Everything Was Good-Bye (21 page)

“I remember. That was before anyone had even heard of them. ”

He nodded. “It was amazing.” He reached into the glove compartment and handed me a cd. “Have you heard their newer stuff? “Strange Days
”
is amazing.”

“Yeah, I love that track.” I put the cd—
Beautiful Midnight—
into the deck and we both listened and sang along to every other word.

We started listening to it all over again. When it reached “… and you’re gone,” Kal turned the music down, nodded emphatically and pulled over. We had reached my building. “We should go out,” he said. “Tonight. We absolutely should… There’s this new place in Gastown, great live music and…” His cellphone rang before he could finish. I could tell by the way that he talked, his voice flattering, that it was his girlfriend Irmila. She’d lived in Hong Kong most of her life but moved to Vancouver when Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule. This was the footnote that seemed to be added to her name whenever anyone spoke of her. As if being from Hong Kong made her more special or less Indian. Her accent was intriguing, a cadence that was foreign but not at all like the Bombay British accent of other Indians. It was staccato, and overly formal, devoid of contractions
and slang. It hinted at aristocracy and, like the rest of her, was difficult to place. “She’s not like other Indian women,” Kal had told me. She was older than him and had never been married—and in fact when they’d started dating, she’d told him that she was not the marrying kind. As if to prove how different she was, she liked to boast that she was the only Indian person who lived on Commercial Drive, the old Italian strip that was now being revitalized by granola crunchers and New Agers. She could read auras and when I first met her she said mine was blue, but didn’t explain any further.

Kal nodded on the phone, smiling at me. Apologetic already.

He shut the phone and before he could say that something else had come up, I told him: “Another time, then.”

It wasn’t until a week later that I saw him again. I was in a coffee shop, contemplating writing in a journal that I had bought from a nearby store, when he and Irmila walked in. She was asking the dumbfounded barista if their coffee beans were fair trade. He called over another employee, who then went to the back to ask the manager. As they waited, Kal seemed bored by the whole thing. He glanced around, saw me in the corner and perked up, as if I were the shot of caffeine that he needed. He tapped Irmila on the shoulder and motioned my way. She nodded and he walked over, dragging a chair from another table.

“Small world.”

“The beans are fair trade.” I pointed to the sign.

He nodded and looked back at Irmila, who was in deep conversation with the manager. “She’ll figure it out.” And in just a few minutes she had, and was sauntering over with two cups of coffee to go.

“You remember Sunny’s wife,” Kal said.

She put the coffee on the table. “Of course, Surinder with the blue aura.”

“Meena,” Kal corrected.

“You’re a writer?” she asked, looking at the journal. I tucked it into my bag. “Hardly.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I long for someone to talk books with. I adore writing. I wanted to be a writer once, after I read Tolstoy, but that was before I met Marc, who taught me to paint. So many colours.” She sighed, in a way that made me understand that Marc was a former lover. She was the kind of woman who struck me as having many lovers, men and women alike. She was all about experience. Poor Kal.

“Meena, Irmila’s having a thing tonight. You should come.”

Irmila’s laugh was throaty and elegant. “Kal, it’s not a thing.” She leaned over him and handed him his coffee, touching his shoulder, fingering the collar of his shirt, every movement a request. “It’s a showing at the gallery where I work, and you should absolutely come. Everyone will be there,” she said, in a way that made me wonder who “everyone” was.

When I told her I couldn’t she insisted, writing down the address on a napkin for me, reminding me several times before they left that they both hoped to see me there.

The address on the napkin had almost worn offby the time I thought I was in the right neighbourhood. I remembered that she’d said it was off Main Street, in another up-and-coming neighbourhood that hoped to be the next Yaletown, but by the looks of it was years away from evicting the vagrant element that lurked in the shadows of rundown buildings whose former purpose and history peeled away with placards. I walked up and down the same city block, trying not to look lost, before I found the gallery. It was on the second floor of a brick building that, according to the sign, had once been a bank. The narrow stairwell was filled with people who were smoking with one hand and drinking with the other, moving and swaying as I shimmied by them.

It was Kal who saw me lingering in the doorway and invited me over. His longish hair was slicked back and he was wearing an untucked plaid cowboy shirt. It was trendy in a second-hand, I-don’t-care-about-fashion way, and when I looked at Irmila in her vintage lace blouse, flowing skirt and hiking boots, I knew she must have bought it for him. He rarely wore anything but a white T-shirt and jeans. He was naturally simple and easy,
often unshaved, and here he was complicated by her. He smiled and took my coat. “Did you find it okay?” he shouted.

I nodded encouragingly. Speaking against the music and background noise was pointless. The studio had brick walls and reclaimed wooden floors. Cocktail waitresses circulated and guests looked thoughtfully at the photographs that were hanging on the walls. Humanscapes—that’s what Kal had told me the photographer said they were. Close-up portraits that were meant to evoke an interpretation of each life by following the shadows and lines of the face, the imprint of smiles, the furrows of worry, the sorrow in eyes. Occasionally Irmila saw me and raised her glass, but she never actually came and said hello. She was in her element, talking with a group of highly intellectual-looking people in corduroy blazers who I presumed had a string of useless degrees and could talk about philosophy and economics with an equal amount of ease. She leaned into conversations, and she touched men’s knees and held women’s hands when she spoke. Everything about her was a flirtation and proposition. Her friends were all one note, loud and passionate, their opinions clear-cutting paths of righteousness. “The U.S. funded the Taliban during the Soviet–Afghan War… they wanted to get the Soviets out because it’s
all
about the oil. It’s all about who controls the oil man.” Everyone nodded, adding in obscure footnotes and intellectual asides; some touted conspiracy theories, suggesting 9/11 had been engineered. “War is good for economies: the rich get richer and the poor keep dying.” The woman who’d said that looked my way and stared me up and down as my high heels punctuated the floor. Kal introduced me. She nodded, still staring at me as though I didn’t belong. I looked away and spent the evening on the outskirts of various conversations. I nodded and smiled, sometimes in no general direction, almost embarrassed by my ridiculously expensive shoes and postal code, ashamed that I knew more about designers and celebrities than I did about polit-icians and foreign policy. Eventually I walked around the room and in and out of conversations without contributing a word, content to linger in the lines of the photographs, to absorb myself in someone else’s view of the world… until I saw him.

He was standing in the corner of the room talking to a woman with an asymmetrical haircut. He still talked as if he were conducting an orchestra rather than a conversation: his hands opened and sliced the air with both passion and indifference. His blue eyes, framed in wrinkles, bracketed an easy smile that had softened with age and yet to me he seemed wholly unchanged. I stared at him so intently that I felt everything else disappear. Sound felt like heavy furniture and walls melted away. Kal saw me staring and leaned over my shoulder, whispering, “That’s Liam.” I nodded and took a sip of my drink, whispering his name in the rim just so I could feel it reverberate on my lips. “He’s the photographer.”

I looked away, trying not to look interested, trying instead to radiate the detachment that everyone else at the gallery seemed to show. “How does Irmila know him?”

“She met him in London. I think he was freelancing for some magazine that she worked for at the time.”

“Do you want me to introduce you?”

I grabbed his hand as he got up. “No. No. That’s not necessary.”

“Later then,” he said, wandering offto join Irmila, who was beckon-ing him like a child. I stood against the wall, staring at Liam through the shifting crowds of clinking glasses and cliquey conversation until he turned towards me with such purpose that I thought perhaps his name had es-caped my lips. He stared through me in the type of look that can elongate moments and rooms. I looked away, and when I looked back he was gone. I scanned the room. He was talking to Irmila. She whispered something in his ear. He laughed and looked at me as though I were in on the joke. I was horrified and humiliated in ways that I had forgotten, and blindly turned around and ran down the stairs, pushing past the cigarette smokers, who were now hard-packed against one another. I rushed down the street and in a few minutes I heard his footsteps behind me, his voice call out. I didn’t look back, and eventually his footsteps stopped.

3.4

T
he next day when I arrived home, Liam was standing on the sidewalk in front of my building. I recognized him from a distance—his casual stance, hands in his pockets like a sheepish adolescent—waiting for me the same way he always used to.

“Irmila told me where you lived.” I stood motionless but for the jingle of keys in my hand. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her anything.”

“What’s there to tell?”

“Why did you run away last night?”

“Liam, why are you here?” I asked.

“To talk.”

“About?”

He rubbed his hand across the nape of his neck, dishevelling his already unkempt hair. “You’re not making this easy.”

“Am I supposed to?” I asked, brushing by him towards the door.

“Do you want me to go?”

I pressed my code into the security panel, opened the door and stood holding it. “No… don’t go.”

He followed me into the building, both of us quieted by the small space, the awkward formality of an elevator, which forced us to look up and watch the small-screen news bites—scenes of 9/11 and political debates on the
promised war on terror. I tried not to watch it. When I did all I could think of were the jumpers, who’d looked like black birds falling from the sky.

“Where were you, when it happened?” I asked.

“London… The whole city just stopped, you know? Everyone watching the news, no one talking, people crying. For a few days it felt like life had changed, but then things don’t ever really change, do they?”

I didn’t answer.

“How about you? Where were you?”

“Here, of course. Always here.”

The doors slid open. With Liam walking behind me, the short distance to the loft seemed longer, yet neither of us tried to fill the silence. I unlocked the door and he followed me into the entryway, staring up at the vaulted ceilings, the wooden beams and steel rafters. He threw his jacket over the edge of the sofa and wandered around looking at everything from a distance as if he were in a museum. Arms folded behind his back, he stared out at the million-dollar view. He said nothing, occasionally pointing or gesturing at some place where we had once been, careful not to touch the glass.

“So, this is your husband?” he asked, picking up a picture of Sunny on a nearby table. “Irmila told me you were married.”

“And you? Are you married?” I asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” He laughed, and shook his head as if he were trying to come up with a good idea. “I guess I’m just not the marrying kind.”

His answer collided with the recollection of Irmila not being the marrying kind. I wondered at the coincidence. I wondered if they’d been lovers. She was just the type of woman he would have loved. Her accent and ec-centricities were reason enough. I imagined them drinking bottles of wine, talking of nothingness like it was nothing, making love on a velvet divan or a Moroccan rug after doing exotic drugs and drinking elixirs. I suddenly hated her.

“Do you want a drink or something?” I asked, trying to be casual, to be grown-up about seeing him.

“Yeah, sure. Your husband won’t mind my being here, will he?”

“He would. But he’s out of town.” I went into the dining area and opened the liquor cabinet while Liam circled the apartment. I leaned over the sideboard and exhaled, realizing that I had been holding my breath, rationing it since I’d seen him outside the building. “Is red wine okay?” The words came out fast, almost flustered.

“Sure, whatever… This place is amazing. Looks like you’ve done really well for yourself.”

“We do all right. Sunny’s a lawyer and real estate developer.”

“And you? Are you a famous or soon-to-be famous writer?”

I looked up. “Neither. I gave it up.”

“Why?

I uncorked the wine and reached for two glasses. “Just didn’t think I could make a go of it.”

“Did you try?”

“Sometimes you don’t need to try to figure out that you’ll fail.”

Liam was rifling through the pile of cds on the table next to him. “Hip hop? r&b? Since when?”

“They’re Sunny’s,” I said, handing him a glass.

“So is everything in your life sunny?”

“Ha. Very funny,” I said, trying not to look at him even though I knew he was looking at me, pulling me back in. I was flushed with just the thought of him.

“Do you love him?” he asked, looking at his picture again.

I tightened my face. “He’s my husband.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s my answer.”

“Did you ever love him?” He watched my expression for the answer that was buried in my long pause, and I hated that he could still do that, that he could see me without even having to try.

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it does.”

“Does it? Still?” I sat down, staring out the window as I explained the details of my marriage, surprising myself with the honesty and clarity with
which I replied to his question, with which I told him everything. He was quiet, and I wasn’t sure if he was sad or disappointed in me. “And what about your love life?” I asked.