Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(18)

Reynolds clacks in, carrying a tray. “Here’s our tea!” she announces, in the nick of time. Gavin can feel the blood pounding in his temples. What the f*ck was Naveena just saying?

“What kind of cookies?” he says, to put neo-representationalism in its place.

“Chocolate chip,” says Reynolds. “Did Naveena show you the video clips yet? They’re fascinating! She sent them to me in a Dropbox.” She sits down beside him and begins to pour out the tea.

Dropbox. What is it? Nothing comes to mind but an indoor cat-poo station. But he won’t ask.

“This is the first one,” says Naveena. “The Riverboat, around 1965.”

It’s an ambush, it’s a betrayal. However, Gavin cannot choose but look. It’s like being drawn into a time tunnel: the centrifugal force is irresistible.

The film is grainy, black and white; there’s no sound. The camera pans around the room: some amateur starf*cker, or was this shot for an early documentary? That must be Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee onstage, and is that Sylvia Tyson? A couple of his fellow poets of those days, hanging out at one of the tables, in their period haircuts, their downy, defiant, optimistic beards. So many of them dead by now.

And there he is himself, with Constance beside him. No beard, but he’s got a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and an arm casually draped around Constance. He isn’t looking at her, he’s looking at the stage. She’s looking at him, though. She was always looking at him. They’re so sweet, the two of them; so unscarred, so filled with energy then, and hope; like children. So unaware of the winds of fate that were soon to sweep them apart. He wants to cry.

“She must be tired,” says Reynolds, with satisfaction. “Check out those bags under her eyes. Big dark circles. She must be really whipped.”

“Tired?” says Gavin. He never thought of Constance as being tired.

“Well, I guess she would be tired,” says Naveena. “Think of all she was writing then! It was epic! She practically created the whole Alphinland ground plan, in such a short time! Plus she had that job, with the fried-chicken place.”

“She never said she was tired,” says Gavin, because the two of them are staring at him with what might possibly be reproach. “She had a lot of stamina.”

“She wrote to you about it,” says Naveena. “About being tired. Though she said she was never too tired for you! She said you should always wake her up, no matter how late you came in. She wrote that down! I guess she was really in love with you. It’s so endearing.”

Gavin’s confused. Wrote to him? He doesn’t remember that. “Why would she write me letters?” he says. “We were living in the same place.”

“She wrote notes to you in this journal she had,” says Naveena, “and she’d leave it for you on the table because you always slept in, but she had to go to her job, and then you would read the notes. And then you would write notes back to her that way, underneath hers. It had a black cover, it’s the same sort of journal she used for the Alphinland lists and maps. There’s a different page for every day. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, that,” says Gavin. He has a dim recollection. Mostly he can remember the radiance of those mornings, after a night with Constance. The first coffee, the first cigarette, the first lines of the first poem, appearing as if by magic. Most of those poems were keepers. “Yes, vaguely. How did you get hold of that?”

“It was in your papers,” says Naveena. “The journal. The University of Austin has the papers. You sold them. Remember?”

“I sold my papers?” says Gavin. “Which papers?” He’s drawn a blank, one of those gaps that appears in his memory from time to time like a tear in a spiderweb. He can’t recall doing any such thing.

“Well, technically I sold them,” says Reynolds. “I made the arrangements. You asked me to take care of it for you. It was when you were working on the Odyssey translation. He gets so immersed,” she says to Naveena. “When he’s working. He’d even forget to eat if I didn’t feed him!”

“I know, right?” says Naveena. The two of them exchange a conspiratorial look: Genius must be humoured. That, thinks Gavin, is the kindlier translation: Old poops must be lied to would be the other.

“Now let’s see the other clip,” says Rey, leaning forward. Mercy, Gavin pleads with her silently. I’m on the ropes. This teen princess is wearing me down. I don’t know what she’s talking about! Bring it to an end!

“I’m tired,” he says, but not loudly enough, it seems: the two of them have their agenda.

“It’s an interview,” says Naveena. “From a few years ago. It’s up on YouTube.” She clicks on the arrow and the video starts to play, this time with colour and sound. “It’s at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.”

Gavin watches with mounting horror. A wispy old woman is being interviewed by a man dressed in a Star Trek outfit: a purple complexion, a gigantic veined skull. A Klingon, Gavin supposes. Though he doesn’t know much about this cluster of memes, his poetry workshop students used to attempt to enlighten him when the subject came up in their poems. There’s a woman onscreen too, with a glistening, plasticized face. “That’s the Borg Queen,” Naveena whispers. The wispy oldster is supposed to be Constance, says the YouTube title line, but he can’t credit it.