Blasted
Blasted
K
ATE
S
TORY
Blasted
K
ATE
S
TORY
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
2008
© 2008, Kate Story
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the
Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP), and the Government of Newfoundland and
Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our
publishing program.
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansâgraphic, electronic or mechanicalâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Cover Design by Paddy Moore
Layout by Joanne Snook-Hann
Printed on acid-free paper
Published by
KILLICK PRESS
an imprint of CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING
a Transcontinental Inc. associated company
P.O. Box 8660, Stn. A
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador A1B 3T7
Printed in Canada by:
TRANSCONTINENTAL INC.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Story, Kate
      Blasted / Kate Story.
ISBN 978-1-897174-31-9
      I. Title.
PS8637.T677B53 2008Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â C813'.6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â C2008-904283-2
CONTENTS
Everything moves in fast-forward.
The Hill. Soft turf the colour of old blood gashed by the arterial bridge. Brand-new overpass rusting, cracking, falling in on itself, bits of concrete raining down. Powder fills the air, white and floating, taste of chalk on the tongue, of salt. Curled at my feet, the skeleton of a small girl. Rib cage, legs and arms bleached white. She has no head.
The ringing phone jolted me from sleep. I thrashed at sweaty sheets â
two rings, three
â pawed through last night's discarded clothes â
four â
found the cell in my jeans pocket, opened it â
fiveâ¦
“Hello?”
Too late.
“God-fucking-damn!” I threw the phone across the room. Then I leaned against the wall, slid slowly down. My head hurt. My tongue was thick and foul.
What the hell time was it anyway? I craned my neck to see the clock radio â
6:04
â then fell onto my side on the floor; lay there, still drunk, slowly cooking in the June Toronto heat. The night before I'd dragged Judith out to a bar. Now, why had I done that? Judith doesn't even fucking
drink
. Images surfaced: Judith trying to order some food, me ordering another pitcher; me leaning over a scarred bar table and telling her with inebriated solemnity exactly why she shouldn't marry Tad, just why their union would not be blessed with bliss. Oh, Jesus.
Had
I really said that? I remembered her pouring me into a cab. I should call her⦠I tried to sit up. Lay back down. Too early to call, anyway.
You know that sudden feeling of falling, just as you start to go to sleep? I fell up, into hope. Hands shaking, I reached for my cell. Not smashed, good. I checked call history.
Nothing. Voice mail? No message. Nothing.
The T-shirt I wore was sogged with sweat. I sniffed it, searching for the faint scents of masculinity and curry. For the last four days I had been walking around in a perpetual state of nausea, nerve-strumming nausea, giddy with love and wearing the same sour shirt. Curry more powerful than an aphrodisiac â hot, damp white towels brought after the meal â long brown fingers tangling in one, leaving faint golden streaks. He tossed back his glass of pale wine, and then his eyes took mine. I gazed and gazed until he laughed at me.
I crawled back to bed and lay curled, the feeling of his body all along my spine. The last time I'd seen him. The first and last time we'd slept together.
The next morning, the “I'll call you soon.” I'd been smiling at him; felt the smile become fixed. I knew then. But I couldn't stop myself from asking, still smiling, too brightly, “When?”
“Oh⦠tomorrow, the next day.” And he'd kissed me, and he'd left me, and I'd waved him off. Smiling like an idiot.
He'd given me his T-shirt; he had a clean spare in his backpack. And ever since, I'd been walking around in it unable to eat or sleep or remember customers' orders or carry on a normal conversation. For
four fucking days
. I rolled over, fighting off a flash of memory: his palm pressed flat upon my stomach. His other hand cupped my face, then fingers gripped, slid up to pull my hair, the heat of his mouth on me, my trembling.
I jammed the sheet between my legs and clamped shut. Cool down, Ruby. Cool down, cool, green grass, falling in terraces, three of them. The smooth lawn incongruous against the rough stone hill rising above it, the patches of straggled grass and long-suffering trees clinging, leaning, all pointing away from the sea. The Hill, that we sometimes called the Mountain. Carved, perfect, terraced
lawn
, the only one on the road. Our houses all fronted directly onto the street, no sidewalk even, and we had no playground but the Hill, looming immense above. We'd explore; there were picnics, games of commando at the Pipeline or the Crashed-Up Car or Candive. Abandoned forts ranged above us like a giant's rotted teeth, their World War walls crumbling in the strong salt winds, their roofs long since vanished.
My favourite place was the Fairy Rock â the name something to mock only later in life â a perfect, dark grey globe, mottled with lichen and half-buried within a circular depression. The sun always shone there, and the Rock stayed cool as if it drew from roots deep in the ground. That place was razed, buried forever beneath concrete when the Arterial Road was built. Just as the church and the burying place were, when the harbour was extended inland and the dockyards were built, noisy and crashing. The dockyards lay directly in front of the terraced place, and there we flew our kites. An altogether incongruous place, with an altogether incongruous monument smack in its centre.
I gave it up and got to my feet to stagger down my apartment's narrow hall, wrapping myself in my grandmother's old green dressing gown as I went. In the kitchen I filled the kettle from the tap â smell of chlorine â and put it on the stove. Funny, I'd never thought of that before, how utterly out of place Shanawdithit was. That's what we called it: Shanawdithit, pronounced “Shanna-ditty,” as in, “You coming down to Shanawdithit?” A group of grubby children clustered outside the house, kites clutched in fists, me peering around the door. I played with them every day, and never ceased to view them with suspicion.
I reached for the tea tin. He'd been mock-horrified, that evening after the Indian restaurant, when I'd admitted I didn't have any coffee in the apartment. “But I don't drink coffee,” I'd nauseated myself with my ethnic play-acting. “I'm a Newfoundlander; I drink tea.” He'd laughed, patronizing, then kissed me.