Objects of Worship (15 page)

The others tell her that they, too, have started dreaming
of Njàbò, the elephant.

She leaves her door open; sometimes the others come
down and watch her work, quietly, discreetly. At first,
she knew, they were keeping an eye on her, worried that
she would withdraw once again. After a few weeks, that
changed. Now they come down because they find it exciting
to be in the room while Cleo paints. The candlelight, the
thick odours, and her absolute devotion to the canvas all
combine to create a mesmerizing ambience. Even Waters
has been spending hours curled up under her stool.

Every day, Njàbò comes, silently, to see her paint. Cleo is
still nervous around her daughter, still avoids talking with
her. Cleo senses that Njàbò is in the room now. The painting
is finished. It depicts Njàbò, the elephant, towering over
her herd, young elephants running around her, playing,
celebrating. Around the elephants, the forest is lush.

Njàbò, the eight-year-old girl, walks up to her mother,
in silence. She gazes at the painting. Cleo sees the tears
running down her daughter’s cheeks. Cleo gathers Njàbò in
her lap. The girl buries her head in her mother’s breasts.
They both cry. Cleo can’t remember crying with such
abandon, feeling so cleansed by the act. She hugs her
daughter, firmly, proudly.

I am awakened by a light kiss on the mouth. Njàbò has
crawled into bed, is holding my hand. Sonya is behind her,
quiet, submissive. Njàbò whispers, “I am the dream.”

Njàbò rouses the entire family, kissing them one by one:
Patrice, West, Assaad, and, finally, Tamara. She whispers
lovingly to each of them, her lips brushing their ears.

She leads the family outside. The street is deserted in
the middle of the night. Njàbò turns to face us all together.
We are all naked.

Looking straight into my eyes, Waters rubs himself
against Njàbò’s leg. Behind my daughter, a group of old men
materializes. The mokidwa have shed their invisibility.

Njàbò smiles. Soon, the ground will tremble.

The first time Kyle received one of those phone calls, he was
getting ready for a date.

Kyle had been attracted to Lauren since the first time
he’d seen her, when she walked into Pen & Paper and asked
to see the manager. She was there for a job interview. He
remembered struggling not to let his mouth gape open. He
remembered actually being able to direct her to Mr. Howard
without sounding like a monosyllabic moron.

And he’d made her giggle. He didn’t know how he’d done
it. But he could tell by the glint in her eyes that it was a good
giggle.

He’d always sneered at people — women, mostly — who
went on and on about eyes and eye colour. Blue-eyed,
brown-eyed, fucking fuchsia-eyed. What did he care? He
never believed that it made one iota of difference to how
attractive someone was. Besides, he could never remember
anyone’s eye colour. Once, a girl he’d been seeing for almost
two years — Jessica — dumped him because he couldn’t
remember what colour her eyes were. What kind of stupid
reason was that for breaking up with someone? He still had
no idea what colour her eyes were.

But Lauren’s eyes were a bright brown that verged on
orange. At work, he was almost afraid of catching a glimpse
of them. Often, when he did, he lost track of what he was
doing and where he was. Her eyes made him dream of
a peaceful nowhere, suffused with a bright warm glow.
More than once, he’d had to be shaken out of it by Cass,
the assistant manager, who, thankfully, was more amused
than annoyed. You should just ask her out, Kyle. Get it over
with already!, she’d tell him.

It had taken him a few months to get up the nerve to
even contemplate asking her out. First, she was just too
gorgeous not to have some type of boyfriend or something
in her life. Second, she was a co-worker; if she turned him
down, it would make things awkward.

He’d had to take a few days off work to attend his uncle’s
funeral. His mom’s brother Flip — his real name was Philip,
but everyone called him Flip — had been the coolest guy in
the family, next to Kyle’s long-dead dad. Before Kyle’s dad
died, the three of them — Dad, Kyle, and Flip — hung out
together all the time: went to movies together, shot some
basketball, walked around the city. After, Flip was always
there for Kyle, reminding him that life continued. That you
had to keep having fun. So they still did all the stuff they
had loved to do with Kyle’s dad. But eventually Uncle Flip
had to move out of the country because of his work, and
it was just Kyle and his mom after that. Kyle hadn’t seen
Uncle Flip for almost three years when he died.

When Kyle came back to the shop, he learned that he’d
pulled inventory duty. Together with Lauren. Alone with
Lauren. That Sunday, the shop was closed, and they had
the place to themselves. No customers, no bosses, no co-workers. If Kyle were ever going to ask Lauren out, this
would be the time. Besides, in the three months Lauren
had been working at Pen & Paper, Kyle had never heard her
mention the dreaded boyfriend word. There might be some
hope after all. And as Uncle Flip would have said: life goes
on. You have to keep doing the fun things in life, no matter
what.

They were taking a break — they’d just finished doing all
the behind-the-counter stock and were next going to attack
the showcase islands in the middle of the retail floor — and
Kyle decided that he was going to pop the question there
and then. Somehow the words just wouldn’t come out,
though.

They were talking about what they really wanted to do
instead of working in a stationery shop. At least, Lauren
was. She spent every evening writing, either film criticism
or film scripts. She told him about the screenplay she was
working on, a period piece set in the States during the
Second World War, a hardboiled crime story starring a
female private eye, while so many men were away fighting.
She told Kyle how she always emailed everything she
wrote to her brother Jordan, who never let her give up on
her writing. She made some money placing a few articles
in magazines, in journals, and on websites, but it wasn’t
enough. She still hadn’t sold any of her screenplays. She’d
taken this job to help pay the rent until her career picked
up. Plus, it was too easy to spend her whole life in front
of the computer writing. She liked interacting with people
every day. Faced with Lauren’s determination and ideas,
Kyle felt increasingly inadequate.

Eventually Lauren rescued the moment and said, “Hey,
they’re showing the first cut of
The Big Sleep
at the rep
on Wednesday. The one that was never released at the
time. Wanna go? I love Bacall so much. And this is one
of my favourite movies. I’ve seen it, like, twenty times or
something. But I’ve never seen this version.” She explained
that studio executives had been unhappy with the first
version of the film. It had sat unreleased for a year, until
new footage was shot to emphasize the Bogart/Bacall
chemistry, but, according to what she’d read, at the expense
of the plot.

“So?” Lauren asked.

Kyle realized that he still hadn’t answered. “Yeah,” he
said. “I’d love to go.” Lauren’s almost-orange eyes lit up, and
Kyle felt his insides melt into hot marshmallow goo.

It was that Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., while Kyle was shaving,
that the phone rang. There was a horrible feeling in the pit
of his stomach that it was Lauren calling. Cancelling.

He picked up the phone, half his face covered with
shaving cream and, miraculously, not a cut on him yet.
Trying not to sound dejected, he said, “Hello?”

“Hi, son,” answered the impossible voice. “I know this
must come as a shock, but I need to talk to you.”

Kyle’s mind raced through a whole spectrum of emotions
and reactions. There was a long silence. Tentatively, the
voice on the phone said, “Kyle?”

And then Kyle simply got furious, mad as all hell. “You
sick asshole! I don’t who the fuck you are, but if you ever try
this stunt again, I’ll find you and wring your putrid neck.”
Kyle slammed the phone down.

Why the hell would someone call him impersonating his
dead dad? How twisted was that?

Then his rage turned into tears, and the doorbell rang.
He stomped to the door.

He opened the door to his apartment, an angry scowl
on his face, tears still wet around his eyes, globs of shaving
cream dripping from his cheeks onto his naked chest,
onto his black cotton pants, onto the floor. “What do you
want!”

And there stood Lauren, holding out a bouquet of
flowers for him.

And she was gorgeous. Just gorgeous. She was wearing
a blue jean jacket over a one-piece pastel-coloured flowery
dress that stopped mid-thigh. A simple black hoop hung
on her left ankle, and her toenails — peeking out of her
sandals — were painted a dark orange. The dress was low-cut, revealing the curve of her breasts, and Kyle had a
vision of his face pressed close to them. He breathed deeply
and imagined savouring their aroma. No makeup to mar
her delicate lips, bright eyes, and freckled cheeks. Her neck-length strawberry-blond hair tucked behind her right ear
with a purple and orange flower, which emphasized her
entrancing eyes.

The next thing Kyle knew, he was sitting on the couch.
He felt something wet sliming on his chest, and he realized
that most of the shaving cream had slid off his face. His deep
embarrassment and conviction that he’d forever screwed up
his chances to ever, ever hook up with Lauren prevented him
from appreciating the touch of Lauren’s hands, which were
gently cupping his left hand.

Before either of them had time to say anything, the phone
rang again. When, after a few rings, Kyle didn’t move, Lauren
let go of his hand and answered it. “Hold on a minute,” she
said. “I’ll see if he’s available.” She held her palm tightly over
the receiver and pointed the phone toward Kyle. “It’s for you.
Should I just take a message?”

Automatically, Kyle grabbed the phone and said, “Hello?”

It was that voice again. “Is that your girlfriend? She
sounds nice. What’s her name?”

Kyle dropped the phone on the floor, let out a long, loud,
angry howl, and started crying again. This should have been
a perfect evening, and it had turned into hell.

Lauren picked up the phone. Kyle was too wrapped up in
his own misery to hear what she said.

Later — a few minutes? an hour? Kyle had lost track of time
as well as hope — his face and chest were being softly wiped
clean by a warm, moist towel. Kyle refocused, brought his
senses to bear on his immediate surroundings.

He was still sitting on the couch. From the light coming
through the window, he estimated that it was still early
evening. Not much time had elapsed, then. Lauren had
taken off her jacket. Her shoulders looked so soft. She was
washing him. Could he feel more pathetic?

She looked up at him — she must have sensed a shift in
his posture — and it took all of his will power not to segue
into the never-never land her eyes usually sent him off to.

“Look, Lauren, I — I, huh, I’m sorry about all this. My
Uncle Flip died last week, and then the phone — I mean,
this isn’t — I’m not — Fuck. I — ”

She said, “Shh,” tracing his lips with her finger. Facing
him, she sat on his thighs. She slipped the straps off her
shoulders and pulled down her dress. She put his hand on
her breast and kissed him, tentatively.

Feeling stupid as the words left his mouth, Kyle said,
“But what about the movie? It’s only playing tonight.”

She kissed him again, shutting him up.

Kyle didn’t believe it. “You’re telling me that everyone
knows this? How come I don’t? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Kyle and Lauren sat in a booth at The Small Easy, an
all-night café that, it turned out, they both knew and really
liked. The lighting was intimate, but not too dark. There
was a candle burning at their table. A big cactus-like plant
further enhanced the feeling of privacy by isolating the
booth from the rest of the cramped café. Not that it really
mattered then, anyway. At 4 a.m., there were only two
other customers, neither of whom paid them any attention:
an immobile grey-haired man staring out the window, his
phone lying on the table and his hand resting on a full cup
of tea that looked like it had been cold for a long time, and
a teenage Asian girl, with more rings on her face than Kyle
could count, scribbling furiously in a notebook between
gulps of steaming coffee from a jumbo mug.

“But it’s true. I’ve been talking to both my grannies
almost every day since it started last week.” Lauren took a
bite out of her tomato sandwich.

“Okay, so how come this stuff isn’t on all the talk shows?
Why aren’t there TV specials about it? If what you’re saying
is true it would be on the news, in the papers, and all that.
There’s no way I wouldn’t know. People would be talking
about it. All the time.” Kyle dipped a thick French fry into
The Small Easy’s extra-spicy mustard-and-mayo sauce and
waved it at Lauren to emphasize his point.