Nathan's father was an aeronautics engineer, an occupation that, even his son had to confess, was fairly cool. But what was not cool was his being unexpectedly transferred to Toronto one day. Once they'd moved into their new house in Leaside, everything seemed bleak to Nathan. He had left behind the painfully slow and anxious progress he'd made to second base with a girl in his grade, his mother had refused him the farewell party “he'd always dreamt of” (several bus tickets for he and his friends to Woodstock '94 in New York State), the first half of the
NHL
season was locked out, and Kurt Cobain was dead. Things, he figured, really, could only get better. And fortunately they did.
He met Richard, namely because both of them had the same eclectic taste in second-hand clothing and spoke so quickly that few other people could follow. Though the true forming of their allegiance came when, on only his second week in Toronto, Richard offered to show him around the city; but just the corners, he'd promised, that were most worth checking out. They spent an entire Saturday walking the downtown core, people begging via signed cardboard while they piled construction rubble into precariously balanced cairns; graffiti alley, where spray-painted scrawls were considered less vandalism and more art; Kensington, flea markets, thrift shops, experimental rooftop gardens, organic co-ops, all amid smokestack spires that jutted brick-red and sudden out of common neighbourhood streets. Nathan was hooked. Appreciating this, Richard introduced him around to other people, and he'd soon fallen in with a quirky group, making the acquaintance of Melissa and her artsy-though-not-taking-themselves-too-seriously crowd, and things had all been uphill from there.
Melissa reached around and tapped him on the belly. “Hey. You made it,” she said above the music. Nathan's eyes flitted down to her body, then quickly back up to her face. She was wearing one of her favourite T-shirts, the fabric thin, its worn-in shape treading the line between hiding and highlighting the curves that lay beneath. She was drinking a cooler, pinkish, bright, her breath more sugary than panging of alcohol.
“Whoah, I see you've chosen to delve into the hard stuff. Wild berry-berrilicious, is it?”
“It's the red dye number three I'm after.” She took a swig.
“So, where's the folks?” asked Nathan.
“Don't know. Something about Niagara something or other. My dad's got some business thing tomorrow, but they went a day early. Lucky for us.”
“Luuuckee,” Nathan agreed, looking out at the room and falling into what felt like a gawky silence. It was often how things were with Melissa these days: starting out fine until they trailed off into something clumsy. But who knew, maybe that's how it was with everyone in the same boat, every non-couple-continuing-as-friends who'd lost their virginity together. Maybe that, in itself, was a recipe for clumsy.
Sexually speaking, Nathan was no Casanova. He'd begun his exploits modestly enough, back in Ottawa, with two promising flings whose sole intention was to get as far down that road as was adolescently possible. Necking in a semi-private spot he'd found behind the Champlain statue near the National Gallery, his hands squeezing away at the soft warmth under their sweaters, teeth clunking, only to find himself ambling stiffly back home again, underwear sticky.
It was a pattern of relative failure that followed him through his first year in Toronto as well. But then, out of the blue, and completely unforeseen on his part, the night with Melissa transpired. It had happened only three months earlier, that May. He'd just turned seventeen and it was springtime, nature broadcasting its brazen pornography from every green space in the city, courting calls, dances, songs, pheromones, nectar, everything alive pulsing with an undeniably voracious urge to mate. He was fidgety with it.
It had been a simple consequence of friends cancelling at the last second. Normally, Nathan and Richard were invited to hang out and provide the entertainment whenever two or more were gathered, which was the case that evening. But Richard had a surprise-to-him family get-together, and the two other girls who were supposed to show up had caught wind of a band that Melissa hated and they loved playing at a café with no cover charge. When Nathan walked through the door, he noted the quiet of the house, and innocently asked the whereabouts of Melissa's parents. It turned out that they would also be in absentia for most of the night, at one of those networking dinner parties her father, Cedric, was so fond of. It was thenâwhile both of them leaned casually against the white kitchen cupboards, sunlight seeping in through the mantled window between them, the pendulum of a clock ticking loudly, rhythmically, randilyâthat the atmosphere between them became laden. Nathan tapped the counter with a hectic beat, in time with the clock, lost for words.
So they opted for the safety of the television, Melissa channel surfing until she found MuchMusic, sliding the remote control onto the coffee table. Even the videos were in the fever of springtime, pop stars with little clothing jiggling to the sounds of overproduced music, running their hands across their own bronze skin or the bronze skin of others. Melissa shuffled closer on the chesterfield until her foot was touching his on the floor. Nathan stopped breathing. They watched another video. More skin, dancers with lips parted, backs arched, nipples erect. He swallowed.
When it happened it was a shock to them both. They were just suddenly kissing and, the shock was, unzipping and unbuttoning each other's clothes. There was no condom, or talk of one, just frenetic action, anxious fumbling. They were only having actual sex for twenty or thirty seconds before Nathan pulled back with a short moan, ejaculating onto the cushions of the couch. He collapsed beside her, pulling a blanket that was draped across the back of the sofa over their naked bodies. The television light bounced off the eggshell-coloured walls while the music continued on with its inexhaustible coital thump. Neither of them dared speak. And to his shame, a few minutes later, Nathan fell asleep.
When he woke, he had a hard time grappling with the fact that Melissa wasn't there. She was just
gone
. Upstairs somewhere. In her room maybe. Not wanting to think about what that might mean, he hurriedly got dressed and stepped up the stairs, walking through the house, quietly calling her name. And when he saw the headlights of her father's car fill the living room window, followed by the sound of its engine turning off in the driveway, he bolted out the back door.
They never talked about it again, though he was sure she'd told her friends, in the same way that he had borne all to Richard. Luckily, she appeared to be making an effort to treat him in the same way she always had. Seeing him as the entertainer that kept things light and easy while she remained the reluctant entertainee, who probably brooded heavily on all those light and easy things that were said.
Within a couple months, the air between them had almost reverted back to its normal feel and texture, and when the word was out that her parents would be away for this, the third weekend in July, it was clear, though unspoken, that Nathan and Richard would arrive at her door at some point. What would a party be without them?
Nathan removed the mickey from his pocket and took a swig, having to exaggeratedly lean forward just to gulp it down. Melissa, assuming it was for clownish effect, snickered.
“That good, is it?” she asked, her eyes casually scanning the faces of the people in the next room. Then Melissa froze. “Oh
shit
!” she whispered. “Is that Brad?”
“Uh. Yeah. It would seem so.” Nathan also recognized the problem. Brad was a jock. A shoulder-guard-wearing, party-crashing, house-wrecking jock. And as the rule of thumb went: where there was one, there were many.
“Shit,” she repeated and moved off in the direction of the back door, as if to bar it, raise the drawbridge, make it all okay with a single authoritative act.
While Nathan, on the other hand, knew it was hopeless. Things would soon get ugly, decline, spiral, and in anticipation of this, he was already working himself up into a state, was already ill at ease, anxious. He sipped his vodka, nodded his head to the music, still the same album, the
CD
player apparently set on repeat. “This bottle / of Steven's / awakens ancient feelings . . .”
Someone lit a cigarette, blew a stream of smoke under the lamp that was mounted in the centre of the ceiling, contraband in this non-smoking house. Others followed. No one cared.
He took another swig, making a concerted effort to try to enjoy himself, quickly, before the decay had become so prevalent it wouldn't be possible anymore. He looked around for Richard and, not finding him, started talking to someone else. While babbling, he heard his own voice, distant and amusing, trying to stay cool beneath his ordinary comic routine, heard himself trying to placate the anxiety rising in his lungs.
The vodka's non-flavour had less of a bite to it now, and he'd already reached the point where time had become choppy, lurching forward minutes at a time without the sensation of his having been present for all of them. He was clearly drunk, losing control in a situation that was losing control.
His conversation was interrupted by the sound of something heavy and glass toppling from a shelf and shattering, the music cutting out for a few seconds,
CD
skipping, laser lagging, searching, then catching again, rereading the binary code on the iridescent surface that gleamed, somewhere, hidden, deep in the machine. “Only in dreeeams . . .” Bass guitar slapping, dirty electric lead, drums building to a climax. “Only in dreeeeeeams . . .”
The girl he was talking to turned back and began chatting again while a fly landed on the rim of her glass, an inkspot floating in the transparency under her nose that she didn't quite notice. It was blue, glittering in the smoky light like a fallen sequin from a grad dress. The fly seemed to be fixing Nathan with its red eyes, seemed to know what was coming, rubbing its hands together with sinister focus.
Evidently his panic was beginning to get the best of him. Watching the girl's mouth move with slurry words, he tried to fight it back, wondering where the attribute of courage came from. Wasn't it possible that it was in his blood, coded in the helix of his genes somewhere? Surely he had
some
semblance of the mettle and bravery of his grandfather. He must. Even just a little tiny piece of it, gleaming, somewhere, deep in the machine.
Nathan caught the thick and skunky odour of hashish and looked over to see a tight circle of people in one of the corners passing around a homemade bong. At the same time a large vase in another corner was accidentally kicked over, tipping onto the carpet. He turned to look in the other direction and saw Richard, close to another one of the jocks who had surfaced, who was pointing out the flower in his hair, trying to mock him. But Richard was looking past the jock's finger, not really listening, focusing in the direction of the front door.
Then he saw Melissa, standing with her back against the wall with apparent abandon. There was nothing she could do either. And as he was admiring her devil-may-care expression, it wilted into something very different, something terrified, as if she were seeing the devil incarnate, and realized that he was something to care about after all. Her knees appeared to weaken, back sliding down the wall, hands covering her face, until she was squatting, out of sight.
A voice behind Nathan boomed above the sound of the electric guitars, “What in the
hell
is going on here!” The room spun around to face Melissa's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson.
Mrs. Johnson was covering her mouth, trailing behind her husband, who was forcefully leading the way, shoving through the teens, his brow already glistening in a cold sweat, eyes wild. He was a large man, and his gestures even larger. He stopped in the midst of the frozen room, flabbergasted. “Who
are
all you . . . you . . . ?” He put a hand on top of his head as if to keep it from blowing off. “And how
dare
you . . . in . . . and . . . And are you,” he pointed at the group in the corner with the bong, “are you doing
drugs
in my house?”
This would have been one of those opportune moments for the record player to scratch into silence, or like in the westerns, when the honky-tonk clank of the ivories faltered just before a gunfight, followed by the sound of a piano bench creaking over a wooden floor as the pianist ducked for cover. An appropriate quiet. Unfortunately this was a
CD
playing, enclosed in a glass cabinet. So the music went on, at the same volume, same album, same voice, having just started over again, back onto song one. The only sound in the hush of the room a blaring one.
“The choo-choo train left right on time / A ticket costs only your mind / The driver said, âHey man we go all the way' / And of course we were willing to paaaay . . .”
Someone nudged Nathan from behind, then someone else. He was, by default, the public relations guru among them. If he couldn't talk them out of this mess, no one could. He was nudged forward farther, by another hand, until the forest of backs and shoulders opened onto an obese and fuming middle-aged man.
Nathan was unnerved, panicky, trying desperately to conjure something from within, something strong and valiant, something that had to do with weeks of wartime ocean where U-boats lay in wait, or to do with jumping from a moving train, or battling unpredictable seas, something about his grandfather and the way he embraced adversity with a calm that made water look like a mirror. Unfortunately it felt like it slipped between his fingers.
Nathan cleared his throat. Everyone turned to him, listening, including, in his mind, the fly. “Right,” he began, speaking above the stereo. “So, the thing is, no one's really to blame here, sir, because, well, frankly speaking, it was just a matter of . . . a miscommunication between the, uhm . . . the . . . well, what I think it really boils down to is the fact that there was a . . . uhm . . . Yeah, I'm dying here, aren't I? I am failing miserably at achieving any degree of eloquence, when I really just want to explain that this party, sir, Mr. Johnson, sir, was really, uhh . . . well it was . . .”