Dead Flowers Read online

  I came into the city on a Saturday afternoon, but because of some confusion I wasn’t able to get into the house. Annie would be in the next day, and only then would we meet the landlord, hand over our cheques and be given the keys. In the meantime, I had a duffle bag and a knapsack that I carried from the bus station onto a local bus that brought me to the end of our road. I started walking, but it was almost an hour before I finally arrived, only to find that the previous tenants were still packing up their things and loading boxes into their vehicles. I stood on the road for a while and watched, then decided that the best thing to do would be to hide my duffle bag somewhere nearby and make off in the direction of a park I knew to be close by. I hoped that there I might be able to find a place to sleep.

  The park was on a piece of property along the waterfront, so for a time I sat on the beach and watched the evening slowly coming on. I lay on a log and tried to rest, but time and again I was interrupted. People came by walking dogs, couples came strolling hand in hand. Finally, before it was dark, I decided to leave. It was getting cold by the water anyway, so I decided to move, to walk back into the city, and once there, to make some plan as to what I should do.

  I spent that night trying to find a place to close my eyes. At some point, I gave up and bought a tall cup of sugary coffee from a convenience store and took it to a bus shelter where I pretended to wait for a bus. From the shelter I could hear the sounds of a party not far away. I could even make out the smell of liquor and cheap beer hanging in the air. Later some guests of the party started filtering by on the sidewalk, small groups of boys and girls, most likely students like myself. Some of them tried to tell me that it was too late, that the bus wasn’t running anymore. I shrugged, and so they repeated themselves. It’s like, three in the morning, they said. Don’t you get it? Some asked me where I was going and invited me to walk with them. I told them I wasn’t going anywhere, that I was just waiting for a bus, but these people were drunk so they quickly lost interest. They walked off and left me alone.

  The next day, dawn was unusually bright. By ten o’clock I had made my way back to the house, which was when Annie was supposed to arrive. Yesterday’s tenants were gone, but it still didn’t feel right for me to approach the place, so after pulling my duffle bag out the neighbour’s hedge, I sat on the opposite curb and waited. Eventually a minivan pulled into the driveway and a short, bald man stepped out. I wondered if he had noticed me, but he didn’t give any sign that he had. A few minutes later there was another minivan in the driveway. I saw Annie coming out of the driver’s side and a boy I didn’t recognize came out of the passenger’s side, and then the three of them—Annie, the boy and the landlord—stood in a circle, shaking hands.

  At first I didn’t do anything. It was like I had forgotten I was meant to be part of the scene. I was tired after a sleepless night, and it was surreal to see Annie. There she was, just a hundred yards away, standing, talking, shaking hands, moving through the world with her trademark cheeriness and confidence. It occurred to me that this was more or less what she had been doing these last few months. Moving through the world and living her life, in a brilliance of mornings such as this. Suddenly I missed her so terribly that I didn’t even bother with my bags, I just stood from the curb, crossed the street, climbed the driveway, and then before anybody knew what was happening, wrapped myself around her in a great big, ridiculous, needy hug. Next came the introductions, to the landlord and to the boy, who as it turned out was Annie’s younger brother. He had come for the ride and to help Annie move. Tomorrow he would return the van, which belonged to their parents. For now though, her brother was grinning. Annie was laughing and asking where I had come from. I gestured vaguely towards the road. The landlord admitted he had noticed me earlier but said he hadn’t known what to make of me.

  The rest of the day consisted of us being shown throughout the house. Cheques and keys were exchanged. Papers were signed. Annie, her brother and I moved a few things into the house. All of what we owned so far barely made a dent in the space. Next, we made a trip to the grocery store, then to the mall where we arranged to have our home phone and internet connected. We bought a dish rack and a bath mat, then stopped along the way at a liquor store. Back at home we made a large meal, set up a table on the back porch, and ate dinner as the sun went down. We stayed up late drinking wine in the dark. When I finally went to bed, I had a hard time winding down. I tossed and turned for a while, thinking how everything was different now. From just yesterday, into this. From the life I’d been living these past few months, into this. And what is this? I wondered, drifting off to sleep.

  In the following days I met Elliot for the first time. It happened when Annie took me to visit his place. He and his roommate Chris had rented a two-bedroom suite on the ground floor of a townhouse. Upstairs was a young family with a newborn baby whose nursery was right over Elliot’s room. We spent a while listening to the baby cry, and to the mother as she tried singing it to sleep. On his desk, Elliot had a pile of paper clips, so while we were sitting there I twisted and bent them into animal shapes. I made two elephants, a few giraffes and then a handful of trees which I arranged into a kind of forest scene. Of course, I was only doing it to avoid having to talk—to avoid having to look Elliot in the eyes—while the baby cried above us.

  Later that night Elliot and Chris came to our house. Chris was sullen, quiet. He gave the impression of having been dragged along. He hardly spoke a word, even as we drank wine and smoked a joint to try and break the ice. Meanwhile, Annie and Elliot talked to each other like a pair of old friends. They spoke eagerly about people in the city, people they somehow knew in common, as if they had so much catching up to do. As usual, I drank too much and the wine went straight to my head. At one point in the evening, Elliot and I wound up in the kitchen, just the two of us, standing in a nook by the sink, close because of the fact that the cupboards didn’t allow much room. And who knows what we said to each other. Maybe we talked about cigarettes, and about how I had started smoking them recently. Elliot thought it was a dumb thing to do, for someone my age to start such an awful, nasty habit, but I tried to convince him that maybe it wasn’t dumb, not if you really thought about it, and not if you considered the reasons I had for having started. I went on to tell him what those reasons were, certain that he was coming on to me, showing me a kind of interest that went beyond what I was saying as I talked and talked.

  Soon it was September and we were into the beginning of classes. The days already seemed shorter and the nights were growing cold. By then the initial excitement of being back again had started to fade, and once it had faded, once I was able to see things more for what they were, I realized that something had changed between Annie and me.

  At first I noticed little things that I hadn’t ever noticed before. How Annie projected something of a special significance onto our friendship, how she acted as though we alone were in on a conspiracy together, as though we alone were able to recognize and communicate the cosmic absurdity of life. Maybe in the past I’d enjoyed this game, but now it struck me as an affectation. That a woman in the grocery store would be buying apples all the way from Peru, that a professor in his middle age would admit he had never read a poem he liked, or that wild poppies would grow and bloom out of cracks at the side of the road—these foibles and miracles were what Annie would use to try and bind us together asking: Do you see this? Now I couldn’t help but feel these were nothing more than regular occurrences, simply ordinary, completely mundane. And her insistence that they carry a significance had become annoying and bothersome.

  It was like Annie and I were stuck on different pages. It was like we had skipped a beat and the rhythm had been broken between us. The trouble was that we never happened to speak about it, although she must have recognized it too. It remained as a kind of embarrassment, looming on the edges of our friendship.

  Then something happened one Saturday night around the middle of the month. Annie, Chris, Elliot and I went t
o a party. Chris was his usual sullen self, but Annie took it upon herself to try and coax him out of his shell. She spent the whole night dragging him around and introducing him to the people she knew. Meanwhile, Elliot and I snuck away on our own.

  The party was in a large house that had about ten different people renting rooms in it. We spent a while snooping, going into people’s bedrooms and opening drawers. I was glad to see Elliot could get into this, exploring people’s personal spaces without them knowing it, studying the objects they kept, but without any inclination to steal or disrupt anything. Eventually we wandered outside into the yard. In a dark corner there was a tree with excellent low-hanging branches for climbing. We hoisted ourselves up and perched there side by side. We leaned together, pressed our bodies and faces together until finally we kissed. Then Elliot told me that he and Annie had fallen in love. He told me what a beautiful person Annie was, how genuinely good, how tender and human and warm. Then we kissed again, so hard this time that I split my lip.

  And what about Franklin? What had happened to him?

  By now I understood that he and Annie weren’t together. As for what had happened, or when it had happened, nobody told me anything. It occurred to me that Annie and I never spoke about things that weren’t light and easy. On one hand it didn’t surprise me that she’d never spoken about her breakup with Franklin. On the other, it seemed odd that in all the time she’d been without him, and in all her emails and the words we’d exchanged, she never mentioned anything.

  Franklin was around, though. He was living in the city, with his parents, and going to school. At least once he had been to the house, only a few nights after we had moved in. Apparently he and Annie were still friends, and still saw each other now and again.

  By chance, Franklin and I were enrolled in one of the same courses, The Existential Philosophers: Their Lives, Their Works. The professor was an older woman, small and thin, with a biting intellect. Franklin and I both admired her and grew to appreciate the course. There were two time slots for it though, one early in the morning, the other immediately afterward. Franklin always went to the early class, and even though I wanted to see him, I was never able to pull myself out of bed.

  One afternoon around the end of the month, Franklin turned up at the door to our house. I was alone, not expecting anyone, and so I was confused when I opened the door and saw him. I told him Annie wasn’t home, that she had gone out somewhere with Elliot, but Franklin said he was here to see me.

  Still confused, I invited him in. We wound up in the living room where there was a couch, a small side table and a lamp, but otherwise no other furniture, no adornment of any kind. Franklin said, I love what you’ve done with the place.

  I figured he was joking but explained the philosophy we had followed in dealing with the size of the house. Annie and I didn’t own enough to fill the space, but rather than to leave rooms entirely empty, we’d decided to spread ourselves and our possessions, however thinly, throughout. This way we could say we were living here, that we were in touch with every part of the house. In lieu of any response to my explanation, Franklin took an exaggerated stride across the living room.

  I suddenly felt awkward. I asked Franklin if he wanted to step outside, if he wanted to climb onto the roof. Walking through the kitchen and out the back, I explained that I’d been sitting on the roof sometimes to smoke. There was a ladder in the yard which I had propped against the wall.

  Did I tell you I’ve been smoking cigarettes? It’s only because I like to smoke, I said, but I don’t always want to be high.

  Franklin nodded, then we climbed up the ladder to a more or less flat spot on the roof where we could sit with our legs hanging over the eaves.

  There’s a reason I’m here, Franklin told me.

  I lit a cigarette. I didn’t offer him one.

  I want to ask you something, he said. I want to ask if you’ll be my confidant.

  I confessed I didn’t know what that was.

  A confidant is someone you can tell your secrets to. It’s someone you can trust, someone who will listen to what you have to say.

  So, I said, it’s like a friend.

  It’s like a friend, said Franklin, but one of a particular kind.

  Okay then, I’ll do it, I said. I will be your confidant.

  Franklin took a deep breath and started to talk, first about his travels in Europe, saying it had felt good being with Annie then. It had felt right, he said, and he’d known he was in love with her. But then she’d needed to come home and Franklin had wanted to travel on, so he had seen her off at an airport in Lyon and then travelled back to Greece to spend time on the islands there. Now that he was alone, Franklin said it had felt right and good to be alone. It had felt right at first in Greece, and then on into other countries. Then after Europe, coming home, it had still felt right and good.

  Franklin spent the summer working idly at a part-time job in the city, and for a whole two months, he and Annie were barely in touch. Franklin had hardly written to her, and never once tried to get her on the phone. He had more or less forgotten her and, he said, forgotten he had ever been in love with her. In the meantime, Annie was broken-hearted, but then she met Elliot and they became friends. Then late one night at his parents’ house, while God only knows what record played, she and Elliot kissed and fooled around, and she forgot all about her love-sickness.

  As soon as I saw her again, I remembered that I was in love, said Franklin. It only took a few minutes, really. I only had to see her move, to see her speak, and then it felt real all over again. I realized that it had been foolish, silly of me to forget. I asked her if we could start over again.

  But she said no, I said. Obviously.

  Why obviously?

  Well, it seems she’s in love with somebody else.

  With Elliot. Yes, it seems that way.

  I asked Franklin, Have you ever met Elliot?

  Once, he said, but it was brief. He’s a very handsome man.

  After that, we fell into a short silence and the world around us was silent too. I remember thinking that this was the silence that falls between people who understand each other perfectly, when between them there’s nothing more that needs to be said. I pointed into the neighbouring yard.

  Over there is a kid who’s maybe eight or nine years old, I said. Just a little boy, and he must just be learning the trumpet. His parents make him practise in the yard, so I’ve seen him out here a handful of times, standing in a very formal way, with a posture that someone must have taught him in school. He looks very proper, steady and focused. He lifts his horn, holds it up, presses his lips into it, and then he blows a single note. He brings his trumpet down again, takes a breath, then raises it up, and it’s the same thing all over again, but a different note. Over and over again. It’s really weird and an amazing thing to see. It’s something I can’t quite figure out. I mean, he’s doing this for hours at a time, playing just a note at a time, one after another. It’s as if he’s trying to make a perfect sound, but there isn’t any music, you know? There isn’t any music to keep him going.

  I lit another cigarette. Still Franklin didn’t speak. There was another silence, and I remember this time thinking that maybe we didn’t understand each other, that maybe we were only two people, terribly separate and far apart.

  Will you be my confidant? I asked.

  Franklin hesitated, and immediately I regretted having asked. It was as if, for having done him the favour of listening, I now expected that favour returned.

  I kissed Elliot, I said. Or maybe he kissed me, who knows?

  If Franklin was at all surprised, it didn’t show. Calm and sensible, he asked, When did this happen?

  It was two weeks ago.

  Does Annie know about it?

  She doesn’t, I said.

  Franklin asked, Is it going to happen again?

  We decided it wouldn’t, it shouldn’t, it won’t.

  After a while, as if he was thinking out loud, Fran
klin said, I wonder if we could ever be friends.

  I thought we were confidants, I said.

  We are, but I meant with Elliot. I wonder if he and I could ever be friends.

  Franklin and I stayed on the roof for as long as it took for the sun to sink and for shadows to grow and smother the yard. Mosquito bites bloomed on our arms and legs.

  Do you want to get high? I asked, throwing away the cigarette I had just lit. These don’t always do it for me.

  Franklin said he wasn’t smoking pot these days. He explained that he was trying to keep a level head. When it was time for him to go, we climbed down the ladder and I walked him again through the house. At the door, he shook my hand. I laughed.

  I probably haven’t shaken hands with a man since the last time I did with you, I said.

  But Franklin didn’t laugh. He just stood there, and after shaking my hand he thanked me. For what exactly, I wasn’t sure.

  Sometimes I wondered what Annie saw in me. She had so many other friends and could have been living with anyone, but she turned to me, she chose me, and I just didn’t understand. As a person, I wasn’t the type to appeal to Annie’s sensibilities. In other friends and in the stories she told, in the worlds she’d conveyed in her letters, I could never find any trace of myself. It caused me to wonder if she even knew who I was, or if she’d maybe been mistaken at some point along the way. Really, we had only known each other for a few seasons now, and although we’d been close, we’d never seen each other change or grow. At least, not until now, I thought.

  It was obvious our relationship was coming apart, and although I blamed myself, I didn’t feel regret. In truth, I didn’t care. I blamed myself only as a matter of course, because something or somebody had to be blamed, and I didn’t mind really, bearing that cross. I felt such a bitterness toward her and was constantly annoyed with the fact that she didn’t notice, or that she refused to see what was happening. Out of the blue she’d turn to me and say: Elliot’s very intrigued with you. She would say: Elliot likes you. He talks about you all the time.