Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes Read online

  The aliens had come to Earth because of the Apollo mission. That’s what the men on TV said. No-one knew how they’d gotten here. Or where they were from. The day after the Moon landing, they just appeared – and moved in, integrating themselves into society as if there was nothing special about it.

  The new teenager making bicycle deliveries for the grocery store down the street, he was an alien, too.

  ~

  The aliens weren’t the only new people in the neighbourhood that summer. Within minutes of joining the rest of us in the alleyway, one of the new kids called me an alien. That kid, he was such a jerk. The kind of jerk that inspires everyone else to be jerks, too.

  Aside from that, I can remember exactly three things about him. One, his big protruding square chin almost lunged at you when he spoke to you. Two, I always picture him wearing the same T-shirt: an ugly beige thing with red piping and a picture of a race car. Three, his name was Tolby; I’ve never met anyone else with that name.

  It was like a dam had burst. Tolby called me alien, and suddenly all the other kids – kids who’d always been my friends – were laughing, pointing, calling me names. Hateful names. Making fun of me, of how I looked. Different from all of them. Of different flesh.

  I searched for your eyes. You were standing aside; at least that’s what I choose to remember. You didn’t laugh. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t participate, but you didn’t defend me either. You didn’t look at me.

  I was so mad, I finally went over and introduced myself to the aliens.

  ~

  The aliens had this screen, which they called television, but it was more. For one thing, the screen was big, wider than I was tall. And the screen itself was all there was to that television, with no big box to hold the circuitry. They operated it with a remote control.

  It doesn’t sound fantastic now, but in 1969 that was the stuff of science fiction.

  The technology itself wasn’t the most wondrous thing about their television – their Space & Time Screen, as I called it.

  On the Space & Time Screen, the aliens showed me life on their homeworld, with houses hollowed out of gigantic purple trees. They showed me dinosaurs stomping around on prehistoric Earth. Ancient Greek athletes. Aztecs building pyramids. Philosophers of forgotten African civilizations hotly debating topics I couldn’t understand, even with the aliens translating. Primate children playing long-forgotten games. The primordial ocean. Dragons flying through interstellar space. And so much more – I’m not sure now what I’ve imagined since and what I really saw.

  When I said I was thirsty, the wife poured me water from the kitchen faucet. “Can I have the same thing you’re drinking?” They laughed at my request, but it was a kind laugh, and the wife handed me the glass of water.

  ~

  “What did we tell you about those people?” My parents were angry at me. My father even raised his hand, but he caught himself before it could come down on me.

  Mom said, “You’re never to speak to them again. Never to go into their house again. They’re strangers. Understand?”

  I glared at them.

  “Do you understand?”

  I told them what had happened. What the other kids had done. The names they’d called me. I carefully repeated the words they’d used, accenting every syllable.

  Their fists tightened, then their anger melted away. Their spines crumpled, their necks barely supporting the weight of their heads. When they looked up at me again, I had never seen them so sad and defeated.

  “Oh,” they said. My father ran his fingers through my hair, and the three of us stood there silently.

  “Oh,” they repeated.

  ~

  Of course I went back to see the aliens and their Space & Time Screen. They were my friends, the only friends I had left. I stopped playing with those other kids. Even with you. Nevertheless, our morning trysts continued: a secret ritual we shared and were loath to abandon. We weren’t quite friends anymore. We were only five years old. What else could we be?

  ~

  In September, everything changed.

  We started kindergarten, you and I. Although we went to the same school, we wound up in different classes. With the advent of school, life’s rhythms followed different patterns.

  If there was a reason I stopped peeking through your kitchen door, I’ve long forgotten it. All I know is that I did stop. In later years, I often wondered if, that first morning I failed to show up, you stood there in your pyjamas waiting for me. Waiting to flex, kick, and twirl. Or maybe you, too, sensed that life was changing. Maybe it just makes me feel better to imagine some grand cosmic convergence and think that I didn’t abandon you.

  There was another change brewing: my parents had received notice that we would be expropriated. The city was planning on razing a large part of the neighbourhood. A community of small, tree-lined streets, hundreds of households, and dozens of local businesses would make way for a new superhighway, a giant luxury hotel, and a shopping mall with a vast parking lot.

  We would have to move by the end of the school year.

  I also fell out of the habit of visiting the aliens. In fact, I stopped hanging out in the alley altogether. When I wasn’t at school, I’d watch TV or sit in my room, drawing.

  The bulldozers hadn’t begun their work, but already the life I’d known was shutting down.

  ~

  I didn’t make any friends in kindergarten, but more importantly I wasn’t picked on. I have the aliens to thank for that. In my class, there was one alien, a shy little girl, slightly shorter than anyone else. There were other aliens in other classes, in other grades. I saw them in the schoolyard.

  No-one ever hit the shy little girl alien, but they only ever talked to her to make fun of her. The teacher never interfered.

  Neither did I. I wanted to feel guilty for not taking her side, but all I could honestly feel was relief at not being the victim. I remembered how you’d stood aside the day Tolby turned the kids against me. Flesh against flesh.

  ~

  The last time, it was also a Saturday morning. Not just any last time: the last time I saw you.

  It was too early for cartoons; the sun had barely risen. I was drawing: Underdog and Bugs Bunny teaming up against Doctor Octopus. A light rapping at my window led me to you. My young heart swelled with delight. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed you.

  I skulked through the kitchen and quietly opened the back door. In you came. We crept back to my room, and I carefully shut the door.

  Silently, you inspected my room: the toys, the action figures, the comic books, the piles of drawings.

  Then you grabbed my wrist and brought your lips to my ears. You whispered, “It’s my birthday.”

  You stepped back and watched me, your eyes wide open with anticipation.

  I wanted to laugh, but my breath caught. I was happy, yet I trembled.

  Trembling, I flexed, I kicked, I twirled. Trembling, I unfastened a button.

  I fell, clumsy. The loud thud echoed in the dawn silence. I picked myself up. Frustrated and embarrassed, I hurried out of my clothes.

  Naked, I finally stopped trembling.

  You smiled at me. Then you, too, disrobed. No flexing, kicking, twirling.

  “What’s going on in there, sweetie?” My mom’s voice.

  You grabbed your clothes, swiftly but with surprising poise, and slid under my bed just as the door opened.

  “Is there someone in here with you?” She stepped into the room and saw me standing naked in the middle of a pile of drawings. I was suddenly aware of my penis. This woman, my mother – she’d seen me naked every day of my life. Changing my diapers. Bathing me. Dressing me. Yet my hands rushed to my crotch, as if hiding my genitals would protect our secret.

  “What happened to your pyjamas?”

  So many questions, and no good answers. I was afraid to lie. Silence seemed my best option.

  “Were you sleepwalking?”

  Mom dressed me
and made me breakfast, looking puzzled the whole time.

  By the time I went back into my room, you’d managed to slip out, undetected.

  ~

  The funds for the project never materialized. All the people left, and the neighbourhood was destroyed, pulverized. But nothing new was ever built.

  My family moved to a different city. New school. New kids. New house. New everything. It was years before it occurred to me that there weren’t any aliens anymore.

  “I don’t remember the aliens.”

  Yeah, that’s what everyone tells me. I haven’t mentioned them to anyone in years. I thought: maybe here, maybe now, maybe you. But ... Forget it, it doesn’t matter. They’re just memories.

  This is my first time back. I was always afraid to discover that the neighbourhood wasn’t real. That maybe you weren’t. What luck to run into you.

  “Luck?” You chuckle dryly, sounding a bit miffed. “I come here every year. Always on the same day.”

  You see me slowly understand.

  You grip my forearm. I love the chiaroscuro of your pearly white hand against my skin. How your nails dig into my flesh.

  You lean in. Your lips brush against my ear, and you whisper, “It’s my birthday.”

  The Flowers of Katrina

  Trish hands Katrina a folded piece of paper. Katrina feels the subtle calluses on the tips of her co-worker’s fingers. “You know Lewis – that tall guy with the smooth head, the dreamy green eyes, and always a perfect two-day stubble?”

  “No, Trish. I never pay attention to the customers.”

  “How can you not know him? He’s our most regular customer. He collects suitcases like my brother collects vintage comics. How can one man need so much luggage?” Trish waves her hand around the shop – World Travel – with its large selection of designer travelware. “But I don’t think that’s the real reason he’s here all the time.”

  “Oh, no.” Katrina glares at the piece of paper with disgust.

  “He likes you. He asked me all these questions about you, and he was so sweet about it. He really likes you. I mean, really bad. He’s so totally crushworthy. You’re lucky I already have a boyfriend, or I’d totally snatch him.” Trish’s eyes are so glazed over with dream-lust that she’s oblivious to Katrina’s reaction. “Anyway, here’s his phone number. I told him to let me handle it. He’s a little shy for such a hotty, which only makes him cuter.”

  Katrina struggles to contain her anger at Trish’s presumption. Trish believes that she and Katrina are friends, but Katrina has no use for friends, much less lovers; yet, despite her best efforts to remain aloof, to remain completely uninterested in anyone, people keep trying to get close to her.

  “This is my place of work. I do not come here to get picked up. I do not want his phone number. I do not want anyone’s number.” Katrina doesn’t even unfold the piece of paper. She means to tear it into pieces, but as soon as she looks at Trish she sees.

  Overlain on the real Trish, she sees, as Katrina always does, another Trish. Unbidden, the life of that other Trish unspools in Katrina’s mind: this time, it’s a Trish who did not let herself get entangled with Wally, the condescending poseur, jobless slacker, and would-be womanizer who leeches on her already precarious finances. This ghost Trish acted on her crush with Lewis the handsome luggage collector. The ghost Trish is happy and calm. Her posture is proud and confident. Her light brown skin shines with health, youth, and vigour.

  So unlike the real Trish, who, despite being childless and only nineteen years young, gives the impression of being on the wrong side of thirty and several pregnancies, with her baggy eyes, cracked fingernail polish, and drooped shoulders.

  How can Katrina be interested in anyone as they are, when she is haunted by the potential of who they could have been, by the ghosts of all their bad decisions showing her the better life, the better person that could have been?

  Every day at work, Katrina is confronted with the myriad could-have-beens of Trish’s pathetic life. It’s not so bad with the customers, whom she rarely has to interact with more than once. But this constant reminder of Trish’s personal failures is wearing. As she has with everyone with whom she has ever had to endure frequent contact, Katrina has reached the tipping point with Trish. The sight of her now fills her with intolerable disdain.

  Katrina feigns illness at lunch and leaves; the next day she quits. Time for another job. Perhaps the next one will last more than a few months.

  ~

  Katrina cannot believe it took her twenty-three years to fall in love with flowers. Yes, in love. Flowers are alive and wondrous, but unlike animals they make no decisions. They are always the best they can possibly be in any circumstance. No ghosts of unchosen paths haunt them. Katrina is in love with flowers. All of them. Lilies. Buttercups. Oleanders. Mulleins. Pimpernels. Lantanas. Mallows. Roses. Tulips. Camellias. Hydrangeas. Poppies. Azaleas. Violets. Carnations. Magnolias. Trilliums. Rhododendrons. Passionflowers.

  But animals ... humans, cats, dogs, birds ... they all make decisions. All of them decide wrong at some point. All of them are haunted by better lives unlived. Or, rather, their better, unreal lives haunt Katrina.

  This is her favourite job, ever. Not only is Bouquet on the Boulevard an easy walk from her apartment, but it’s a tiny storefront and she usually works by herself. She sees the owner for no more than five minutes a day, when Anne comes in to relieve her and work the closing shift.

  Most of Katrina’s work hours are now spent alone with flowers. Their colours. Their scents. Their absolute, resolute lack of ever having to make a decision. Their existential purity. Their unambiguous beauty.

  Why has she not spent her entire life among these wonderful creatures?

  It is true that the customers here are even more intensely haunted by bad decisions. By their errors of love and romance. On the other hand, they do not try to pick her up; when they come to Bouquet on the Boulevard, their romantic focus is already on someone else. She is thus invisible to them.

  It does break her heart a little bit every day to abandon her darlings to these defective, imperfect people. But then there are always new flowers to fall in love with. And the flush of new love washes away the bittersweet pain of loss.

  Every day, she brings at least one favourite home. She has never enjoyed her apartment – her life – as much as she does now. She hadn’t known that before the flowers she was lonely. Now, her life is full. Full of love and steadfast companionship.

  She wants this job to never end.

  ~

  Three years later, and Katrina is still in love, still happy, still working for Anne at Bouquet on the Boulevard. Most days are exactly the same to Katrina: she basks in the aromas of her perfect loves, and thus the world, too, is perfect.

  She is surprised when one day at the shop, a tall, fit man – bald, with fashionable beard stubble – gapes at her and boldly grabs her hand. “Katrina! It’s you!”

  Katrina is shocked into immobility.

  The man looks at their joined hands. He acknowledges his brashness with a mock-bashful nod and releases her hand. “I don’t really want to let go of this hand, you know. You might disappear again. I don’t want that.”

  Finally, Katrina manages to say, “I have no idea who you are, sir.”

  “Sir? No, that won’t do at all. Lewis – it’s Lewis.”

  There’s something peculiar about him, something that commands her attention. It’s not that he’s so very handsome – Katrina doesn’t really care about that. What is it that both nags at her and compels her to keep staring at him?

  “You don’t remember me, do you? I never did talk to you. But I realize I wasn’t ready, then. I was too young emotionally, not enough of a man. And a girl like you shouldn’t waste her time on boys.”

  “Why are you talking to me this way? I don’t know you.”

  “No, you don’t. Yet. But you will.”

  Then some memory comes wafting up into her consciousness. “Wait – Lew
is? From World Travel? That was more than three years ago.”

  “But I knew I’d find you again. There’s no other girl for me.”

  And then something else dawns on her. What’s so special about him. So different. So compelling. Unique – unlike anyone she has ever met.

  His ghosts are fainter than his real presence, so faint that she can barely perceive them. That’s because they aren’t ghosts of better lives; they’re ghosts of worse lives. Lewis unerringly makes the right choice. And his lifetime of correct decisions has led him here, to this moment, to her.

  Katrina gasps. Lewis takes her hand again. This time, she surrenders it willingly.

  ~

  At her apartment, amid Katrina’s flowers and their luscious fragrances, Lewis removes her clothes and kisses her naked body with delicate reverence, as if she were as fragile as a flower. It is the first time Katrina has ever let anyone touch her, kiss her. Every moment is blissful. Even the slight pain of him sliding into her – she was so wet, so ready for him; and he, too, was wet, glistening with desire for her – binds her to Lewis. She becomes his.

  With that bonding comes the realization that, even with her beloved flowers, she had still been lonely.

  She weeps while he moves inside her; he notices, but he does not stop, does not become overly solicitous. From the way his hands and arms cradle her, she knows that he accepts her emotions without hesitation or questioning. She feels him growing even bigger insider her.

  Lewis behaves perfectly. He loves her perfectly.

  He says, after they have both come, looking unflinchingly at her, cupping her head with his strong hand: “Your eyes themselves are like flowers: gateways of seductive colour that open to reveal fragile yet savage beauty.”

  It is then that she notices the bloody scratches she left on his back. She doesn’t remember doing that. She didn’t know she could be like that. That, too, binds her to him.

  She drinks in his masculine musk and surrenders to sleep.

  ~

  The next time, the following night, they meet at his condo. On the walls hang framed, black-and-white photos from cities and locations she has only dreamed of: Venice, Barcelona, Istanbul, Gibraltar...