Farther out puffins with caplin draped in their mouths. Puffins find kayakers unusual and dont move. Until youre right up on them and then they hop and flap, push off the water with their stubby wings, and plunge-dive.
On the way back in the baby gull has reached a purchase. But he’s alone and bewildered.
29 Oliver says, Everything of importance has resonance. It all has immediate links. Maisie, he says, goes for the throat in her fiction. And that’s what it should do. It matters how you leave someone. If you want to feel good, then choose to love and leave when you dont like her. Leave when youve done no wrong and leave when youre not feeling jealous. Have a good footing.
I have seen Oliver too often at the Ship. And who has seen him with his prize, pregnant paralegal student? Only me.
30 Craig Regular steps out of Lydia’s bathroom and we chat for fifteen minutes. About his six-week gig on a local software program. Oliver got him discharged from drug charges, so he can get back into the U.S. He’s leaving in ten days.
All this time Lydia is drawn to him, and Craig speaks to her. Then he wants to make a coffee. Lydia shows him how her stove works. There’s something coquettish about how she leans on her hip as she twists the knobs. There is something brazen in how his head tilts over a collarbone to admire the propane flame.
I call her when I get back home and she says, I’m going to call you back. And I can tell that Craig is by her ear.
I am nervous. I dont want Craig so close to her ear.
31 The police are rigging a video-camera system through Lydia’s house. They are very polite, ashamed if they have to do a little damage to the mouldings. The cameras are tiny, with high resolution. Apparently there are three, though as soon as they are installed I cannot see them.
I wash a cast-iron pan in the sink. I have my weight on one leg. I often rest on one leg to give an ankle some relief. The body does things the mind is oblivious to. Lydia is firmly planted on two legs. She’s slightly back on her heels, feet apart, ready to go. I am more floaty, balanced, ready to bend with whatever comes. Lydia anchored, resists any oncoming.
September
1 My story is about the impossibility of holding onto water. Of the moments of love sifting through your hands. Trying to hold them and yet they push through and pass. Maisie’s story ends with a man’s fluorescent shirt, so blue it’s like someone poured a drink down his neck.
I want to hold the majority of Lydia. I want this established. She offers me this much, a quarter. And when I ask for more she is defeated. She says, with resignation, that what she offers does not seem to satisfy me.
And then I’m down to a tenth.
This morning as I press her close to me and there is resistance. A moment at the top of the stairs when I lean in for a kiss and she steps away. All this makes me ache. I have holes of aching.
2 I am taking a few days on my own. I have forgotten about the city. About the small images that fill in a day. There is a man in an apron smoking in a doorway beside Leo’s Fish and Chips. He is talking to Boyd Coady, who sits wedged around the radiator under the hood of his pickup.You could drop the hood on Boyd and click it shut, he’s that far in.
3 I’m running around Quidi Vidi. As I run I’m talking out loud about Lydia. How she trivializes my love, implying that my love means an appreciation of her body and social graces, but not her talent. As if I could love someone whose talent I didnt respect. And yet I’m constantly in jeopardy, feeling that I’m not getting enough love, which must drive her nuts.
I am grumbling out loud. I swear as well. It feels good to swear at her.
Soccer-pitch lights shedding white on the path. I have to shut up as I pass people. I watch fifteen minutes of a soccer game, excellent players. High-school girls in the bleachers and I understand there are boys playing. The girls chatter about bad shots, hitting the scoreboard, that shot’s got steroids in it. A corner. Both posts are held by defence, standing almost inside the posts. I run on. Up King’s Bridge Road and then Gower, past Lydia’s car. On Long’s Hill I see Boyd Coady in the cab of his pickup. He is playing accordion. His truck windows screwed up.