fiction

 
NATALIE

By Paul Corman

I can feel Natalie slipping out of my life like an image on poorly fixed celluloid. She fades further away each day as the etching of time subtly erodes what detail of her still remains. I am in the darkened theatre of my life, watching her greedy apparition dissolve to white. In the next reel I know she will take to the dance floor with a strange muscular man with large white teeth who twirls her about to flamenco music. The scene ends with them flailing about on a large bed with silk sheets.
See how I torture myself.
I wish we would have a raging fight and throw our wedding china around the apartment, so one of us has an excuse to leave and have it mercifully over. But no, we keep the charade alive. She because of what her family and friends will think of her failed marriage. Me because, god help me, I still love the bitch.
Some time when it hurts too much I image her suffering some humiliation to soften the pain of the fantasy. To scrape the emulsion from my memory.
Nothing physically injurious. Oh it's nothing violent I imagine. Not usually anyway. Mostly it's seeing her with a custard pie the face, or in her black lawyer gown standing in front of a jury, with a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
But let's forget her for awhile. The real question of the day is has spring finally arrived? Surely it must be. The last of the gray slush has melted away in the rain, stranding road sand and soggy cigarette buts, in the gutter. Thrusting mountains impregnate dark swollen clouds as they move east of the fecund ocean. They gestate above the prairie and swoop across the northern woods to spread their birth fluid over our gray city. A monochrome world of subtle gradation and course-grained silver nitrate waiting for the birth of the sun to fully form it's captured image.
Rain beats at my window and soggy pigeons coo on the sill as I work all day at the editing table, cutting and taping brittle celluloid. Mixing up the moments in time. Scissoring one place in beside another. Creating continuity that alludes me in my own life when I turn from the allusions on the bright editing screen to my own inescapable experience.
There was a time before vanity and the subtle tingling of arthritis to come that I'd run to my room on a rainy6 day like this to strip of jeans and drag on my bathing suit from the drawer. All the neighborhood kids would run joyfully into the warming rain, to jump in puddles and splash muddy water up each other's legs. That alas was before puberty struck and the poisoned arrow of passion was thrust into my receptive breast.
It is dark and still raining when I close up the editing studio and walk to the lot where my car is parked. Around me the recently renovated factory buildings of the old garment district drip with new money. I pause under the awning of a woman's clothing boutique. The window mannequin has Natalie's nose and sharp upturned breasts. As I look up at the heavy gray blanket of starless sky I imagine it protecting all the sleepy lovers. They wake in the morning to untangle limbs and behind the shaded windows they sort out their underwear on the bedroom floor and begi9n the days conversation.
A pressure like deep unresolved hunger rolls up from my groin and lodges in the pit of my stomach. I am tempted to slip out of the light into a darkened corner and relieve my carnal pressure under the gaze of this counterfeit voyeur. Like some street corner pervert whacking off in front of startled schoolgirls. And as I stand there staring at the window I realize there is more than a resemblance to Natalie's flesh in this porcelain facsimile. They are both hard and cold.
A taxi sloshes by with its darkened roof light and steamed windows. Rushing on with its human freight. For a moment I feel safe and protected under my wide English umbrella. A wet mist settles slowly on the black pavement and yellow globes of incandescence surround the street lights like balls of pain.
At the corner a man in a wheel chair sits out in the drizzle. Caught in the spotlight during the filming of a bad movie: the dark side of Singing in the Rain. His dirty pant legs are tucked up under his stumps and his metal cup is overturned on the sidewalk. Pennies and nickels scattered like a lost and desolate life, exposed.
His thin gray hair is plastered to his head and tears streak his dirt stained face. He reeks from cheap wine and tobacco and as I push him under an awning he opens his eyes and looks up at me. He points nicotine stained finger at his scattered coins and I scuttle out from under the awning to sweep them up.A passing car splashes a wave against the curb. It licks at my leather shoes and at the last second melts back onto the road and runs fiercely along the gutter seeking the drain.
The man stares at me with a toothless grin as I hand him the cup.
"Bless you." He says, gripping my hand tightly as I try to pull back. His dirty fingers are cold and as he draws me closer I fear he means to thank me with a kiss from those cracked and pealing lips. But he only looks into my eyes as if searching for some answer, and satisfied it's not there he lets my fingers slip away.
I turn from the old man slumped in his chair under the awning. I am half way down the street when he begins to sing something Irish and mournful. It drifts towards me on the empty street like some piece of shared history I've long since forgotten and he feels I should remember.
I turn the experience to productive currency. A voice over narration for some as yet unrealized project. Role the film. Music. Narration. "You out there sitting safely beyond pity in the darkened theater. Why all this human suffering you ask. To what purpose this life of grief and pain? No answer? Tell me this then. Did you think to discover wisdom laughing and playing in the Garden of Eden?
Ah! If only it were so simple.

posted by Paul at 2:21 PM

 
ALL SAINTS

By Paul Corman

There was a large pool of dried blood on the sidewalk in front of All Saint's Church at Sherbourne and Dundas. It dripped off the curb into the gutter and someone had walked through it leaving a trail of brown footsteps that faded out near the traffic light at the corner.
The blood had turned flaky in the hot July sun giving off a rancid smell that attracted a stray tomcat. The cat crouched low licking at the dried blood swiveling his head back and forth watching for dark shadows with burlap bags out hunting a meal.
The previous owner of the blood lay at that moment on a stainless steel tray in a cooler at the city Morgue on Grenville St. Dennis Filmont had come out of the 24 hour variety store across the street from All Saint's Church at 2 AM the previous morning after robbing the attendant of 36 dollars and 52 cents. Jacked up on bad crack and disappointed with the take he'd loosed his demon of furry and drilled the ceiling of the store with 4 rounds from his rusty 38 police special. The clerk a Korean student studying Business Administration had an epileptic seizure and fell on the floor. The customer behind Filmont ran out the door screaming that someone had been shot.
As Filmont burst out the store two plain-clothes narks came out of the donut shop next door. They chased Filmont across the street were he stopped in front of All Saint's Church and pointed his gun at them. When it jammed the cops each put a round into Filmont's stomach and he crumpled in a ball holding his guts. He died in front of All Saint's Church before the ambulance got there.
Dennis got his picture on page three of the Toronto Sun that morning. He was 29 years old. Single white trash. His mother had been an occasional prostitute known to the police before her suicide by jumping from the Bloor St Viaduct to where six lanes of rush hour traffic sat motionless a hundred feet below on the DVP.
Dennis's father was either a truck driver from Ohio who'd dropped a load of chickens and needed some action before heading home, or the son of a local businessman who manufactured cute rate false teeth for people retired on a fixed income. No one will ever know for sure. It was a question that anguished Dennis all his short meaningless life.
Dennis will be buried in a cheap pine casket in a less desirable corner of a suburban cemetery close to the marshy area that floods over every spring. The city will pay for the plot but no stone and within a few years nothing will left in this world to remember his passing through.
Dennis Filbert was born screwed up and everyone knew right from the start that he'd come to a bad end. On that score he disappointed no one. It was probably the only time in his life he hadn't.
Dennis was the 23rd person to die on the street near this corner in sight of All Saint's Church since the land was originally cleared of it's hard wood forest and rendered fit for civilization.
Now the first white person to die near the corner was six year old Ronald Tinsel. Ronald was heading home with a pale of milk from the shed on the NE corner where the family kept a cow named Bell. He was run down in the middle of the road by two gray geldings pulling a wagon loaded with ale casks. The horses were normally calm and well behaved but on this particular day they bolted when a pack of dogs chased after them nipping at their heals.
Almost half the deaths in or around the intersection over the years were accidental. Four horse related. Six auto accidents. Two fatalities occurred when the wall of a building collapsed on the NE corner killing two Italian Stonemasons leaving their widows and children to fend for themselves in the new country.
There were deaths by natural cause including heart attack, brain hemorrhage, old age and septic poisoning brought on by an abortion performed by the sixteen-year old girl's boyfriend-a first year medical student at the university.
There were two suicides. (One found hanging from a tree by the morning milk man.) There were three homicides. One a prostitute strangled and butchered in an alley by a person or persons unknown. Another victim-a woman run down by her estranged husband driving a 1924 Packard as she walked home from work at a Sadina Av. shirt factory. The last recorded murder was that of a young music teacher shot six times by his ex-boy friend as he came out of the Italian Restaurant that replaced Ronald Tinsel's family cowshed. The piano teacher died in the arms of his new lover and the killer spent the rest of his life in Kingston Prison were he was very popular.
In all those years the crack head holdup man, Dennis Filmont, was the first citizen to meet his end at the hands of the police at this intersection-a surprising statistic in a city where the cops are known to shoot first and answer few questions later.
The cat licking Dennis Filmont's blood on the sidewalk in front of All Saint's church on that hot July morning new nothing of these statistic. Nor of the many members of his own species who'd died abruptly under the wheels of cars or by other means since their introduction by a spinster from Montreal who arrived in the wilderness out post with her four cats and a copy of the Provincial School Curriculum. The Tom also didn't realize that he was a direct descendant of those first settler cats-true pioneer stock.
As the Tom licked at the blood bubbled in the hot sun Bird Man shuffle across the road against the red light stepping over the streetcar tracks and dodging between a pair of speeding taxis.
Bird Man and the tomcat were old foes and the cat retreated at the man's approach. Bird Man stopped to look at the blood in front of the church shifting his weight back and forth in his felt lined boots and pulling the overcoat tight around his chest.
Bird Man heard thoughts came up through the sidewalk. He saw the dead man's final images and his life long disappointments. The boots and heavy coat filtered the anguish and pain so Bird Man could look without hurting himself. He'd learned some tricks to keep the white coats from feeding him drugs and locking him in little windowless rooms.
Bird Man put his hand in his coat pocket and gently fingered a young sparrow were the broken wing was folded against its body. The bird rubbed its beak against Bird Man's finger and went back to sleep.
Bird Man looked up at the inlaid brickwork over the front door of All Saint's as he went up the short flight of steps. If ships were feminine Bird Man could say that buildings were definitely masculine-protective and imposing. He whispered a greeting and pressed his hands against the brick as he went in.
All Saint's Church might have felt Bird Man pass in. He might have felt the pigeons that nested in the back corner under his eves were the flying buttress met the slate roof. They might have tickled him sometimes. Especially the peeping young in the spring. Brushing him as they flapped their downy wings practicing for their first flight. He might have felt a little touch of jealousy when they caught the wind and sprang into flight for the first time.
He definitely wouldn't like their gray dribble that seeped down his sides. Acidly etching the white brick. Discoloring the red inlay pattern. Wounding his High Victorian Gothic sensibility.
He'd over look this though. They were company when no one else was around. Cooing to each other. Telling each other stories. Complaining about the cars and cats that constituted their daily adventures.
Certainly much better than the raccoons and rats that had crept in a decade ago when it seemed no one wanted him any more. He'd stood humanless for some years. His double hammerbeam chancel roof had sagged under the weight of the snow. The oak pews had groaned from the cold.
Then one day people came and turned up the heat in his cellar again. Cleared out the vermin. Sandblasted, painted, varnished. Brought in cots and mattresses and set up a kitchen
Humans in his rooms again. Different from those he'd known. Shufflers with muddy feet and torn coats. Quiet ones that watched their feet as they walked. Talkers who couldn't shut up. Smelly some of them. The occasional vandal who secretly carved initials in his woodwork. Still though one couldn't complain. They were people.
Any thing was better than dismemberment. He shuddered at the thought of what could have happened. His lovely brick smashed by villainous wreckers. His precious hard wood spirited away to decorate kitchens in suburbia-or pretend British pubs in shopping malls and office towers.
Oh things were not as they once had been. He'd seen a lot of changes since being dedicated to the greater glory of God a hundred and sixty-two years ago.
It was a nice neighborhood then. Tree lined. Mansions all up and down. Not those murky Housing complexes and high rise snobs with their noses in the clouds. He missed the huge maples that shaded his door in the summer. Cut down to widen the street. The sidewalk pushed right up to his front steps. All the grassy land around him transformed to house the thronging people. The cemetery removed. Where had they taken all those old bones he'd wondered? And the horse shed where worshippers once stabled their Arabian stallions and Appaloosa geldings during Sunday service. Ah the smell of horses
He was old he knew that. But still sound. No dry rot in his timbers. The foundation as hale and hardy as the day those strong Italian stone masons laid it. And still bright and cheery inside for the few hours a day that light slipped between the high rise buildings across the street and blazed through his stained glass. Red green and yellow splashing across his strong oak floors.
Oh, and music again. His oak beams thrilled the first time he heard it. Not High Mass. No comparison to three hundred pious voices raised in praised to the All Might Supreme One. Still though they made his inside tingle Saturday night when they brought out their guitars and beat on kitchen pots and danced about the floor.
He took pride in his place. He was needed. Wanted. Of service again. Better to serve this lowly congregation of hairy unkempt street wanderers than not to serve at all.
The big room inside was filled with hungry people when Bird Man came through the door. One more in off the street in need of comfort. Bird Man joined the food line and sat at a table with two talkers who looked up and grinned through broken teeth-spaghetti sauce in their beards.
Bird Man thought of his father and his friends in the front room of the old house singing Saturday afternoons. Beer bottles perched on the fireplace. Sandwiches. Hairy hugs from men who smelt of Old Spice and cigarettes.
4:46 PM

posted by Paul at 2:12 PM