heat in the seat of my suit, and I haven't frozen my ass off yet, so I think my toes will be okay, too. Besides, you know I'm warm-blooded.”

He means for this to get a smile out of her, but Mary remains serious. “I want you to be safe up there, Dapper Dan.” She reaches across the counter to touch his face. “Every time you cross the Channel, I just about die worrying about you. I want you to come back to me in one piece. Toes and all. Agreed?”

Dan shrugs and takes the fur-lined boots. “Agreed.”